My intention is not to make clothes. My head would be too restricted if I only thought about making clothes.

If I do something I think is new, it will be misunderstood, but if people like it, I will be disappointed because I haven't pushed them enough. The more people hate it, maybe the newer it is. Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change. The place I am always looking for-because in order to keep the business I need to make a little compromise between my values and customers' values-is the place where I make something that could almost-but not quite-be understood by everyone.

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.

Not only in the creative world but also in the sports world. The most successful achievers in sports are people that are really driven and have that spirit of hunger.

Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.

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.

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.