Are there a lot of designers that matter? The industry hasn’t got a litmus test any more. The whole thing has imploded. Watch it die, like the banking industry

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.

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.

I often ask students: 'Is this what you would show Tom Ford?' and they say: 'No, we'd have done more work' or 'We'd have dressed better.' So I say: 'Why don't you do that here?'

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've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.

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.