I really think that creating clothes and fashion has to be a statement about how we live and where we live and what's happening in the world.
There'll always be a McQueen woman. She's strong, powerful & when she puts a McQueen jacket on, she feels different.
We don't take on battles so small we know we can win, we take on battles so big we dare to dream of winning them.
Dreams are never just dreams, they are reality waiting to happen.
A McQueen woman always has to feel powerful. She's never a girly girl, she's always a woman.
When you design a collection, you have to start with what you love and what you believe in. Unless you do that, you can't stand behind it, so there's no point in doing it.
The McQueen woman doesn't want to feel casual. It's not that kind of world. When you put on the clothes, they make you stand differently, feel differently. It was about how to do that but make it feel light. I've always been part of Lee's romantic side, that's what I love.
Do what you love and believe in, and work hard.
Every day, I love what I do and I think it's a gift and privilege to love your job.
I don’t shout the loudest, and I’m quite shy, which was why I was reluctant to throw myself into the public eye. I love beauty, craftsmanship, storytelling and romance, and I probably don’t have the armor to survive the relentless competition that exists in this particular world. But I have my own toughness.
Lee was very much his own person so it's impossible to know quite what he would have thought but part of the reason for me staying is that I believe he always wanted this to be a house that would be here forever, that he never wanted his name not to mean anything any more. And I want that too. I want Alexander McQueen to continue. Then, in a hundred years time, there will still be this house that he created, this great place that represents modernity and creativity and beauty and romance and all of those things. That, I think, would be amazing.
Alexander McQueen's designs are all about bringing contrasts together to create startling and beautiful clothes and I hope that by marrying traditional fabrics and lacework, with a modern structure and design we have created a beautiful dress for Catherine on her wedding day.
I always drew dresses. I remember loving Richard Avedon's early Versace campaigns. I used to plaster my whole walls with them when I was a kid.
I think maybe that as time goes by there will be more newness but because I was part of what it was before it's not like coming into a house and saying it's all about me. I don't feel like that. It really is all about McQueen and the things that he was trying to say and about moving that forward, making it relevant, making it desirable, making it into what people want to wear.
With McQueen you have so much at your fingertips. That is what's so incredible about this place. Lee built an amazing house, an English house - and that is very important - where creativity rules, where you can do whatever you want to do for the shows because no one's saying: where's your basic dress, where's your three button jacket?
Whenever I pick up a jacket and it's heavy, I think, 'Oh, I don't want to wear that.'
The range of genre that we is very diverse, which makes for a fun and multi-dimensional show, but creating something that flows, depending on what kind of vibe the show is going to be [loud dive bar, small theatre, festival] is a bit of an art a haphazard art at times.
It has been the experience of a lifetime to work with Catherine Middleton to create her wedding dress, and I have enjoyed every moment of it.
I wasn't the trendiest girl at college.
