I work in three shades of black.

Fashion is something you attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction the meaning of it is born. Without the wearing of it, it has no meaning, unlike a piece of art. It is fashion because people want to buy it now, because they want to wear it now, today. Fashion is only the right now.

Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them.

For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit - the hungry mind - is what gets you going forward.

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.

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.

I'd rather [the collection] have no title. Journalists like titles. That's why I give them to you.