Malibu Top - Kukui & Haupia

We must never confuse elegance with snobbery. I would like the people that buy my clothes to understand that for me it's one small piece of art. For me, art is about learning and about living with people. It's alive. I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon. Fashion is about dressing according to what's fashionable. Style is more about being yourself. I love my beauty. It's not my fault. I am convinced that there can be luxury in simplicity. I am like a freight train. Working on the details, twisting them and playing with them over the years, but always staying on the same track.

VERIFICATION

The great thing about fashion is that it always looks forward. People said making clothes inside out was not proper. I disagreed, because clothes that are inside out are as beautiful as a cathedral.

PROCESSING

I like things simple. I couldn't love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something. Every day I'm thinking about change. I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore. It's a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

SHIPPING

I like things simple. I couldn't love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something. Every day I'm thinking about change.

I wish I had invented blue jeans. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes. You can only go forward by making mistakes. Attitude is everything. There are always protests, whether you do something good or bad. Even if you do something beneficial, people say you do it because it's advertising. My relationships with producers or photographers - these are relationships that took years. Never in my wildest dreams did I entertain the idea that I would become a fashion designer. Awkwardness gives me great comfort. I've never been cool, but I've felt cool. I've been in the cool place, but I wasn't really cool - I was trying to pass for hip or cool. It's the awkwardness that's nice. I don't care about money. I really don't care. I just want to do what I do. I don't try to be in fashion; I don't try to follow trends. You just end up out of fashion that way. Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous. My learning process is by eye alone; it's not at all scientific. I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle. Women are more sure of themselves today. They don't have to emulate the way men dress. Women are women, and hurray for that. It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic, by fashion.