My approach is simple. It is nothing other than what I am thinking at the time I make each piece of clothing, whether I think it is strong and beautiful. The result is something that other people decide.

I haven't yet made clothes that I have been totally satisfied with, and maybe I never will.

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.

What's good about many people liking the work is that when I want to collaborate or am interested in the synergy of artists working together, nobody ever says no to me when I ask to work with them.

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

The same spirit runs through everything I do.

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.