Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by Louise Wilson

My students are noticed by the people I respect from the quality of their work.

We had six horses, and I would compete. Jumping. Cabinets full of cups. I always won.

We always want more, more, more. You see good work; you want it better. We push, push, push.

You can't refuse to move forward when you're educating in design, because that's what we're asking students to do the whole time.

I'd rather wear black than bright florals like most fat ladies do.

A lot of fashion might seem boring, but it is actually quite fun: the inside, the outside, the silhouette... All the different finishes. That's a skill.

Without art, you don't have society. It underpins so much.

Fashion is an incredibly tough, unforgiving industry.

I was very successful at three-day events, point-to-points, Pony Club, and gymkhana. But then I went to college, and because I had really good horses, they weren't going to be left in the field, so they were sold.

I may sound like a corny bastard, but I love fashion.

I always hate it when fashion is trivialised.

I can't imagine taking up running.

People think I'm rude. I'm not rude; I'm just not networking. It's just honesty.

I've always loved books.

What is good work? You just know it when you see it. You just can't explain it.

I have very tidy cupboards. I do like a cupboard to look nice when you open it, with the labels facing forward.

I always thought I was going to be a professional horse rider because I rode horses competitively from zero to 17 years old.

I don't see why you wouldn't cry when you're in an intense environment.

I had a fabulous childhood. Not many people have an outdoor tennis court that you're allowed to put your ponies on and pretend you're at Hickstead.

In the past, you'd have one magazine, it would arrive monthly, and that was your magazine. You'd devour it; you'd absorb all the knowledge in it; you'd read it over and over again.

In 'Who's Who,' my hobbies are listed as eating, sleeping, and voicing one's opinion. Not necessarily the right opinion, but it's mine.

When you're responsible for leading a group of young people, you have to be positive. If you're not, you shouldn't be in your job, should you?

Youth re-energises.

I was going to do business studies in Newcastle because there were a lot of nightclubs. My father said if I went that route, he'd never speak to me again: credit where credit's due.

I love Ikea: it's non-design, but it works.

I wear black because I'm a large lady, and I have many exact replicas of the same black outfit.

Most designers don't dress in fashion. They dress in an anonymous way so that people are just judging their work.

Now there is tons of information available online. 90% of students rarely look at magazines in their intended format because they're looking at them on a computer screen. They don't understand the layout, so when they come to putting their own portfolios together, they have no spatial awareness.

I love to-do lists.

Fashion's transient - it moves.

As much as I might decry the students, as much as they're a nightmare, it's a privilege to be among youth.

There's a broad range of fashion: knitwear, textiles, journalism.

I love hard work, energy, feeling involved.

I still believe that education is about provoking some kind of original, creative thought.

I never know what I want, but always know what I don't want.

The only thing with press attention is that it can be very draining on our energy store.

In fashion, you're privileged because you're consistently working with a vanguard of youth.

I've always spent money on books. I've always enjoyed handling books - the size, the format. I feel very strongly about original ephemera.

The press always pick on British fashion, but I don't think that there are more successful young designers than in Paris or Milan. It's all a myth.

I've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.

I always say to students, 'You're never going to have all the skills, but you have to have a skill.'

I was born in Cambridgeshire and moved to Scotland when I was seven.

There's lots of bad things about teaching, but the really good thing is that you get to be around young people - irritating as they are.

I try to stop my students doing random things on the Internet or putting work online. It doesn't get them jobs. This concept of being noticed, I don't know what it brings you.

I never really liked Italy. 'Lots of cement' is my long-standing quote.

I'd love to be charming and softly spoken, but that's never going to happen.

Elegance for one society is not elegance for another. It's in the eyes of the beholder.

I have no unhappy memories of my childhood.

Everything is not on a plate for you at Saint Martins - it's about personality, about working out how to do it.

I'm becoming the Simon Cowell of fashion.

At the end of the day, I'm a very boring academic, bogged down with academia and structure and delivering an education.

I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable.

I believe intellect is needed in order to develop any creative output and that intellect alone is not enough!

Show-offy, I could sometimes be accused of.

Students may feel the criticism is harsh, but I think it's possible they haven't had criticism before. It's my job to point out when something is badly done, or when there's no point of view. To build a brand you have to have something about you. If not personality, then some thought process. I'm 40, and they're young, so they're meant to be informing me. They should be bringing me a book or something that I haven't seen, not like some obscure chant book by Dominican monks, but an image of the way they see the world.

I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable.

Don't crave fame, do what you do and just apply. I don't think many of them here today are that interested in fashion. Perhaps it's because there's not much going on. No punk, no reaction to something. I think we are in a waiting period.

Are there a lot of designers that matter? The industry hasn’t got a litmus test any more. The whole thing has imploded. Watch it die, like the banking industry

A lot of people believe that you don't need to know the history and that creates newness. I disagree: we should always be informed and then destroy it.

It's a secret language, known to all different people, in different ways, that enables them to read a subliminal message without realising they're reading it. It affects people on many levels, and even people who think they're not into fashion, or reject fashion are then being informed just in the case of rejecting it. The fact that they had to react against it was a conscious decision.