I’m not a yogi, but I know the sun salutation.

It just seemed too weird to me. I don’t know, maybe they were smoking a joint in the car downstairs from their parents’ apartment. I had to go that far to put together a scenario of how they could have possibly recognized me.

I never cared about buying things for myself, like clothes. And then all of a sudden I realized how great it is to be very precise about the shirts that I wear and all the things that are a part of my closet. So the ritual of fashion and shopping became very personal to me.

I love the entire ritual of getting dressed. When we do a fashion show, we try to send out a message; we couldn’t do that without the hair and makeup. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.

I always find it kind of embarrassing, kind of funny, and kind of exciting. In New York I’m recognized a lot, although nobody says anything. You know, they stare at you just a second too long. But in Paris it’s not as commonplace to be recognized.

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.

I really do believe that art changes the landscape of the world.

We don’t design by calculator or by demographics or anything like that. We really are a group of creative, sensitive people. We have our charmed little world where we get to make things. We’re really lucky.

For so many years, I felt so insecure, so inferior, and I still have those moments, but I have a newfound confidence since I got in shape and changed my diet.

One thing that is exciting about fashion is the surprise element. People don’t know what they want. They just know when they see it.

No one ever said ‘no’ to me about anything. No one ever told me anything was wrong. Never. No one ever said, ‘You can’t be a fashion designer.’ No one ever said, ‘You’re a boy and you can’t take tap-dancing lessons.’ No one ever said, ‘You’re a boy and you can’t have long hair.’

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.

I still appreciate individuality. Style is much more interesting than fashion, really.

I hate this idea that you have to love somebody because they are your family. Nobody can tell me what I’m supposed to feel and who I am supposed to feel it for.

But I’m blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me.

I’m not good at hiding my feelings. I’m also not good at lying. I’m very open about everything.

What’s comfortable to me is familiarity. Comfort has nothing to do with the size of the garment. I do find something quite comfortable and charming in a too-narrow shoulder, a sleeve that’s too short or too long, a pant that’s too high or too low, hems that are trod on.

It was never my desire to revolutionize fashion, to make clothes that could be in a museum. I want to create clothes that have a certain style, but I want to see them used. I want to see people enjoy the things I’ve made.

Innovation is an evolutionary process, so it’s not necessary to be radical all the time.

We’re developing things, but I don’t know what we’ll go with for the show, so I don’t like to talk about it.

There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn’t realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.

Marc Jacobs is full of creative people and Louis Vuitton is again a name on the door, a name that has existed for many years but I’m a collaborator there and I bring in other people, other artists and I work with a great creative design team.

Grunge is a hippied romantic version of punk.

Sometimes there are two very opposite directions, and we go with the stronger one at the end. It’s an impulse thing, like, ‘Oh, I love both so much, but it’s got to be one or the other because the two don’t work together.’

I do love fashion. I certainly wouldn’t suffer all the stress that comes with it if I didn’t really love it. I always talk about the team of people I work with every day. They share that passion.

It’s quite nice to see that I didn’t have to change who I was to reach two very different types of people.

Awkwardness gives me great comfort. I’ve never been cool, but I’ve felt cool. I’ve been in the cool place, but I wasn’t really cool – I was trying to pass for hip or cool. It’s the awkwardness that’s nice.

I love attention.

To me, beauty and makeup and color is like the finishing touch on everything.

I don’t want to sound too silly or pretentious about this, but, you know, I love being in Paris. I love working at Louis Vuitton. I love fashion. That’s why I do it. No one’s forcing me to do this. And nobody forces anyone to buy it. It’s a real love affair.

I wouldn’t know how to find eBay on the computer if my life depended on it.

As far back as I can remember, I had an interest in fashion. I used to go to sleepaway camp, and they’d provide a list of things that you had to bring, and I always wanted to be a bit more creative than the list allowed. Like, if they required chinos, I wanted to hand-paint...

When you see a fashion show, you see those seven minutes of what was six months of tedious work of, you know, going up an inch and down an inch, changing it from one shade of red to another shade of red. So it’s the same as any creative process. The result is what we...

You can go to Graff and buy a diamond that’s flawless. You aren’t going to be able to buy the same diamond at Fortunoff, but it’s still a diamond you can enjoy. If fashion can allow you to have the Chanel mystique through a lipstick, then why shouldn’t art allow you to have that through...

I don’t think, ‘Gee, I’d like to dress this person.’ There was a picture in Us magazine. It was a jersey dress, and Courtney Love was wearing it. I have this thing about Courtney Love, this funny worship.

I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they’re the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters.

For people that don’t have any interest in the psychology of nuance, who need everything to be in their face, who don’t want to analyze… those aren’t the people I romanticize about dressing.

I’m useless at staring at a piece of white paper. But if you put a piece of white paper with a black line on it in front of me, I’ll say no that black line should be red and it should go this way or that way.

Sometimes, you just have to clear your head and get out to see other things. It is very important to be nourished. I love to go to museums and galleries, I like to see theatre, film, dance – anything creative. It doesn’t promise you inspiration, but it nourishes your creative soul, and that’s good.

I go through phases where I buy only Speed Stick and Axe, and Noxzema shaving cream.

I always say I lived my life with my grandmother. She was emotionally stable, and she was very encouraging to me.

Sofia is so active, and she made The Virgin Suicides, which I thought was great – all these things are inspiring to me, not in terms of creating a particular dress, but just in terms of knowing that there is this type of woman out there.

Luxury is anything you don’t need, right? I mean, you need food, water, clothing, shelter… but good wine, good food, beautiful interiors, nice clothes; those aren’t necessities, they are luxuries – it’s all luxury.

I don’t need to be better than anybody or worse than anybody to feel better about myself. I just need to stick on my own path and stay in the moment as best I can.

I love a blouse that’s dumb. I love to use the word ‘dumb.’ It’s not knowing, and the word ‘blouse’ is so out of fashion that I love it – ‘a blouse that’s dumb.’

Whether it’s an $11 flip-flop or a $2 key ring or a $2,000 dress, they’re all done with integrity. They’re all done with a design sense. As long as the creativity exists, then I don’t think it’s a sellout. A sellout is putting your name on any piece of crap and then expecting people to...

I guess when I look over my shoulder at other designers, I feel like people are so definitive. It’s so clear to me what their aesthetic is, what they’re projecting. And I look at my own work and I think, Who could ever decipher what the hell is going on?

I believe that anything can be for men or women. I mean, I’ve worn a lace dress before!

I don’t love Photoshop; I like imperfection. It doesn’t mean ugly. I love a girl with a gap between her teeth, versus perfect white veneers. Perfection is just… boring. Perfect is what’s natural or real; that is beauty.

I’m not a model, so the idea of modelling a suit or clothes is weird in itself.