Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.

I've always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.

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

I always just wanted to have enough to carry on. I never had ambitions to take over the world or be a global enterprise. But I wanted to have a strong business in order to do the main objective.

I don't think of myself as anyone special, and I would not know how to define myself.