Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Issey Miyake - Page 2

Clothes have become more personal, more a matter of very individual taste.

A-POC unleashes the freedom of imagination. It's for people who are curious, who have inner energy - the energy of life and living.

With imagination and personal creativity, people who sew can design the way they look to suit themselves.

I became a fashion designer to make clothes for the people, not to be a top couturier in the French tradition.

Clothes should fit comfortably - not too tightly - so that you have space to move in and think freely.

Retire? Never! We are far too busy!

Function alone does not make clothing appealing.

I tried never to be defined by my past.

In Paris, we call the people who make clothing 'couturiers' - they develop new clothing items - but actually, the work of designing is to make something that works in real life.

I am always looking to the future of making things.

I try to be free. The women also must be free.

When I first began working in Japan, I had to confront the Japanese people's excessive worship for foreign goods and the fixed idea of what clothes ought to be. I wanted to change the rigid formula of clothing that the Japanese followed.

A few of the influences on my career so far have been Isamu Noguchi, Irving Penn, and seeing the riots of 1968 in Paris.

Many people repeat the past. I'm not interested. I prefer evolution.

If you look back throughout history from the ancient Egyptians onwards, most cultures started making clothing from a very basic premise: a single piece of cloth.

In fashion, you need to present something new every six months, but it takes time to study things. Development is very important.

Technology allows us to do many things, but it is always important to combine it with traditional handcrafts and, in fact, use technology to replicate dying arts so that they are not lost.

I love to be free to explore, research, and evolve.

My touchstone started out being - and is still - exploring the ways by which to make clothing from a single piece of cloth.

I never thought fashion was the job for me, because I'm Japanese. Clothes! That was a European, society thing.

I am neither a writer nor a theorist. For a person who creates things to utter too many words means to regulate himself - a frightening prospect.

I am most interested in people and the human form.

Everything is an experiment.

I feel it is urgently necessary to train people who are capable of tackling the various problems we face today in regards to environmental turmoil and the relevancy of clothing.

Designers must be increasingly sensitive to our Earth's dwindling resources. It is our responsibility.

Architects always have a feel for time - the generation they live in - as we do, and they are always striving toward boundless adventure.

Design is a vital component to the enrichment of our everyday lives. Japan has a very rich history and culture of design, and I feel it is a very important dialogue to open and keep evolving.

Indian paper is famous, Egyptian papyrus, Chinese paper... every country has used this natural material. But the problem is it's going to run out because it's very difficult work.

If Mr. Obama could walk across the Peace Bridge in Hiroshima - whose balustrades were designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a reminder both of his ties to East and West and of what humans do to one another out of hatred - it would be both a real and a symbolic step toward creating a world that knows no fear of nuclear threat.

I am very interested in the culture of paper.

I have always been interested in conducting research that yielded new methods by which to make cloth, and in developing new materials that combine craftsmanship and new technology. But the most important thing for me is to show that, ultimately, technology is not the most important tool; it is our brains, our thoughts, our hands, our bodies, which express the most essential things.

From the beginning I thought about working with the body in movement, the space between the body and clothes. I wanted the clothes to move when people moved. The clothes are also for people to dance or laugh

I did not want to be labelled the designer who survived the atomic bomb, and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.

One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else

Many people will say, well, clothes should be worn; but I think people can look at them in public, like seeing a film. I think museum exhibitions are very important

Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process

Work for money, design for love.

Beauty is like a sunset: it goes as soon as you try to capture it. The beauty you like is precisely that which escapes you.

The best fragrance is the scent of water, the fragrance of dew and rain falling on plants. Water is the essential element, a source of life and energy. A perfume that, like a garment, moves to suit the woman, her skin. A perfume that embraces a woman.