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

My generation in Japan lived in limbo. We dreamed between two worlds.

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.

I believe that all forms of creativity are related.

Retire? Never! We are far too busy!

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.

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.

I am not sentimental about the past. I like to think about what is next.

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

We have to keep a very tight check on quality.

To be honest, I think we should find first the possibility to make it. Research is first - if you're not interested, you never can find something. Many things happen from forgotten machines - ones that are no longer used.

We can also cut by heat - heat punch. And we also can cut by cold - extreme cold. When you cut with heat, it makes a mark. With cold, no mark. It depends on the fabric.

Paul Poiret did wonderful things because he was so influenced by motifs, but Vionnet really understood the kimono and took the geometric idea to construct her clothes - and that brought such freedom into European clothes in the 1920s.

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.

You see it in the many bouncing clothes that are not just pleats. To make them, two or three people twist them - twist, twist, twist the pleats, sometimes three or four persons twist together and put it all in the machine to cook it.

Most of us feel some kind of uncertainty, with the population increasing and resources decreasing. We have to face these issues.

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.

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

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

I've never been involved in any kind of political movement.

I am not really interested in clothing as a conceptual art form.

Boys have been wearing skirts for some time now. My three assistants wear mini skirts. They come to work on their motorcycles wearing mini skirts. The French saw the idea on the streets and have done it in better fabrics, and now everyone says, 'Ah!'

When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape - I remember it all.

I do not create a fashionable aesthetic... I create a style based on life.