Alexander McQueen Quotes

1. I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore.


2. 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.

3. Give me time and I'll give you a revolution.

4. Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment.

5. It's not my vision when I cover a woman's face with a chador. I got the idea from a "National Geographic" photo. I'm just showing their plight in the world.

6. Menswear is about subtlety. It's about good style and good taste.

7. Sting's my ideal man, because he's a real man.

8. I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don't want to fit in. And now people are buying into that.





9. Rap music's been around for too long now to be inspirational. The words are, but the music isn't.

10. British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage.

11. Clothes and jewelry 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.





12. 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.

13. I work with people I admire and respect. It's never because of who they are.


14. I'm mad in the front of my mind, but business-minded in the back.

15. I can't get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it's just crass.

16. It's good to know where you come from. It makes you what you are today. It's DNA, it's in your blood.






17. The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity.

18. 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.

19. Fame should be left to the film stars.

20. There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do - but that part is for me. It's my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There's a sadness to it, but there's romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.

21. As a designer, you've always got to push yourself forward; you've always got to keep up with the trends or make your own trends. That's what I do.

22. For a long time I was looking for my perfect equilibrium, my mojo. And now I think I'm getting there: I've found my customer, my silhouette, my cut.

23. I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12.



24. I am married to work.


25. I can design a collection in a day and I always do, cause I've always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it's late.

26. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design.

27. I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

28. I feel more Scottish than Norman.

29. I don't want to be too proud, but I have a good personal style.

30. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint.

31. I hate it when people romanticize Scotland.

32. I have been skiing since I was in school, but I'm not great. I am never going to break an Olympic record, I just want to go down the hills, on red or blue runs, but not...black.

33. I just want to be a wallflower. Nondescript. Just not anything. I don't want to see me.

34. I like the concept of dressing people. I used to not care whether people bought the clothes or not, but I kind of like it now. I wouldn't label that commercialism; it's more like I do this work because I want people to wear it.


35. I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is not really exposed to me or my work.

36. I never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.

37. I think I should be a president. President of the United States.




38. I want to empower women.



39. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.

40. I was never a big networker, but I was a spin doctor, all those shock shows, that's how I got my first backers. But fashion's a scary industry to be in, especially if you've not grown up with it.

41. I was three years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life.

42. I'm not big on women looking naive.

43. I'm interested in designing for posterity.

44. I've had good times; I've had bad times.

45. I'm not interested in being liked.

46. My relationships with producers or photographers - these are relationships that took years.

47. Nicey nicey just doesn't do it for me.

48. Now I design what I want to wear, and it works that way.

49. Really, what I'm aiming for is world domination!

50. The police need to come down to street level.

51. There are only a handful of designers that influence other designers, and I have to keep one step ahead of the game.




52. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance.

53. There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company.

54. Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive.


55. You can get insular with fashion.

56. When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.

57. When a woman gets dressed up to go out at night, she wants to give 50% away, and hold the rest back. If you're an open book, there's no allure.

58. You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don't need to do that any more.

59. You find a lot of ideas from my shows in adverts now. I find it a compliment.

60. Youth culture now really looks back and embraces the past, but keeps it contemporary but not sticking to one particular style.

61. 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.




62. What we do have in London is a fantastic pool of talent coming through the colleges. We are the fashion world's incubator.

63. I kind of like it the way it is right now…I believe in that one-on-one sell. I don't really believe in flooding the market with loads of goods that don't mean much, and (you) lose your identity.


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