I think of young Chinese women today as being incredibly modern and are taking a lot from Western style and tailoring.
What's really interesting is when you get a brand-new wave that has no connection to anything else. It always reflects society. The flappers would cut the dresses and make them looser, they smoked, their hair was short. It was a rebellion against the corset and the Edwardian era.
The most fascinating part is how fashion just attracts all these social rejects, if you will, from around the world, encourages individuality. They're the people who make the industry tick.
Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.
It was a time after 'Lady Sings the Blues' and 'Mahogany' and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.
Now is the most exciting time in fashion. Women are controlling their destiny now, the consumer is more knowledgeable, and I have to be better every single day.
Androgynous fashion, long hair, the Pill, a new interest in the inner psychological life - an unabashed sloppiness, if you will - really marks the sixties. It was when Britain went girlie. And what do girls do? Girls shop.
I've never been happier to be born in this time than when I was wearing a corset.
It's a new era in fashion - there are no rules.
It's like, what happened, I was always leading fashion, and then the grunge thing kind of came along. And because I've been so on top in the '80s you know, I, you know, what can I do? Suddenly go grunge?
I think and hope I have changed the way we look at hats. They are no longer symbols of conformity but highly individual acts of rebellion. I am constantly challenging the perception of what a hat should be and what role it should play.
One doesn't want fashion to look ridiculous, silly, or out of step with the times - but you do want designers that make you think, that make you look at fashion differently. That's how fashion changes. If it doesn't change, it's not looking forward. And that's important to me.
So soon as a fashion is universal, it is out of date.
When fashion turns over it brings in little tiny creaks and cracks. This is the fascination and that is where you have to watch every step.
'Ashes To Ashes' is a victim of its own success. We started lots of trends. I like to think we had something to do with bringing back the high waist. It's so much more flattering.
Style has always been very important to us. We grew up in the '70s. Music was glam rock, punk rock and a very stylish movement.
With unisex fashion, you know, females were doing it first. You're the reason we have unisex clothing. It's because girls said, "Wait, I can wear jeans, too! I can wear a suit, too."
The biggest and most interesting challenge is to bring Elsa Schiaparelli's legacy to the present and the future. She had an exceptional, incredible, and intelligent approach; she was ahead of her times.
In the end, punk inevitably burned itself out and acted as a bridge across which the New Romantics could sashay in their chiffon and glossy hair.
The fashion world is so interesting because it's always changing, but if you know yourself really well, despite of all the changes in the fashion trends, you know how to stay true to yourself.
I want to be the Joan of Arc of fashion. I want to be the link between the runway and the real woman.
Maybe Italians are a bit less restrained: they can be less rigid and sometimes they stray a little in their ways of dressing for work, which is something that is always linked to the formal suit. What we like of both Italians and the British is that they love to dress well. In the past ten years we have witnessed a revolution in the menswear market.
When I started Giorgio Armani in the mid-'70s, I realized that women needed a way to dress that was equivalent to that of men - something that would give them dignity, an attitude that would help them handle their work life.
When the women's movement started in the 1960s, there was a vision of a future where women didn't wear makeup or worry about how their hair looked, and everybody wore sensible, comfortable clothes. It ran into an absolute brick wall.
Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.
