Riccardo Tisci Quotes

I try to destroy taboo in fashion-which is something I learned as a kid. I come from the street, and you have to be a survivor.

At the beginning, I didn't see what Givenchy could give my career. It was like, "Okay, I'll do it for the money for a few years to help my mom and my sisters."

To leave Italy at 17 without money and go to a country like England is very rare; Italians stay with the family until 30, 35. But I couldn't stand to live in this box anymore. I was getting bigger, and the box was getting smaller.

If I am in fashion, it is really due to very few designers that I admire - not because I don't like the rest, or that the rest are not beautiful, but because I am very selective. I adore Versace. I adore Helmut Lang, despite the fact that it's over.

I started to draw and design clothes that I couldn't find, because everything was all luxury, fashion clothes or very straight. So I mixed all of that together: Who says I can't put a man in a skirt? Who says that a man can't wear lace? Who says that men can't wear Swarovski? Who says that men can't wear makeup? You know what I'm like; for me, straight, gay, women, men, trans, we're all the same. I don't see difference.

These five years as a couturier have really changed my way of seeing fashion and my confidence with fashion. Couture is a dream.

I used to hate to go to school, because when it was Friday afternoon and everybody was finished school, I knew I was going to work Saturday and Sunday.

Couture is emotion. Couture is freedom. Couture is not thinking about pricing and not thinking about craziness. You can do whatever you want to do in couture.

In spite of the fact that everyone thinks I am very much a rottweiler - that i am very dark and everything - I have a side that is very romantic that i show to very few people.

I've got what I want, and I've got the luck to express myself and to be paid and to do what I do as a creative person.

When I started, everyone said couture was finished and I was so scared. Actually I was more terrorized than scared. I was arriving from a provincial area of Italy. They called me in to do Givenchy and I just thought, Wow.

I can give a beautiful present, and that may change the lives of people around me.

In prêt-à-porter now we understandably need to make the collection satisfy the big market more, so couture is extra special.

I brought a lot of the codification of womenswear to menswear. Why? Because when I was a child, I was wearing women's clothes adjusted to me.

I am super-Italian, not even European - Italian. And this is very precise. It's like houses. Over time they stabilize themselves in the terrain. I am still at the first step of a long staircase.

When I was 12, I used to dress as a woman in the house. At the time, cross-dressing was a big taboo in Italy. It was better to have a son who was a drug addict than a cross-dresser.

My first stage was couture. Boom. Couture. It has changed because women have evolved. Back in the day there were princesses. Today, there are still princesses, but she no longer rides around with horses and a carriage. She parties, she goes on vacation, she goes on boats. She wants to be dynamic. I understood this and I kept going. We do prêt-à-porter, men's, and couture.

I come from a very poor family, with sisters. I never really knew my father, so I miss this strong image of a man in my life.

Couture was only for rich people. Givenchy was for rich people. A bag cost 5,000 euro; a coat cost 10,000 euro. In the beginning, I couldn't react. I was just working like a machine, because I wanted to make the house happy.

For me, darkness is something very beautiful.

I've had this sensibility since I was a child. If there was a black boy in the school, I was the friend. If there was an effeminate guy, I was the friend. If there was somebody who was poor like me, I was the friend.

I love finding new things. I love the conceptual aspect of Antony Hegarty or the voices of those back in the day like Lil' Kim, Missy Elliott, Ciara. I love what evokes emotion in me.

People's wardrobes in history are something that society and culture imposed. But sexuality is not about the way you dress.

I was lucky. From the time I was a little, I was always surrounded by women, and I am very attracted to the feminine world, because I love the strength and romanticism, which in the end, you can find in my style.

I always think about the streets because that's where I come from and that's where I'm going to die one day. That is my life.

I am close friends with Marina Abamovich, so I love strong, very aggressive political art. She is like a mom who wants to adopt me.

I'm very well off but I can stay with normal people. I can do a super-luxury life, but I can do a very normal life and I'm not scared.

We didn't have a television, so we sat around the table, and me and my sisters and my mom would do these jobs, like, a penny for a piece, you know, these paper jobs. You know, what really saved me as a human today is my sisters and my mom.

I tried to never exclude people. I know what it means to be left out.

I think my heart is in a very good place. And I think this is why I'm achieving what I've been asking to do in the universe for so long.

When I was young, especially when I was at school, I thought couture was about big gowns, big hats (that is couture as well, of course) - but my couture is about going near the clothes and having a look at the details. I like people to have a shock in a chic way.

I’m very faithful to myself. When you do things that are true it just comes out quite instinctively.

The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.

We are Italian. We are all little tribes - not only in fashion, but also in music - in everything, basically.

In the beginning I didn't want to do a menswear collection. It felt a little forced. And then I found that it was an amazing world.

Seduction is about intelligence and wit. Someone who makes me laugh has every chance to seduce me.

I arrived here, with a destroyed house, with nothing. I had to do everything very slowly. And with a little team and a great president, we achieved a lot. I am happy here. For now, it is still Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci, and I think that it will be for a long time, because it will be difficult to evict me from my house. I feel good here!

I do the final fitting because the client wants me there. They're not spoilt, they really understand that you're very busy, but they just want you to say what you think - for just ten minutes. They really want to know your opinion because it really is a service at the end of the day, a luxury service.

I love art and music more than I love fashion, to be honest.

My truth is this: That I don't know what will happen tomorrow because you can never know.

In Italy, especially in '70s and '80s, there was a lot of racism between north and south. And my mom immigrated from the south to the north, from Puglia, the heel of Italy. But what made me feel different was society, not my family.

I had only two girlfriends. I didn't have many friends because I was staying at home and dreaming - drawing and dreaming.

With couture you have faithfulness - people are faithful to you. In couture, you will see that the cut looks like a lace dress from a distance, but it's only when you get nearer you understand that it's layers of lace, hand stitched in a certain shape, all the work - the zips, the buttons, the hooks... it goes on.

My great strength, which I very much believe in, is family. For me, family doesn't simply mean components of DNA. I mean family in the sense of siblings. My mom and my sisters are the energy and inspiration in my life.

Couture is more your own world, they come and buy head-to-toe ­ - they buy the jewelry, bags, coats, dresses, bodies underneath.... But couture is not dead ­ - it's taken another shape.

Even at the beginning when I arrived at Givenchy, there were certainly people who supported me, but not everyone loved me. They were saying, "Why an Italian who acts Gothic?" Never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. But it was like, "No, Italians should only do sexy!"

Sex is something I live very well, but it is something I revealed very slowly in my fashion. What I do is emotional. For me, there is a base, which is my Italian roots. It's a strong passion for fashion, a passion for sensuality and dressing for one's self.

My life has changed financially and I have a name, but I try to never forget people on my journey.