The idea was not to make a huge business, because the bigger you get, the more restraints I thought I might get. Number one was to do what I set out to do: make new and interesting things within the size of the business that is possible to do without restraints. The second goal was to do the business in order to achieve the first goal. That's what many people don't understand.

Beauty is whatever anyone thinks is beautiful.

I don't feel too excited about fashion today People just want cheap fast clothes and are happy to look like everyone else

It would have more meaning for me to hear what critics have to say if their values and their ways of living were deeper and more serious.

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 the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.

Comme des Garcons is a gift to oneself, not something to appeal or to attract the opposite sex