Top 67 Quotes & Sayings by Nicolas Ghesquiere

In this work, you have to convince everyone all the time, at different levels, to support your dream. I learned you have to be confident in order to do that.

I promised myself: Before your 18th birthday, you're going to be at Jean Paul Gaultier. And it worked. I was hired.

What I find most interesting in fashion is that it has to reflect our time. You have to witness your own moment.

Actually, I love golf clothes! I think this is the most interesting part of golf!

There are people I've worked with who have never understood how fashion works. They keep saying they love fashion, yet they've never actually grasped that this isn't yoghurt or a piece of furniture - products in the purest sense of the term.

Your priority has to be the creativity - and build a brand. That's what everybody did - Balenciaga, Dior, Saint Laurent. That's the smart thing to do.

I'm always very stressed about making a new proposition every season. But in a way, it's a kind of addiction.

In terms of design, it's true the world has an influence. But, as a designer, you have to protect yourself. You have to look at the world and then forget it.

Of course I live in my time, and I'm really curious. But, at the same time, I don't think it has a direct impact on my work.

Never forget that what becomes timeless was once truly new.

With my designs and my ideas, I want to please myself first.

I grew up in a family that played golf, and my brother was much better than me, so I kind of put that aside. I had to be good at something other than golf.

People used to define me as a futurist designer, but, you know, the future is now for me.

I think the golden age of couture had some of the most incredible customers: women like Nan Kempner and all the icons.

Fashion is a playground up until a certain age. But then you have to find your own signature and your own style.

I love this idea of being able to touch people with something quite familiar, something quite emotional, and at the same time, have the feeling that this is a new way of doing it, a fresh way of showing things. I like radical people. At the same time, I'm fascinated by popularity, people who were able to have huge success and also keep their consistency.

I'm the kind of person who, even after a shoot that I've loved, is always moving on. There is no gap.

I have a quality where I sort of scare people. But I am who I am.

I don't feel French at all. That was never really a concern, and it's limiting to think that way. I think Paris is more of a playground for international designers, so I don't really feel French. And I don't really want to feel French.

I put pressure on myself to propose something new - I think it's the minimum that you can do as a fashion designer.

I don't know if that's new, but it has become very official over the past 25 or 30 years - and today it's probably at its most extreme point, where sometimes collections look more like a stylist's work than a designer's signature.

I've always been fascinated by people's capacity to care. Everyone has a different capacity for it. Some people can take on more and deal with more. Today, with the economy, I have such respect for the hard work that has to be done. But we're on this planet and we have a responsibility to ourselves to care.

For me, I go somewhere for three days, and then I come back and I want to change everything, and so it's a fight with everybody. I'm transforming and convincing. It's more than designing. It's shaking people and trying to give them direction. I'm a bit of a control freak. This is a problem as I get older, and it's something I should work on. I should be more confident - learn to trust people and give them freedom and delegate.

Why is it that when I did a weird dress in the past, people were like, 'Oh, it's niche,' and why when I do a pair of jeans that are super cool, it's much more accessible, but I enjoy doing it? I enjoy the mix of those two things. I realized that quite late, actually. I'm going to really try to express those two things at the same time, because this is me.

More than anything, I'm designing for a woman of today. I want to be a witness of my time.

That's what I think when people do their "best stuff" collection. When you start to think, "Oh, I will just present my 10 years of work," that's not a good sign.

You never do things thinking you will make a big statement. It just happens sometimes and you are lucky.

I think when a time comes, a change comes, and you have to recognize the change but also believe in yourself.

I love art. I love music. It's more about the lifestyle you yourself have - that's the most inspiring thing. The way you share relationships with the people around you.

I believe there is a moment growing up when you build your own mood board. You do a collage - you collect a few things, a few images that will be so important for your future choices. Not only aesthetic, or what you like for dressing, but your artistic choices. The room where I put papers and pictures and posters on the walls when I was a kid, it's still very strong in my head today. This movie poster or that portrait of a girl I took from a magazine, deep inside, is inspiration that comes back all the time.

Why isn't Tilda Swinton on the covers of tons of magazines? Well, she's not that. It isn't her thing. But I don't know. I think that suddenly a time came when models, after the Linda Evangelista crowd, and Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington, when the models for me became a bit bland. But I think more than that, the culture changed. The movies, television, music, and all of those things - those people were more visual and therefore more interesting.

We live with a future where every three or four months, we have to question everything. You think you could be the best, or that you're nothing and you don't know what you're doing. It is exhausting.

For a long time, my uniform consisted of a trench coat, wide flared jeans, and little bottines - I copied a pair that my mother had in this theater place. I had, like, 10 pairs of the same shoes.

I always have the feeling that my subjects are the same - I'm just changing my point of view. I'm going to move a little bit this time and watch it a different way. But at the end, I think I'm always fascinated by the same things, except I will express them over and over again, with different words, with different colors, with different shapes. But strangely it will always be the same topics or subjects that are so important to me.

When my parents realized that what I liked was fashion, they gave me good advice. I remember my father telling me that I should try to do an internship. They never said, "This is a world we don't know; it might be something strange," or "That is not serious," or things like that. They always said, "Try. We'll help you. We'll send drawings to people if you want. We'll write letters for you." What I'm very thankful for is they never made me think that something was impossible. They were really, really supportive. They are still.

It was time to come up here and retire with my wonderful husband, and my children and my grandchildren, and make that change. I'm not good at hanging on. When I make a decision to cut it off, I have to cut it off completely. I'm not good at, "Oh, I'll stick around and consult a little bit." I'm not good at that and I don't want to do that. I don't think you get anywhere doing that. I mean, I don't, although other people might. But that's not my personality. It's not my id. I have to make the break and be a good sport and adjust to it.

Fashion, in a way, has become like pop culture today. With all of the communications and the Internet and the designers doing lines with big brands, it's more popular than it's ever been, but everything is all mixed together. It's become like television or music.

In French we have this word déclic. It's when you have, suddenly, a light shining and you say, "This is what I want to do."

I love what I do and I adore this whole world. I'm able to meet fantastic people. I meet fantastic writers, I meet architects, I meet incredible talent. Fashion is really a world, besides the creation, that I think is super interesting, super inspiring.

It's true that fashion is looking at fashion all the time, and this is quite boring.

It is the job of the editors to find somebody. I'm sorry, but you have to get out there and find them.

First, at a certain point, I wanted to have my own magazine, but I never could. Why? Because I am not commercial enough. The people who would have been able to give me my own magazine, they were not insulting me, but they would simply say, "It wouldn't work for you." And that was a big disappointment to me.

Designers are more like artistic directors now. Before, there wasn't this idea of supervising the artistic direction of the entire house. The old way was to think you could be this couturier or designer or stylist.

Strangely, meanness pays more than offering constructive and interesting commentary. Every season I think, "This is the last season. I'm not gonna read tomorrow morning. Forget it." The first thing when I wake up - quite late, usually - I am craving the newspaper.

I'd rather work with someone who likes what I do than create something for the red carpet that won't make me happy.

I'm always curious. Every day. As we get on in life, we must be grateful.

I can say, let's go to the DNA of the brand and find something that I can introduce into my work. It's part of the patrimony of fashion.

As designers, we do so much with material and construction. It's really architectural; it comes close to building. A scent is so immaterial. It's really about emotion and sensation. Clothes are too, but it's not the same.

There is something I think we share, which is, of course, an appreciation for Helmut Lang. I think at a certain point he really changed so many things in fashion. I'm a bit younger than Helmut, but from my point of view he provided a true entrance into this new way of thinking - not being invaded into couture.

To look deeply into the lawn and see six shades of green - there is hardly that respite for you. And that's our job that we're doing. And it's even more demanding for someone like yourself, who is so extremely creative. But you have to move forward. You cannot just wallow or sit back and take in the accolades. They're wonderful, the accolades, and you appreciate them. But then you go on to the next moment. You have to always be going out to the end of the diving board and diving off.

I think creating the clothes is about creating historical images - and that's about more than fashion. It is about the fashion, the photography, what you are doing in the moment. It's what we call in French rechercher, or the search for that thing. So even though fashion is not scientific, I think being a designer is somewhat like being a scientist.

With my designs and my ideas, I want to please myself first. I'm always very stressed about making a new proposition every season. But in a way, it's a kind of addiction. In another way, it's a crazy pressure. I try to stay quiet about the whole situation, because fashion itself can be crazy, and everyone wants a part of you.

You need something that puts a little distance between what you really are and what you want to show; it's a shield, a protection.

Couture has a lot of issues today. Here in Paris there are oddly so few houses showing. And I'm not talking about the style. I'm talking about the sense of couture and these young actresses that you were talking about - they want long dresses that are not always the most innovative or the most interesting. So it's a bit lost.

I like the idea of women and men in movement. My fashion is not about being still. It's almost sporty, sometimes. I like the evolution of sports clothes. I think they are very interesting in the cut, in the fabrics.

It's quite strange in fashion, and it's probably the same with movies and acting - the big choice is between being radical, making a choice that will be more specific that will reach less people but will be very strong and very directional, and making a choice that will be more popular and catch the interest of a large group of people. Sometimes people are trying to push you in one direction or another.

People usually forget that fashion designers are not artists, but there is an artistic side that is very strong in my point of view. At the same time, you have to be so organized and so serious. There are two aspects that are quite big contradictions, strangely, in what I'm doing.

Today, kids are much more aware of what fashion means, but when I was growing up, it was popular, but not as popular as today. Like any kid, I was fascinated by drawing. But when some of the kids let go, I kept drawing and drawing.

I think what we're talking about is a sense of fashion as laboratory work. I mean, we are not scientific, of course, but we are looking for ideas all the time.

Naturally looking at something will become so important in your aesthetic. For that, you have to be disciplined, too, in the way that there is a moment to catch and there is a moment to express. The moment to express has to be so pragmatic, because you have to build the clothes; you have to be very, very specific about how you want to describe to other people, for the color of the fabric, the way of sewing things, putting things together.