I started to work with cotton fabrics. I used cotton because it's easy to work with, to wash, to take care of, to wear if it's warm or cold. It's great. That was the start.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

Design is not for philosophy it's for life.

The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.

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.

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.

I sent 200, 300 of the clothes that I had made, and the dancers chose what they liked.

I very much like dance and dancers.

I started to work with cotton fabrics. I used cotton because it's easy to work with, to wash, to take care of, to wear if it's warm or cold. It's great. That was the start.

Even when I work with computers, with high technology, I always try to put in the touch of the hand.

Of course there are many ways we can reuse something. We can dye it. We can cut it. We can change the buttons. Those are other ways to make it alive. But this is a new step to use anything - hats, socks, shirts. It's the first step in the process.

By the way, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14.

From the beginning I thought about working with the body in movement, the space between the body and clothes. I wanted the clothes to move when people moved. The clothes are also for people to dance or laugh.

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.

Well, what I'm doing is really clothing. I'm not doing sculpture.

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.

I have worked with several dance companies.

Many people will say, well, clothes should be worn; but I think people can look at them in public, like seeing a film. I think museum exhibitions are very important.

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

A-POC respects that there is a fine balance between the value of the human touch, which can be called artisanal, and the abilities of technology. I like to think of it as poesy and technology.

A-POC unleashes the freedom of imagination. It's for people who are curious, who have inner energy - the energy of life and living.

All of my work stems from the simplest of ideas that go back to the earliest civilizations: making clothing from one piece of cloth. It is my touchstone.

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

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!'

Clothing has been called intimate architecture. We want to go beyond that.

Clothing is the closest thing to all humans.

Design is a vital component to the enrichment of our everyday lives. Japan has a very rich history and culture of design, and I feel it is a very important dialogue to open and keep evolving.

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

Everything is an experiment.

Frank Gehry not only understood my sense of fun and adventure but also reciprocated it and translated that feeling into his work.

Function alone does not make clothing appealing.

I am always looking to the future of making things.

I am most interested in people and the human form.

I am neither a writer nor a theorist. For a person who creates things to utter too many words means to regulate himself - a frightening prospect.

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

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

I am very interested in the culture of paper.

I became a fashion designer to make clothes for the people, not to be a top couturier in the French tradition.

I believe that all forms of creativity are related.

I did not want to be labelled 'the designer who survived the atomic bomb,' and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.

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

I gravitated towards the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.

I love to be free to explore, research, and evolve.

I make clothing, and I don't care about trendy things.

I never thought fashion was the job for me, because I'm Japanese. Clothes! That was a European, society thing.

I realised I wanted to make clothing which was as universal as jeans and T-shirts.

I respect men and women who age and are proud and don't lose energy. I think fashion forgot those people.

I suppose there are many, but I cannot imagine ever having a more perfect collaboration than that which Penn-san and I shared. It was based upon mutual trust, respect, and a desire to have our own work pushed to new places. And it always resulted in delight.

I tried never to be defined by my past.