People always want an explanation about everything and I cannot give it to them. Because I don't know myself. 'Why did you do a pair of pants like that?' I have no idea. I'm not going to have a 20-minute political discussion about the necessity for slashed, painted leather jeans. Basically, I don't know more than you.

When I was designing, I had in mind Jimi Hendrix, and I could hardly find skinny indie black kids to wear my clothes. I remember one telling me he had to swap his skinny jeans for baggy ones in the subway before going home, so he wouldn't get in trouble in his neighborhood.

Mostly the subject of the photograph, which can be anyone really, coming down the street - someone that has no idea. "Heroism" in photography, just like in a novel, is for everyone.

I'm so personally attached to all the characters I met and photographed over the years ... the anthology is like a photographic reliquary that could potentially preserve their grace, fierce joy, and restlessness.

The perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'

I like it to stay very organic, and to remember a personal story behind all my subjects.

Since I was a child, my whole life has revolved around music. It's often while listening to a song that ideas for my fashion collections formed.