It falls apart now. They used to be intrinsically linked. Now they've been driven so far apart that I don't think the one has anything to do with the other. Even more so: I think that there is almost a reaction against style, that brute ugliness somehow has been interpreted as being the way to go.

Oh, they've been putting in the long hours ... But is that because they don't have the skills, and everything takes twice as long? Or do they put in these hours to avoid what they should be doing ... which is stopping and binning a lot of [their work]?

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.

A lot of people believe that you don't need to know the history and that creates newness. I disagree: we should always be informed and then destroy it.

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.

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.

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.