Christian Lacroix Quotations

There are days when I'm completely depressed and able to do only one drawing

But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry.

The idea of seeing everybody clad the same is not really my cup of tea

They say that the best furniture and clothing design from the '50s and '60s is Scandinavian or Milanese.

Going out in Paris was like going out in the '30s dressed like the Andrews Sisters. It was everything I'd seen in books at my grandparents' house, only it was our generation.

Italy is a divided country without a center.

French design hardly exists, except as artificial modernism.

But some one will say that this supreme Being, who made all things, and those also who conferred on men particular benefits, are entitled to their respective worship.

In Italy, the Milanese are well organized but follow bourgeois taste. They adhere to certain codes of elegance, but not to individualism.

The notion of time bothers me. You look at thirty-year-old photographs and realize how the time has passed.

I translated Beatles songs for my English class.

I'd experienced the '40s and '50s by looking at my grandparents' old clothes, books, and magazines

The exchange by e-mail is more intimate than conversation - you allow yourself to say things you otherwise wouldn't.

I think it's always difficult to reconcile the needs of art and business.

You need ego but mine is not blinding.

Much later, designers like Dior and Saint Laurent recreated styles form the '30s and '40s.

My fear was that people expected radical change because of the new contract. But no.

My first time in England, in the '60s, the interiors were somehow familiar to me, probably because of the books I'd read and the images I'd seen.

The Paris store Colette is successful because it's a filter for things that are made elsewhere. It's the kind of store France needs.

I wanted to go back to the beginning and to the codes of the house.

Ready-to-wear -- that means 'ready to wear'. Some people are doing couture during ready-to-wear (fashion week), others are putting up performances, we just come here with our little flowers.

For fifteen years I've had Swiss clients who tell me that it's a mystery how the French react to their own artists, especially the painters.

I've known for a long time, but I have only really taken it in this morning - and I think I will be shedding a tear by tonight,

But it seemed like the more we advanced, the more the future looked impossible, making us return to the more radical times in the past.

I never loved the world around me as it was.

If I was a fashion designer just following trends or designing for celebrities, I would not be fulfilled.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been influenced by the idea that my name could be spread across the entire world.

That was the idea behind glam clubs like Seven and The New Eve. You could eat and dance to live music. To enter you had to descend a grand staircase.

With the development of the Christian Lacroix house in Paris and my work notably for the theater, it wasn't serious doing things by half.

For me, I am still very happy to be able to do stage design as it's an opportunity to express the extreme.

I am still in love with couture because it is just two months from drawing pad to runway so everything on the catwalk is hot from the oven.

I am not nostalgic for the past.

Haute Couture should be fun, foolish and almost unwearable.

There's always some kind of hidden logic.

We all look for lost time.

Fashion needs to be worn.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

I am always anxious to know what has happened while I've been asleep.

I look for friends who make me laugh.

People want to be in their own fashion tribes, so they want to wear the same clothes to be connected to everyone else in that tribe. But they want to be different from other tribes.

For me, haute couture is a necessity. I never would have done this job were it not for haute couture. It is a comfort, a security. I almost feel it is our duty to continue. Haute couture is France. We have to keep all the skills and craftmanship alive.

The world needs some excitement from fashion.

For me, elegance is not to pass unnoticed but to get to the very soul of what one is.