I didn’t know anything about the fashion industry until I met the stylist Simon Foxton on a Tube. I was 16, on my way to Kingsway College, and then my whole world opened up. Before that, like in every African family, you are meant to be a lawyer.
Thierry Mugler is about the power of glamour and walking straight into the future. He’s been a god for successive generations in the fashion industry. He fused pop and high fashion, told a story in style and combined fantasy with reality.
Digital has really made the fashion industry a lot more transparent. So people can see and understand how the industry really works, and participate in an industry that was very inaccessible to people. The only thing that people used to see before was the end product. Anyone can participate in it now.
I think the reality is that there’s a role for everybody to play in the work of social justice and that we have to organize everybody. That means that Silicon Valley has to be organized, the fashion industry has to be organized, the formerly incarcerated have to be organized, the teachers.
The fashion industry needs to breed a whole different way of thinking. We need more diverse people working in all facets of the industry.
Society has a hyper emphasis on thin, and that trend comes from the consumers – it does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry needs to make money; that’s what we do. If people said, ‘We want a 300 pound purple person,’ the first industry to do it would be fashion.
A lot of people, when they look at the whole trans thing, they think,’Oh, you’re transgender, and in the fashion industry, which is very pro-LGBT, so you don’t have any problems because it’s a progressive place.’ But that’s not the reality.
The fashion industry now has a direct relationship with its customers. Thanks to things like Twitter, ideas can be shared and circulated.
I grew up in a miniature village in the middle of the countryside in England, quite secluded from the outside world. I was always enamored by the fashion industry.
Obama was 200 percent advertising. I promote myself to sell my brands. Because now I am a kind of celeb. I am in a different world than the fashion industry. I am with Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Madonna. I build me as a celebrity.
Part of what I have to represent is an alternative to this perverted fashion industry concept of what beauty is.
Age is not a taboo in the fashion industry. One should learn what to wear to look good at any age.
It would be disrespectful to take my stardom and bully my way into the fashion industry.
No, I’m not the first or last model of my type in this industry. You can make up all the reasons you think I am where I am, but really, I’m a hard worker that’s confident in myself – one that came at a time where the fashion industry was ready for a change.
I almost went to Central Saint Martins for fashion design. I deferred for a year when I graduated high school so that I could go model and make some money and immerse myself in the fashion industry for a year.
I’ve been a fella in the fashion industry for a very long time now, and the industry has been very good to me.
I think reality television has made the fashion industry and the beauty industry, any industry – frankly, just life – it has made life seem much different than it really is.
One cabbie chastened me by saying that the fashion industry was doing harm to young people, who are trying to live up to an unrealistic ideal. It prompted me to make body image and diversity key issues on ‘The Business of Fashion.’
‘The September Issue’ is really a film about Anna Wintour’s relationship with long time ‘Vogue’ Creative Director Grace Coddington. The two of them have been working together for two decades, and the extraordinary symbiosis between them has left an indelible mark on the fashion industry.
I think fashion is repulsive. The whole idea that someone else can make clothing that is supposed to be in style and make other people look good is ridiculous. It sickens me to think that there is an industry that plays to the low self-esteem of the general public. I would like the fashion industry to collapse.
Pretending that the fashion industry isn’t in part based on leather would be quite stupid of me, but at the same time, there is another way of doing things – even outside of leather. I don’t use PVC either, for example, because it is harmful.
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