The same spirit runs through everything I do.

I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks.

For me, I haven't succeeded in any way whatsoever.

The very, very first thing that I wanted was to make a living - be independent and have a job. It might have come later, that kind of reaction to the boringness of fashion.

In Comme des Garçons, I hardly do any sketches; there's no fittings on bodies, there's no models that come in and say, "Oh, a little bit like this." In the beginning, there isn't even a theme. It's like getting the whole world at your feet - to empty your mind of everything that's ever happened before, to get an empty space.

For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.

If you have total freedom to design, you won't get anything interesting. So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It's the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through. So it's self-given, but that's the only way, I think, to make a strong, good new creation.