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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
Always
Experiences
Never
Inside
Growing
Postwar
Born
Accident
Comes
Japan
Felt
Connection
Work
Accidents
Really
Connections

More quotes by 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 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.
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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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Beauty is whatever anyone thinks is beautiful.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Most of the things I read from journalists are, you know, a little bit simplified and easy.
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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I'd rather [the collection] have no title. Journalists like titles. That's why I give them to you.
Rei Kawakubo
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Celebrity doesn't really affect the work. What affects the work is the expectations from the outside. This is what no one understands.
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 work in three shades of black.
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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You can tell if it's a good collection if people are afraid of it. In ten years, everyone will love it.
Rei Kawakubo
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My energy comes from freedom and a rebellious spirit.
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
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In the sense that anarchy equals freedom, yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.
Rei Kawakubo