If you wear clothes that don’t suit you, you’re a fashion victim. You have to wear clothes that make you look better. The important thing is to take your time and not get stressed. I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction. All I did my first year at Vogue was Xerox. I think there is something about luxury – it’s not something people need, but it’s what they want. It really pulls at their heart. Even Michelangelo got paid for doing the Sistine Chapel. To those artists who say they’re doing it for the love of art, I say: Get real. I get ideas about what’s essential when packing my suitcase. I’d like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressing for other people, that they’re wearing what they like and what suits them. It’s not a status thing. Sometimes incompetence is useful. It helps you keep an open mind. I’ve always thought of the T-shirt as the Alpha and Omega of the fashion alphabet.
Get into plant swaps
Design is a constant challenge to balance comfort with luxe, the practical with the desirable. My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor. We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement. I remember walking the dog one day, I saw a car full of teenage girls, and one of them rolled down the window and yelled, ‘Marc Jacobs!’ in a French accent. We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement.
“The writer Charlotte Smith, who suffered from chronic rheumatism and depression, passionately believed that plants could ‘soothe’ a ‘wounded mind.”
We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great. Fashions fade, style is eternal. Fashion should be fun. It shouldn’t be labelled intellectual. I don’t like trends. They tend to make everybody look the same. I never look at other people’s work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions. You have to be luxurious nude. It’s difficult to move in the nude in front of a mirror. It’s much easier to move when you’re dressed. But if you can walk around in the nude easily in front of your man, if you can be luxurious in the nude, then you’ve really got it. Instead of buying six things, one thing that you really like.
Don’t keep buying just for the sake of it. It should be natural, and that’s how I like women to look. I like them to feel comfortable and look organic. I am convinced that you don’t need to spend a fortune to look like a million. I am like a freight train. Working on the details, twisting them and playing with them over the years, but always staying on the same track.