We live in a dark and romantic and quite tragic world.

One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.

Fortunately there is more wealth in the world than there was at the time of the global economic crisis of 1929 – Chinese, Indian, Arab and Russian.

I have more friends in New York than Paris.

We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.

If you stick to something doggedly, you are off to a bad start.

What I love best in life is new starts.

I always loved advertising. If I hadn’t been in fashion, I’d have been in advertising.

My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.

The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to...

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‘It’s like hair color....

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

Some people would like me to be round again.

I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes — it’s about all kinds of change

Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive

Bling is over. Red carpet covered with rhinestones is out. I call it ‘the new modesty.’

I’m German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn’t exist any more.

Greece needs to work on a cleaner image. It’s a big problem, as they have this reputation of being so corrupt.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop.

Fashion is neither moral or immoral, but it is for rebuilding the morale.

Doing collections, doing fashion is like a non-stop dialogue.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.

I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.

Black-and-white always looks modern, whatever that word means.

Don’t dress to kill, dress to survive.

I’m all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.

No. I mean those people really did something for designers I don’t think department stores can, could or should do still today. Today the world is different so you have to make it differently. There’s...

My mother did not like children.

I love classic beauty. It’s an idea of beauty with no standard.

You cannot fake chic but you can be chic and fake fur

I’ve only wanted paper and beautiful colors. It was my dream, and it still is my dream. And books. They’re all I need, and the rest I can do without.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

I can do whatever I want.

I’m not a fortune-teller.

Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.

The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.

People like me were supposed to be into exclusivity, unapproachable. That’s what I hate most. I think it’s very demode.

I don’t want to be on the Internet.

Oh yes, I love to do shoes. I’m not a fetishist but I love to do shoes.

I do my job like I breathe.

Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.

I like to do things quickly because I’m easily bored.