I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable.

Many students don't really like it (fashion). If they don't like it, they won't be able to tell you who the stylists are or the photographers. If they say they can't remember the names but they recognize the work, I'll say that's bullshit because if you were selling mobile phones, you'd know all about the phones' features and tariffs.

It's a secret language, known to all different people, in different ways, that enables them to read a subliminal message without realising they're reading it. It affects people on many levels, and even people who think they're not into fashion, or reject fashion are then being informed just in the case of rejecting it. The fact that they had to react against it was a conscious decision.

Students sometimes turn up at my course and they look a bit like they're going to Bali with only Wellingtons and a map, and they never leave their hotel room because they didn't think to bring a bikini. I'm full of bizarre analogies like that.

Of course, there's some you think, well I wouldn't let them in the door, but there's not many. It's very important to know that it's a mutual thing, that there is respect and a form of teamwork. With quite a few of them it can be traumatic, but there are moments in here when they do extraordinary things with their designs. There are things of beauty I get to see in this office.

You can't subvert knowledge until you have knowledge... At the same time, I respect a student coming at it from a totally different position and trying to move it forward, and not falling into the rattrap of work that came before.

I absolutely loathe and hate the work... But I love youth. I realise how lucky it is being with youth, and what an honour that is. Nowhere else could a fat 47-year-old speak to people as young as this. They'd think you were a paedophile.