“Success nullifies. You then have to do it again, preferably differently”

“For me, Chanel is like music. There are certain notes and you have to make another tune with them”

“The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine”

“Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests”

“Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive”

“Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore – and then you get something out of her”

“I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.”

“I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?”

“Fashion is about two things: the evolution and the opposite.”

“Fashion is about going ahead, not about memory.”

“The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.”

“I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern.”

“Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.”

“Stuff your brain with knowledge.”

“In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and even clothes, the discussion of fur is childish.”