Are there a lot of designers that matter? The industry hasn’t got a litmus test any more. The whole thing has imploded. Watch it die, like the banking industry
Students may feel the criticism is harsh, but I think it's possible they haven't had criticism before. It's my job to point out when something is badly done, or when there's no point of view. To build a brand you have to have something about you. If not personality, then some thought process. I'm 40, and they're young, so they're meant to be informing me. They should be bringing me a book or something that I haven't seen, not like some obscure chant book by Dominican monks, but an image of the way they see the world.
It's a secret language, known to all different people, in different ways, that enables them to read a subliminal message without realising they're reading it. It affects people on many levels, and even people who think they're not into fashion, or reject fashion are then being informed just in the case of rejecting it. The fact that they had to react against it was a conscious decision.
Don't crave fame, do what you do and just apply. I don't think many of them here today are that interested in fashion. Perhaps it's because there's not much going on. No punk, no reaction to something. I think we are in a waiting period.
A lot of people believe that you don't need to know the history and that creates newness. I disagree: we should always be informed and then destroy it.
I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable.
Students sometimes turn up at my course and they look a bit like they're going to Bali with only Wellingtons and a map, and they never leave their hotel room because they didn't think to bring a bikini. I'm full of bizarre analogies like that.
I had an argument with my students on why they want to present their work in an iBook, it's like your sister who has no design training, put on some outfits in the bedroom, took some pictures, sent them to Apple and after paying 40 quid, you have a portfolio! I can't believe it.
I've always believed that you have to have the skills before you destroy the skills. If you want to be crude, be crude, but don't be crude because you don't know how to do it, because you're not perfect at drawing and pattern-cutting.
I often ask students: 'Is this what you would show Tom Ford?' and they say: 'No, we'd have done more work' or 'We'd have dressed better.' So I say: 'Why don't you do that here?'
Oh, they've been putting in the long hours ... But is that because they don't have the skills, and everything takes twice as long? Or do they put in these hours to avoid what they should be doing ... which is stopping and binning a lot of [their work]?
Of course, there's some you think, well I wouldn't let them in the door, but there's not many. It's very important to know that it's a mutual thing, that there is respect and a form of teamwork. With quite a few of them it can be traumatic, but there are moments in here when they do extraordinary things with their designs. There are things of beauty I get to see in this office.
I never really liked Italy. 'Lots of cement' is my long-standing quote.
You can't subvert knowledge until you have knowledge... At the same time, I respect a student coming at it from a totally different position and trying to move it forward, and not falling into the rattrap of work that came before.
I absolutely loathe and hate the work... But I love youth. I realise how lucky it is being with youth, and what an honour that is. Nowhere else could a fat 47-year-old speak to people as young as this. They'd think you were a paedophile.
When they first arrive, really, my eyes bleed! It's only when they're about to leave that they become people you might want to know.
It falls apart now. They used to be intrinsically linked. Now they've been driven so far apart that I don't think the one has anything to do with the other. Even more so: I think that there is almost a reaction against style, that brute ugliness somehow has been interpreted as being the way to go.
Many students don't really like it (fashion). If they don't like it, they won't be able to tell you who the stylists are or the photographers. If they say they can't remember the names but they recognize the work, I'll say that's bullshit because if you were selling mobile phones, you'd know all about the phones' features and tariffs.
