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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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Rei Kawakubo
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: October 11
Businessperson
Designer
Fashion Designer
Personal Stylist
City of Tokyo
Comme des Garçons
Kawakubo
Kawakubo Rei
Growing
Postwar
Born
Accident
Comes
Japan
Felt
Connection
Work
Accidents
Really
Connections
Always
Experiences
Never
Inside

More quotes by 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.
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I work in three shades of black.
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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.
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Most of the things I read from journalists are, you know, a little bit simplified and easy.
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The more people that are afraid when they see new creation, the happier I am.
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For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.
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You can tell if it's a good collection if people are afraid of it. In ten years, everyone will love it.
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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.
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In the sense that anarchy equals freedom, yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.
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It would have more meaning for me to hear what critics have to say if their values and their ways of living were deeper and more serious.
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I'd rather [the collection] have no title. Journalists like titles. That's why I give them to you.
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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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Feeling free inside oneself is being free.
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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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.
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Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them.
Rei Kawakubo
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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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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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Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.
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Beauty is whatever anyone thinks is beautiful.
Rei Kawakubo