Gaiety is one of the most important elements I brought to fashion. I brought it through color.
Today people are a hundred times more interested in the personality of the person they are with than the clothes he wears.
Today - and it's happening very rapidly - money, wealth, position, birth are of no importance at all. The thing that is important is the individual you are.
I would say that if something has an aesthetic value and it is pleasing to watch or to wear, it may in fact have nothing to do with status symbol. You just like to wear it.
I think that in the end, the people are not fooled by promotion. They want to know that something works and is right.
Consumerism, what kind of car you have, what kind of house you have in the country and so on, and that is all very incidental when you examine the kind of person he may be. He may be a big bore, and then there is a person who hasn't done a thing in the world and he is a fascinating person.
Americans have started a lot of projects around the world and I am one of them.
I don't think people today need to derive security from possessions.
People have to identify with something to show they have reached a certain goal. Anyway, in Russia it's done with medals. You put on all these medals to show who you are.
If you have to sit the whole evening with the most famous person in the world and he is a goddamn bore, you will want to run away and if you sit with a person who's completely unknown, but he's fascinating, you are delighted.
The direction we are going in at this moment is the negation of material goods as being important and the great importance of spiritual values and sensations. Permissiveness, if you will. There is tremendous talk of sex and bi-sexuality.
When a man has seen the aerodynamic shape of a Caravelle jet at an airport, he doesn't need aerodynamic furniture.
You can wear your hair long or wear a beard because you want to show that you are interested in thought, in psychological endeavors rather than appearance.
I would say that it is a trait by which Americans, searching for things which are different or new, seem to recognize the gift that people may have that cause people do to things.
Americans are responsible not only for really starting a lot of things in a lot of countries, but also for giving people the confidence to do things they might never have thought to do.
As many Europeans and other people from other countries, I have been led into my present activity by a very specific American gift of trade.
We are in a very strange way going back to the mentality of the time when Americans went in covered wagons. I imagine they had a piece of cloth, and the piece of furniture they carried with them meant to be a good piece of wood, and sturdy. We're going back to that.
It would be very interesting to make a survey around the world, from wealthy countries to the most advanced countries to see what influence Americans have had. I
American businessmen have taken advantage of the opportunities which existed in Europe and Europeans seem not to have been aware of.
