“Taste is, never being satisfied” – definition by Andreas

TRANSLATIONS:   JAPANESE  ●  TRADITIONAL CHINESE  ●  SIMPLIFIED CHINESE

Advice to people who want to become a fashion designer. I get lots of letters so here is a general letter in reply.Taste is everything. It springs from discrimination, knowing the difference between things: what is good and what is great. We are each born with it to a different degree, you can’t learn it but you can cultivate it if you have it.

And the way you cultivate it is through true culture.

Definition of culture by Matthew Arnold

Also you have to be good with your hands. People send me their drawings with no clue as to how their “designs” are to be made. That’s no good, they’re just dreaming.

What is your deep interest? What else would you like to do? Do that instead – you’ll learn more. By doing something else, should you ever come back to wanting to do fashion at least you’ll have some ideas. You could study biology or history of art. All subjects lead you to culture and to beauty; maths too. But whatever you study you need to also to immerse yourself in the arts and literature. Reading is essential. With regard to fashion you must engage with fashion history: you need to know the past to know the present; our purpose should be to understand the world we live in.
Fashion school can’t teach you ideas. It can teach you pattern cutting( some colleges don’t do this, definitely don’t go there).You can teach yourself to sew and learn from other students. The best that can be said of fashion school is that it gives you time to study.
Copy. Teach yourself by copying. I think it’s the only way to learn. You will see how hard it is – just try to copy Yves Saint Laurent exactly! If you change one thing you will have to change everything else in relation to it. I have sometimes copied a couture garment in such a way as to make it by the “ready to wear” method and also to accommodate it to present daily life. An example was the “Stature of Liberty” taken from an eighteenth century corset but with elastic side panels and a zip. The golden rule is that it must be as good as the original, in it’s own way. A design is formed through 100 decisions.
A design must have a good reason to exist. Does the world need it?