I'm experimenting in public. At the design grad schools, these are people sitting around in groups, putting their work on a wall, analyzing it and putting it back in a drawer. I think there's little risk in that.
By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size.
I have a passion for design. Be it a line of clothes or taking a gut decision with unique pieces of furniture, one should always be willing to experiment.
Maybe the museum [of Arts and Design ]needs to follow the advice of its acronym and not be afraid to go a little M.A.D.
While studying art and design at Central Saint Martins, I went round supermarkets taking photos of shoppers and their baskets: the game was to match people with their food. For an architectural project, I made a scale model of a shop out of gingerbread rather than foam and added icing and sweets very colourfully.
I had used the stretch materials for years to shape the inside of garments I made for private clients. Then I just started using them on their own.
The shock of the way I mix patterns and fabrics can be disconcerting, but what I am trying to do is provoke new ideas about how pieces can be put together in different ways. I think this is a more modern way to wear clothes that in themselves are fairly classic.
In my work, I have always tried to push the boundaries of what fashion can do.
I think what we're talking about is a sense of fashion as laboratory work. I mean, we are not scientific, of course, but we are looking for ideas all the time.
Cardboard is another material that's ubiquitous and everybody hates, yet when I made furniture with it everybody loved it.
I really don't over-theorize about design. I'd rather feel it than talk it to death. A lot happens as you unroll the design.
