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I don't think of myself as anyone special, and I would not know how to define myself.

Rei Kawakubo

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Rei Kawakubo
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: October 11
Businessperson
Designer
Fashion Designer
Personal Stylist
City of Tokyo
Comme des Garçons
Kawakubo
Kawakubo Rei
Think
Thinking
Define
Special
Anyone
Would

More quotes by Rei Kawakubo

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I don't feel too excited about fashion today People just want cheap fast clothes and are happy to look like everyone else
Rei Kawakubo
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What you wear can largely govern your feelings and your emotions, and how you look influences the way people regard you. So fashion plays an important role on both the practical level and the aesthetic level of activity.
Rei Kawakubo
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I am kind of like the guide, the leader of this discussion. It could be from me, it could be from other people, it could be a mixture. It's a real sort of guild. I lead it and direct it and inspire it.
Rei Kawakubo
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In the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.
Rei Kawakubo
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The freedom I give myself for the business is in deciding to take part in the Paris collections, but also having other retail strategies that are unlike anybody else's. Not necessarily going into malls, doing the business my own way - having different brands to cover different concepts, to be able to have the cash flow to carry on.
Rei Kawakubo
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Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.
Rei Kawakubo
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I haven't yet made clothes that I have been totally satisfied with, and maybe I never will.
Rei Kawakubo
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I am a clothes maker, and that's all I am. I only want to talk about the making of the clothes. I don't feel the need to go out there and explain that.
Rei Kawakubo
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There's always a pattern in order to make a thing, but the starting point must be something I've never seen before. It's not two-dimensional, but it's like a sample. I work with patterns like a sculptor. I try to get [the team] not to work on a body, [but] to work on a free space, on a table. The work is basically on flat surfaces.
Rei Kawakubo
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For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit - the hungry mind - is what gets you going forward.
Rei Kawakubo
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I identified very much with punk, not only in the fashion sector, but in every other sector. The very nature of doing something new and free meant something that was against authority.
Rei Kawakubo
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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.
Rei Kawakubo
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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.
Rei Kawakubo
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I'd make my whole collection with just one square of fabric. I wouldn't do anything else everything had to be made from one square. This is just one example.
Rei Kawakubo
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In the sense that anarchy equals freedom, yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.
Rei Kawakubo
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I work in three shades of black.
Rei Kawakubo
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I can't become naked for everybody. It's never going to be possible for the person to write the whole story completely, so I find bits of myself, bits of what I think in some articles. And I don't give lip service to journalists. I never make them feel comfortable. I say, It's your job to make the story.
Rei Kawakubo
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For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.
Rei Kawakubo
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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.
Rei Kawakubo
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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.
Rei Kawakubo