In history people dressed much better than we do today.
We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.
At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.
Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don’t care attitude about clothes. You don’t care, you just do it and it looks great.
But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.
But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I’ve been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.
Even though it was the 70s, we found old stocks of clothes that had never been worn from the 50s and took them apart. I started to teach myself how to make clothes from that kind of formula.
Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.
Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.
I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn’t realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.
I am always trying to find fabrics that are more friendly to the environment – working with Virgin Atlantic, they managed to research into this and find more eco fabrics.
Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.
When we started to do punk, we put all of these things together to create the look of an urban guerrilla – a rebel.
In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.
Journalists are usually quite jealous people, especially of intellectuals who are supposed to be in fashion.
Liverpool people are famous for liking clothes and fashion; they are very social and lively people, and we know that they like clothes.
More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.
Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.
The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.
When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.