Quotes from Ann Demeulemeester

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

The future is open, and I never make plans. As long as it's interesting to me, I try to live my life to the fullest.

I can make 10 jackets of the same colour, same two pockets and same length, that will look like 10 completely different jackets when you put them on. It's about the way they are cut - it makes them look and feel completely different and move differently, and that's a never-ending study. People who wear my clothes will know exactly what I mean.

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.

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

Black is not sad. Bright colours are what depress me. They're so... empty. Black is poetic. How do you imagine a poet? In a bright yellow jacket? Probably not.

Black is not sad... Black is poetic.

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.

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

I don't look at other people's work because I don't want to be distracted by their ideas.

A new time is coming both for my personal life, and the brand Ann Demeulemeester. I feel it's time to separate our paths.

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

I always followed my own path.

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.

I never leave anything behind. It's like a history, a chain, a line of life, you just have to move and make new steps, and keep it evolving - but my soul is my soul.

It's most beautiful thing about my work. I have reached people who I would never have known without my work.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Those that think my clothes are androgynous also still believe that women should look like Barbie dolls. That's precisely the problem, the deep-rooted assumptions about what is feminine.