Christian Lacroix

I am still in love with couture because it is just two months from drawing pad to runway so everything on the catwalk is hot from the oven.

You need ego but mine is not blinding.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been influenced by the idea that my name could be spread across the entire world.

I look for friends who make me laugh.

If I was a fashion designer just following trends or designing for celebrities, I would not be fulfilled.

The exchange by e-mail is more intimate than conversation - you allow yourself to say things you otherwise wouldn't.

I am always anxious to know what has happened while I've been asleep.

People want to be in their own fashion tribes, so they want to wear the same clothes to be connected to everyone else in that tribe. But they want to be different from other tribes.

I am not nostalgic for the past.

I think it's always difficult to reconcile the needs of art and business.

I never loved the world around me as it was.

Very skinny women don't look beautiful in clothes.

If you look back at the history of creativity in clothes - the French Revolution, the First World War and the Second World War - they have all been creative reinventions, the moment new forms of luxury come into play.

Fashion needs to be worn.

The world needs some excitement from fashion.

There are days when I'm completely depressed and able to do only one drawing.

For me, I am still very happy to be able to do stage design as it's an opportunity to express the extreme.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

The idea of seeing everybody clad the same is not really my cup of tea.

French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism.

I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry.

They say that the best furniture and clothing design from the '50s and '60s is Scandinavian or Milanese.

In Italy, the Milanese are well organized but follow bourgeois taste. They adhere to certain codes of elegance, but not to individualism.

Italy is a divided country without a center.