I never designed before. I wasn't formally trained in design, I went to photography school at the ICP. But over time, I taught myself to draw, and I studied different techniques, various hemlines, and then I would take the ideas to a manufacturer and a patternmaker and have them produced into garments.
I've never studied anything formally. I was excluded from school at the age of 17, so I am an autodidact, which is a word that I have taught myself.
Photography really is all about lines, and so is clothing. I worked for Oberto Gili for a couple of years after I was at ICP; we worked in fashion, travel, interior design, everything. I was inspired by his styling choices within fashion photography, and I think those experiences helped steer me towards fashion design. I love photography as a medium, so I think I will always take inspiration from it.
I never studied film formally at school, but as a kid, I spent most of my time in cinemas.
I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework.
Because I am not formally trained in the medical sciences, I can bring in new ideas to AIDS research and the cross-fertilization of ideas from different fields could be a valuable contribution to finding the cure for AIDS.
My design always has a political agenda. When I borrow components from various cultures and juxtapose them in an object, it is a message that co-existence is indeed possible. Design creates an ideal world where different ideas live close to each other in perfect harmony.
Before I got through high school I had attended 22 different schools. In the time before I was well acquainted with the latest school, I would amuse myself by drawing and found that I was pretty good at it.
And friends of mine that had photography class in high school would develop the film and make prints and I'd take them back to the track and give 'em away or try and sell them. Much to my parents' dismay, I majored in photography in college.
I just read everything I could get my hands on. I taught myself to read or my mother taught me. Who knows how I learned to read? It was before I went to school, so I would go to the library and just take things off the shelf. My mother had to sign a piece of paper saying I could take adult books.
At school I was a disaster, but when I would design, I could feel a sense of pride. I've always designed, and I would literally design everything I'd see: cars, bikes, motorcycles - everything.
I studied voice when I was at school, and I was in the chamber choir, and I studied music theory as well, so I guess a lot of it came from being taught at school.
I didn't do myself any favours. I would be resentful of my own ideas even before I'd said them out loud. But music was always the most consistent and peaceful thing for me. So I taught myself to be my harshest critic rather than just a mean voice in the back of my head.
I might take a little time off from school to train. I'd be a totally different animal if I trained full time.
I taught and studied dance in college, and for over a decade, I thought that would be my career: tap dancer, ballet dancer, modern dancer. I still find myself doing some tumbling or interpretive dancing in the grocery store every now and then.
After I left school, where I studied art, photography and textiles at A-level, I started doing an apprenticeship in interior design, but I wasn't really enjoying it very much, so I decided to do something creative, and in 2009, I began blogging.
If I designed a computer with 200 chips, I tried to design it with 150. And then I would try to design it with 100. I just tried to find every trick I could in life to design things real tiny.