Avant-Garde Style Quotes

When it comes to fashion, I'm just inspired by anyone who has their own flair or piece on anything. I love originality. I love when people bring some bold and don't do what's been done or being done. I don't think I have anyone in particular. Just anyone who's original really inspires me.

I have always just experimented, and I come from a very ancient, acoustic root. It was very hard to put a finger on me.

We who have been ahead in STYLE have usually been also ahead in our thinking.

I'm lucky to have met Nicolas Ghesquiere, the creative director of Vuitton. He understands me and knows me, and I admire his sensibility and talent. Karl Lagerfeld is another huge designer and artist for whom I feel affection and admiration.

I do look at fashion, and I love going to Opening Ceremony and seeing what they have. Seeing what Jeremy Scott is doing. And this designer Bernhard Wilhelm. Proenza Schouler.

I don't think I could walk down the street wearing bubbles or a dress made of ham. What Lady GaGa has done has been kind of amazing. I am the opposite. I wear clothes I would wear on the street. I'm all about a real look.

When you see an Alexander McQueen fashion show, you are taken on a journey. It's surreal.

In the heyday of the Oscars, there were electric sparks flying. When Cher went in her fabulous Bob Mackie dress and her Mohawk, and Bjoerk with her swan dress. Then we thought it was bad taste; now I think it should have been the best dress because she stood out.

I try to push design boundaries using new draping and fabric manipulation techniques every time I approach a new design.

A film that I love is 'Raising Arizona' and that's funny but it's quite indie and weird and odd and quirky. I'd love to do something like that. Who knows?

Bjork - she wears really weird stuff, and it's amazing.

I like Victoria Beckham's fashion sense. In Bollywood, Kangana Ranaut is really out-of-the-box and quirky.

I like a lot of older rock 'n' roll artists, like legends like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. They really influenced me to be very, very androgynous and very commanding, and very very - I wouldn't say odd, but I would say eccentric.

I'm totally obsessed with Tilda Swinton. She has this strange, beautiful sexiness about her. I love everything she does. And I love her hair. It was a little bit of an inspiration for mine.

I hate the terminology of 'costume' because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they're high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn't say they're costumes, I'd say they're more couture.

I like things that are well cut, things that are considered within their detailing. Fabrics that are very developed; specialist jacquards and prints. My clothes are statement pieces. They're decorative, but there's always a subversiveness or an othersidedness to them.

Rick Owens is my desert island designer. I could live in his clothes alone, and I collect Ossie Clark.

In terms of bridal dress, I've tried everything. I've tried short, long, deconstructed, constructed, bustiers, working in fabrics, working in color. I've been working in color in bridal for probably 15 years. Who else would do an entire collection dipped in tea? I did that one year. My design team dipped every single dress in tea in a bathtub. I did that just because I wanted to work out of the vocabulary of white.

I have pictures of my grandmother from the 1920s and '30s in avant-garde dresses that looked like they could have come from the House of Worth or Lucien Lelong. She would never say if they were couture, but I do recall her telling me, 'All my clothes and shoes came from Paris.'

When I started coming to do shows in New York, New York had a pretty electric energy then. It was the early-nineties, and there was a lot of really fun theatrical types that were designing, and so the runway kind of became this stage for all of these mega model personalities to flaunt their stuff.

Certainly a big challenge for me with evening-wear is to make it look modern and artistic and avant-garde. The very concept of a ball gown is not in itself a modern concept, and women need to wear that for a certain presence in Hollywood. I'm also aware that a starlet might go to more than one place that night so the piece could also offer, maybe not a revolution, but an evolution.

Outside of advertising, the person who's influenced me most is quite possibly Frank Gehry.

I love the rawness in fashion.

Leigh Bowery created outfits that made him look deformed, which was very brave. I believe this was the main thing that gave Leigh his edge. His designs were often breath-taking, but it was the way he used his body that was so utterly new and refreshing.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chelsea Handler, Tilda Swinton, and Sofia Coppola are other clients. They're all risk takers but never look like they're in costume.