Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy - but mysterious. But above all black says this: "I don’t bother you - don’t bother me".
My role in all of this is very simple. I make clothing like armor. My clothing protects you from unwelcome eyes.
It's most beautiful thing about my work. I have reached people who I would never have known without my work.
As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.
Make your work deeper and better than those before you, and eventually someone will notice. If you don't think the work is better than what you've seen, then go back until it is.
Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field.
I thought I should work more on the idea that you wear a suit or a jacket because of the fun it can provide, because it's a game, because it might even have a sexual quality.
For me it was sort of career suicide to work in color, but I did it because I perceived myself from an early stage to be interested in seasonality - the changing of the seasons - that's what I deeply loved.
When I think of artists that I would have loved to work with, it's Jimi Hendrix. And Steve McQueen. He's not a rock star, but he's kind of a rock star to me.
Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity.
I work in colour sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white - I like the abstraction of it.
Antwerp literally was a trash hole, but fashion changed that. The designers there were extreme, and their work was hard to understand. But now, people from all over the world come to Antwerp to shop.
I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, 'What should I do now?' It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.
Diane Arbus is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic, and frighteningly daring artists of the 20th century. Her work emerged from a deeply private place and profoundly affected all those who came into contact with it.
I am happy that thousands of students, young designers and fashion people will be able to see and study my work in every aspect of it.
What's really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer.
I try to consider each body of work on its own terms, discretely, so terms like 'sculpture' or 'photography', in their broad sense, don't really enter into my thinking.
My poems are almost all written as Diane. I don't have any problems with that, and if other women choose to identify with this, I think that's terrific.
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.
There is a real vulgarity in the way women dress at the moment. They show off too much and try too hard. They don't understand where the line is between sexy and vulgar. I know where that line is.
I dress women the way I see them and the way I envision them from day one, thus my customer knows that what she is looking for she will get.
