There is no better designer than nature.
Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment.
People don’t want to see clothes, they want to see something that fuels the imagination.
For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium.
The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today.
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.
There’s beauty in anger, and anger for me is a passion.
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.
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.
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.
Fashion is self confident and fearless.
You can only go forward by making mistakes.
It’s almost like putting armor on a woman. It’s a very psychological way of dressing.
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.
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.
I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.
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.
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.
I think there is beauty in everything. What ‘normal’ people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.
When I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.