Top 40 Jason Wu Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We all want to be a little glamorous, a little playful and a little mischievous at times.”

— Jason Wu

2. “I woke up one day and I was like, “I don’t have anything to save for myself for the future.” That’s when I started archiving things. I take four or five things that are really key to each collection, and I restore them or, in some cases, remake parts of them, and archive them.”

— Jason Wu

3. “I had a hard time in middle school. I was never really quite me until I was 16 or 17, and things like bullying didn’t matter anymore.”

— Jason Wu

4. “I need to feel like I’m part of something. I need to feel part of the world when I go to sleep.”

— Jason Wu

5. “I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I’m like, “It’s going in my archives.””

— Jason Wu

6. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, being in fashion business, because that’s what it is at the end of the day, a business, and you have to make sure it works.”

— Jason Wu

7. “In American culture you leave home at 18. In the Asian culture, your parents don’t really want you to leave home. So my parents just thought I was going to be one of those kids. I was like, “I’m never going to make a living at whatever I do.” I just liked pretty things.”

— Jason Wu

8. “I love old architecture. I love collecting furniture, mixing really earthy things with the very polished. I don’t come from an interiors background, so I’m not an expert. I just enjoy going to antiques shows and finding interesting things.”

— Jason Wu

9. “I am an Asian designer. I was born in Taiwan. That is who I am. But I am a designer, like any designer of any race. Growing up in the ’80s in Taiwan, the arts were not considered a career.”

— Jason Wu

10. “I don’t collect things per se, but I do pick up things as I go. Like, in my studio I have an old sewing machine from Germany that my dad gave me, and then something else that I got from a friend in India, and a piece of flooring from one of my shows.”

— Jason Wu

11. “I don’t know if I would want to come back as anything but me. I feel really satisfied. I don’t really want to be anyone else. I just feel like I’ve gotten everything I signed up for as me. I’m happy as me.”

— Jason Wu

12. “I would love to take an old space and restore it to exactly the way I want it. Like an old factory, just something with great bones and lots of character. I’d take an old house and flip it into something very modern inside, or the other way around.”

— Jason Wu

13. “I hope I am the antithesis of disposable fashion.”

— Jason Wu

14. “I worked 10 years as a toy designer before I started my career as a fashion designer. It’s something I just fell into and really liked.”

— Jason Wu

15. “I hope being gay isn’t the most interesting thing about me.”

— Jason Wu

16. “I think what I create is serious fashion, but I don’t want to keep my focus on that. You have to look at a lot of different things. I mean, people are always surprised when they find out that my favorite show is RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

— Jason Wu

17. “In designing for the first lady, I tried to sort of be in her shoes, but I didn’t really look at her as an important political figure. I looked at her as a woman who would like to wear a beautiful dress to an important gala.”

— Jason Wu

18. “I think clothing is transformative. When you put something really beautiful on, you feel something. In so many ways, were always playing a form of dress-up – its just a grown-up, much chicer version of it. Its nice to be able to be whoever you want to be.”

— Jason Wu

19. “My parents are very comfortable with the way that I am, and I think they’ve always been. Without that, I don’t think that I would have ever have been able to grow into the person that I am today. I never felt like I was hiding anything from them.”

— Jason Wu

20. “My inspirations come from everywhere. It’s important to look at everything and anything.”

— Jason Wu

21. “Actually, I’m probably 99-and-a-half percent plastic now.”

— Jason Wu

22. “The way my mom dressed was one of my earliest inspirations, in those ’80s suits with shoulder pads and things like that. For years, I ran away from that style. But now, all I want to do is shoulder pads and nipped-in waists and padded hips and peplums and poufed dresses.”

— Jason Wu

23. “I love a little bit of glamour and I love tall girls.”

— Jason Wu

24. “When I was growing up, you sort of did the unthinkable. You did something that has never really been replicated.”

— Jason Wu

25. “You’re always in the mode of creating the next season. It’s so fast, and in two months, the collection you just did is already old, and it’s always next, next, next.”

— Jason Wu

26. “My cats are really sassy and sophisticated, but most importantly, they are picky.”

— Jason Wu

27. “Being feminine in the way you dress doesn’t have to compromise who you are as a woman or your career.”

— Jason Wu

28. “It’s nice to be able to be whoever you want to be. I moved to New York for that reason. I think I am a very good example of how you really can do whatever you want to do without having any kind of prerequisite experience of any of kind of connection. None of my family members came from this world.”

— Jason Wu

29. “What I was interested in wasn’t popular and young, but I never really deviated from doing it. I just decided that I was going to go full force into exactly what I wanted. I think there’s a certain comfort that comes with age and experience, and when I got that, I think my work got better.”

— Jason Wu

30. “The worst thing is to be a designer and create work that isn’t honest. You have to be honest. Otherwise, you’ll always be a reaction to what other people do and you’ll always be one step behind.”

— Jason Wu

31. “My parents loved me, and I think they realized that I was probably not going to have a normal 9-to-5 job. For the longest time, my dad thought that I was just going to be home until I was, like, 35, which, weirdly, is completely normal in Asian families.”

— Jason Wu

32. “I think a beautiful dress on the wrong woman could mean nothing. It has to be the right woman and the right clothes. That’s why you need that personal touch. I mean, that’s why I went into this business to begin with.”

— Jason Wu

33. “The polishedness and the sophistication were what I was interested in. I mean, give me a polka dot, a floral print, a pleated dress, a big fur coat, that was always my language, and it wasn’t very “in” when I was starting out, so I had a difficult time in the beginning.”

— Jason Wu

34. “I didn’t understand anything about fashion until I moved to Canada when I was 9. That’s when I learned English and was exposed to fashion magazines.”

— Jason Wu

35. “I always have the TV on. When there’s no TV, I play music. I like having noise. I think that’s why New York is so suitable for me, because it’s never really fully quiet.”

— Jason Wu

36. “Buy things you truly love, things that are special, but not a lot of them. It’s about value, not quantity.”

— Jason Wu

37. “I was very preppy in my childhood. I also went through an anti-clothing moment where I just wanted to wear sweats because I’d just moved to Canada. My mom was always trying to get me into proper clothes, but I never wanted to wear them, and now that’s all I wear.”

— Jason Wu

38. “I miss All Stars, by the way. I was just telling people: how am I going to get by until January?”

— Jason Wu

39. “When I was 12 or 13 I already knew that I was gay. And then my interests were not conventional. So I was very different, in every sense of the word. And in an all-boys school, that’s tough.”

— Jason Wu

40. “I guess I accidentally became a part of history. Honestly, when you’re young and you’re a designer, you have a goal, but that is not the kind of goal that you even think it’s possible to achieve.”

— Jason Wu

41. “Designers have always shown outlandish and exuberant clothes, but that hasnt always translated to the streets.”

— Jason Wu

42. “As a designer you have to just do whatever you want to do. The second I came to terms with that, it transformed my work.”

— Jason Wu

43. “I love the idea of working with women because I always feel like a man designing womenswear needs women around him to really have a sense of what they’re doing.”

— Jason Wu

44. “Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t know anything about politics. Every time I go to Washington, I feel like I’m in Legally Blonde.”

— Jason Wu

45. “For a while, I just thought that I wanted to be an illustrator because that’s all I wanted to do. I also did some sculpting. It was always very artsy and very feminine, everything that I did.”

— Jason Wu

46. “I think it’s really important to make things your own in your voice. I started when I was 23, and in the beginning of my career, there was this expectation of a young designer being edgier, cooler, more downtown. But I was never that person.”

— Jason Wu