Design Inspiration Quotes

I love New York. It's given me so much as a designer. When I moved here, I wanted to tap into the glamour of the city immediately. More than anywhere else, New York offers itself up - you arrive and get a rush in a flash. It's dazzling. Everywhere you look, there is decoration, from a pair of jewel-encrusted shoes in the window in Bergdorf Goodman to the Chrysler Building. And New York is incredibly democratic. Everyone is packed into this tiny space. You are confronted with all manner of people, and I love that.

It was just an idea I had, that it could be cool to have a book covered in fake fur.

When I started university, I didn't know much about architecture, so I flipped through a lot of magazines, looking at different and exciting images from all over the world. I thought that architecture could be interesting.

I came from a different world from other designers because I already had such a strong fan base that was interested in fashion. You have to give the little divas something.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.... I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.... It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.

There's this label called Neurotica by these sweet girls that have given me some lovely things to wear, and we might collaborate on making a little piece. They're really lovely, and I think they've been quite inspired by me in turn.

I was born in 1935, and as far back as I can remember, I was sketching designs. My first subject was an aircraft, which I imagined myself piloting.

Every time I design clothes, I'm making a movie.

What's interesting about architects is, we always have tried to justify beauty by looking to nature, and arguably, beautiful architecture has always been looking at a model of nature.

I've never liked to conceptualize too much about fashion, like it was art or science, which it is not. But it's nice when there's a clear idea behind a collection.

I was literally 3 years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life, through primary school, secondary school, all my life. I always, always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of twelve. I followed designer's careers. I knew Giorgio Armani was a window-dresser, Emanuel Ungaro was a tailor.

If I was ever going to become a good designer, I had to leave America. My own culture was inhibiting me. Too much style in America is tacky. It's looked down upon to be too stylish. Europeans, however, appreciate style.

I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.

I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design.

I wanted to design a line based on Hollywood's Golden Era. I talked with Stephen Burrows and with Willi Smith and with one or two other people, but it just seems like such a hard field to break into. I need someone like Calvin Klein's manager to get behind me!

Art Nouveau got its inspiration from nature. The Bauhaus got its inspiration from engineering.

From a design perspective, the U.S. has always been a great source of inspiration for me.

My inspiration for interior design is more historical than traditional.

When we started work on the iPhone, the motivation there was we all pretty much couldn't stand our phones, and we wanted a better phone.

I brought a lot of my own pieces of clothes to the design room when I first met with the design team just so they could see what my style was like.

Vivienne Westwood really inspires me. I love her punk ethos.

In Comme des Garçons, I hardly do any sketches; there's no fittings on bodies, there's no models that come in and say, "Oh, a little bit like this." In the beginning, there isn't even a theme. It's like getting the whole world at your feet - to empty your mind of everything that's ever happened before, to get an empty space.

Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I'm probably one of the first designers to make short films.

Rooney Mara is someone I'd like to dress; we've not worked with her before and she certainly has very interesting personal style.

Designing wasn't something that I was always into, but I wasn't able to find clothes that I wanted to wear. I wanted to be able to walk into any store and have an idea of what I want and go and get it.