Alexander mcqueen quotes

These beautiful models were walking around in the room, and then suddenly this woman who wouldn’t be considered beautiful was revealed. It was about trying to trap something that wasn’t conventionally beautiful to show that beauty comes from within.

You've got to know the rules to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.

I am married to work.

Having money hasn't changed me. If anything it's made my life worse. People come up to you who knew you before you were famous and who didn't come up to you before. I'm a clever designer. I can do what the client wants. But I'm prepared to forget about money if it affects my creativity because, remember, I started off with nothing. And I can do that again.

As a designer, you've always got to push yourself forward; you've always got to keep up with the trends or make your own trends. That's what I do.

Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment.

There is no way back for me now, I'm going to take you on journeys you've never dreamed possible

Now I design what I want to wear, and it works that way.

I think I should be a president. President of the United States.

I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them.

I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem lies on their side of the fence, not mine. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era.

I'm not big on women looking naive.

For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium.

I want to be honest about the world that we live in, and sometimes my political persuasions come through in my work. Fashion can be really racist, looking at the clothes of other cultures as costumes. . . . That’s mundane and it’s old hat. Let’s break down some barriers.

I work with people I admire and respect. It's never because of who they are.

Menswear is about subtlety. It's about good style and good taste.

For a long time I was looking for my perfect equilibrium, my mojo. And now I think I'm getting there: I've found my customer, my silhouette, my cut.

The explosion of museum exhibitions is only a mirror image of what has happened to fashion itself this millennium. With the force of technology, instant images and global participation, fashion has developed from being a passion for a few to a fascination - and an entertainment - for everybody.

I like the concept of dressing people. I used to not care whether people bought the clothes or not, but I kind of like it now. I wouldn't label that commercialism; it's more like I do this work because I want people to wear it.

London's where I was brought up. It's where my heart is and where I get my inspiration.

I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.

You can get insular with fashion.

People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don't see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality.

My friend George and I were walking on the beach in Norfolk, and there were thousands of [razor-clam] shells. They were so beautiful, I thought I had to do something with them. So, we decided to make [a dress] out of them. . . . The shells had outlived their usefulness on the beach, so we put them to another use on a dress. Then Erin [O’Conner] came out and trashed the dress, so their usefulness was over once again. Kind of like fashion, really.

I use things that people want to hide in their heads. War, religion, sex; things we all think about, but don’t bring to the forefront. But I do and I force them to watch it

I am a melancholy type of person.

Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual.

If you ask any lady they want to be taller, they want to be slimmer, you know, and they want a waist. I'm not here to make people look like a sack of potatoes.

Of course I make mistakes. I'm human. If I didn't make mistakes, I'd never learn. You can only go forward by making mistakes.

You find a lot of ideas from my shows in adverts now. I find it a compliment.

I'm 40 now, but I want this to be a company that lives way beyond me, and I believe that customers are more important to making that happen than press. When I'm dead, hopefully this house will still be going. On a spaceship. Hopping up and down above earth.

I have been skiing since I was in school, but I'm not great. I am never going to break an Olympic record, I just want to go down the hills, on red or blue runs, but not... black.

You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don't need to do that any more.

Rap music's been around for too long now to be inspirational. The words are, but the music isn't.

When we put the antlers on the model and then draped over it the lace embroidery that we had made, we had to poke them through a £2,000 piece of work. But then it worked because it looks like she's rammed the piece of lace with her antlers. There's always spontaneity. You've got to allow for that in my shows.

I am constantly trying to reflect the way women are treated. It's hard to interpret that in clothes or in a show but there's always an underlying, sinister side to women's sexuality in my work because of the way I have seen women treated in my life. Where I come from, a woman met a man, had babies, moved to Dagenham, two up two down, made the dinner, went to bed. That was my image of women and I didn't want that. I wanted to get that out of my head.

I'm about what goes through people's minds. The stuff that people don't want to admit or face up to. The shows are about what's buried in people's psyches.

Life to me is a bit of a (Brothers) Grimm fairy tale.

You can only go forward by making mistakes.

I want to empower women.

I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.

You've got to know the rules to break them.

I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity.

I've had good times; I've had bad times.

There is no better designer than nature

I like things to be modern and still have a bit of tradition

Really, what I'm aiming for is world domination!

It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle - everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.

I'm the pink sheep in the family.

There's beauty in anger, and anger for me is a passion.

When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.

I think there has to be an underlying sexuality. There has to be a perverseness to the clothes. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance. It's like a Story of O. I am not big on women looking naive. There has to be a sinister aspect, whether it's melancholy of sadomasochist. I think everyone has a deep sexuality, and sometimes it's good to use a little of it-and sometimes a lot of it-like a masquerade.

The police need to come down to street level.

There comes a time in your life when you focus solely on what you believe is right, regardless of what everybody else is doing.

I hate it when people romanticize Scotland.

I don't want to be too proud, but I have a good personal style.

It needs to connect with the earth. Things that are processed and reprocessed lose their substance.

I was three years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life.

I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12.

I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil.

I find beauty in melancholy.

Fashion is self confident and fearless.

I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don't want to fit in. And now people are buying into that.

Beauty can come from the strangest of places, even the most disgusting of places.

Animals fascinate me because you can find a force, an energy, a fear that also exists in sex.

I was never a big networker, but I was a spin doctor, all those shock shows, that's how I got my first backers. But fashion's a scary industry to be in, especially if you've not grown up with it.

What I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There's a lot of tribalism in the collections.

I think there is beauty in everything.

I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design.

There are only a handful of designers that influence other designers, and I have to keep one step ahead of the game.

I was this young boy and I saw this man with his hands round my sister's neck, I was just standing there with her two children beside me... Everything I've done since then was for the purpose of making women look stronger, not naïve. And so, when everyone started saying I was a misogynist, that really freaked me out. They didn't know me. They didn't know what I had seen in my life. That was the first part of fashion that I hated - people labeling me without knowing me.

My relationships with producers or photographers - these are relationships that took years.

The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today

There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company. (But) I always remember that it's the fantasy, the artistic side, that makes customers want to buy the straightforward black pants.

There is no better designer then nature

People don't want to see clothes, they want to see something that fuels the imagination.

I'm mad in the front of my mind, but business-minded in the back.

It's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together.

For people who know McQueen, there is always an underlying message. It's usually only the intellectual ones who understand what's going on in what I do.

I can design a collection in a day and I always do, cause I've always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it's late.

I'm interested in designing for posterity.

I believe in that one-on-one sell. I don't really believe in flooding the market with loads of goods that don't mean much, and you lose your identity.

I am an avid follower of the news, and sometimes you just can't take any more war, any more disasters, and you want to remind yourself there's beauty in the world. I wanted to show a more poetic side to my work. It was all about... a feeling of sadness, but in a cinematic kind of way. I find beauty in melancholy.

It's not my vision when I cover a woman's face with a chador. I got the idea from a 'National Geographic' photo. I'm just showing their plight in the world.

It's almost like putting armor on a woman. It's a very psychological way of dressing.

It's good to know where you come from. It makes you what you are today. It's DNA, it's in your blood.

Women should look like women. A piece of cardboard has no sexuality.

If you're an open book, there's no allure.

Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I’m inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It’s so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.

Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual. When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers.

It's the ugly things I notice more, because other people tend to ignore the ugly things.

Let me not forget the use of my own hands, that of a craftsman with eyes... that reflect the technology around me.

If you're lucky enough to use something you see in a dream, it is purely original. It's not in the world - it's in your head. I think that is amazing.

Fame should be left to the film stars.

There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company.

I never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.

Style is not about the clothes, it's about the individual

There’s blood beneath every layer of skin.

British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage.

I feel more Scottish than Norman.

I'm not interested in being liked.

I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is not really exposed to me or my work.

Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint.

There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do - but that part is for me. It's my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There's a sadness to it, but there's romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.

Fashions fade, style is eternal. - Yves Saint-LaurentThe most important thing to remember is that you can wear all the greatest clothes and all the greatest shoes, but you've got to have a good spirit on the inside. That's what's really going to make you look like you're ready to rock the world. - Alicia KeysIt's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together.

The reason I'm patriotic about Scotland is because I think it's been dealt a really hard hand. It's marketed the world over as . . . haggis . . . bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it.

I was literally 3 years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life, through primary school, secondary school, all my life. I always, always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of twelve. I followed designer's careers. I knew Giorgio Armani was a window-dresser, Emanuel Ungaro was a tailor.

I can't get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it's just crass.

I think there is beauty in everything. What 'normal' people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.

When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin Of The Species, no one could have known that the ice cap would melt, that the waters would rise and that life on earth would have to evolve in order to live beneath the sea once more or perish. We came from water and now, with the help of stem cell technology and cloning, we must go back to it to survive.When the waters rise, humanity will go back to the place from whence it came.Make no mistake, this is not sci-fi, this is evolution

There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance.

When you see a woman wearing McQueen, there’s a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful. It kind of fends people off.

When a woman gets dressed up to go out at night, she wants to give 50% away, and hold the rest back. If you're an open book, there's no allure.

Sting's my ideal man, because he's a real man.

Some designers are so airy-fairy people can't connect with them. I hope people can relate to me, to a normal person who just happens to be a fashion designer, that people can take me as they find me. It's not the designer's job to care about what people think. Whatever else I've done, I've never tried to be something that I'm not.

Give me time and I'll give you a revolution.

Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive.

I'm prepared to forget about money if it affects my creativity because, remember, I started off with nothing. And I can do that again.

You can only go forward by making mistakes. I'm twenty-seven, not fifty-seven. I'm not Givenchy, I'm Alexander McQueen.

I don’t want to do a cocktail party. I’d rather people left my shows and vomited.

Youth culture now really looks back and embraces the past, but keeps it contemporary but not sticking to one particular style.

I just want to be a wallflower. Nondescript. Just not anything. I don't want to see me.