Ann Demeulemeester

“I need human feelings to fit garments. I couldn't do it just, like, on an object - it's too close to our body. It's like a skin you are making, so you need one's feelings to make a garment.”

“I always followed my own path.”

“As a young girl, I dreamed of having a voice in fashion.”

“When you see or hear something beautiful, it's like that thing is transmitting a kind of energy, and if that energy helped create the work, the only thing I can do is play it when I finally show the work.”

“Beauty of mind creates freedom. Freedom of mind creates beauty.”

“What I like to wear, I do myself. I don't know how that sounds, but it's the truth. My life is so mixed with my profession that I don't know where I begin or my work ends.”

“Fashion is silly. Perhaps I should say fashion in general is silly. But then everything is, in general. If you talk about music in general, it's silly; about magazines, in general, they're silly.”

“I am just a Flemish girl with her feet on the ground.”

“For me, Gothic is something from my youth, when I had a heavy metal phase.”

“Good fashion is like rock music: all anarchy and revolt.”

“I became a fashion designer by accident. I loved to make portrait drawings when I was a teenager, and from that came the interest in what people were wearing and why they were wearing it.”

“Creating is a lonely thing in a lot of ways.”

“Ann Demeulemeester is an adult brand now, with its own identity and legacy that is able to continue growing without me.”

“I had to find my own language in jewelry. That was important to me; it really had to be what I would love to have myself.”

“Jewelry is something that has to do with emotion. That aspect of jewelry really interests me.”

“I feel more European than Belgian. However I do think that my Flemish roots have an impact on my character and culture.”

“My work has always been about authentic feeling, and I think we live in a time where we need that.”

“I've always done things my way.”

“It's too easy to say that orange is happy and black is sad. To me, black is perfect. You can fill it with the emotion you want to express.”

“I'm not confused about what's happening in fashion, because I follow my own direction and go.”