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 have a great admiration and tenderness for Azzedine Alaia. I haven't seen him in a while, but I guess he must be still sewing some dresses at night.

I started as a black-and-white teenage photographer, and I'm still there decades after. In some ways, the genre is almost gone. I am thinking of true, stubborn, lifetime black-and-white photographers, as opposed to black-and-white as a photographic commodity.

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.

Men's fashion has a certain heaviness in the fabrics and construction. But also there is a heaviness in the mentality.

I thought I should work more on the idea that you wear a suit or a jacket because of the fun it can provide, because it's a game, because it might even have a sexual quality.

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