Top 40 Rei Kawakubo Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Feeling free inside oneself is being free.”

— Rei Kawakubo

2. “For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.”

— Rei Kawakubo

3. “My energy comes from freedom and a rebellious spirit.”

— Rei Kawakubo

4. “I work in three shades of black.”

— Rei Kawakubo

5. “Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them.”

— Rei Kawakubo

6. “I make clothes for a woman who is not swayed by what her husband thinks.”

— Rei Kawakubo

7. “What you wear can largely govern your feelings and your emotions, and how you look influences the way people regard you. So fashion plays an important role on both the practical level and the aesthetic level of activity.”

— Rei Kawakubo

8. “Creation takes things forward. Without anything new there is no progress. Creation equals new.”

— Rei Kawakubo

9. “Beauty is whatever anyone thinks is beautiful.”

— Rei Kawakubo

10. “Not only in the creative world but also in the sports world. The most successful achievers in sports are people that are really driven and have that spirit of hunger.”

— Rei Kawakubo

11. “Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.”

— Rei Kawakubo

12. “I don’t feel too excited about fashion today People just want cheap fast clothes and are happy to look like everyone else.”

— Rei Kawakubo

13. “It would have more meaning for me to hear what critics have to say if their values and their ways of living were deeper and more serious.”

— Rei Kawakubo

14. “In the sense that anarchy equals freedom, yes. Anarchy means freedom, but it also means chaos.”

— Rei Kawakubo

15. “In the ’70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.”

— Rei Kawakubo

16. “Fashion is something you attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction the meaning of it is born. Without the wearing of it, it has no meaning, unlike a piece of art. It is fashion because people want to buy it now, because they want to wear it now, today. Fashion is only the right now.”

— Rei Kawakubo

17. “You can tell if it’s a good collection if people are afraid of it. In ten years, everyone will love it.”

— Rei Kawakubo

18. “I don’t think of myself as anyone special, and I would not know how to define myself.”

— Rei Kawakubo

19. “There are no limits – I endeavor to make clothes that didn’t exist before.”

— Rei Kawakubo

20. “It was also never wanting to be part of any group or movement or anything that was the done thing. I hated organization. When you have a group, you have a leader who is going to put down the rest of the group.”

— Rei Kawakubo

21. “For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit – the hungry mind – is what gets you going forward.”

— Rei Kawakubo

22. “Fashion is something that you can attach to yourself, put on, and through that interaction, the meaning of it is born.”

— Rei Kawakubo

23. “The more people that are afraid when they see new creation, the happier I am. I think the media has some responsibility to bear for people becoming more conservative. Many parts of the media have created the situation where uninteresting fashion can thrive.”

— Rei Kawakubo

24. “The first thing we do is sit around a table and discuss what we could pick up from daily life, from space. That’s how it starts, completely abstract. There’s no kind of, “Oh, let’s do Peru,” or “Let’s do pleats,” you know?”

— Rei Kawakubo

25. “I am kind of like the guide, the leader of this discussion. It could be from me, it could be from other people, it could be a mixture. It’s a real sort of guild. I lead it and direct it and inspire it.”

— Rei Kawakubo

26. “The same spirit runs through everything I do.”

— Rei Kawakubo

27. “I always just wanted to have enough to carry on. I never had ambitions to take over the world or be a global enterprise. But I wanted to have a strong business in order to do the main objective.”

— Rei Kawakubo

28. “For me, I haven’t succeeded in any way whatsoever.”

— Rei Kawakubo

29. “What’s good about many people liking the work is that when I want to collaborate or am interested in the synergy of artists working together, nobody ever says no to me when I ask to work with them.”

— Rei Kawakubo

30. “The more people that are afraid when they see new creation, the happier I am.”

— Rei Kawakubo

31. “Celebrity doesn’t really affect the work. What affects the work is the expectations from the outside. This is what no one understands.”

— Rei Kawakubo

32. “I’ve always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident.”

— Rei Kawakubo

33. “My intention is not to make clothes. My head would be too restricted if I only thought about making clothes.”

— Rei Kawakubo

34. “I identified very much with punk, not only in the fashion sector, but in every other sector. The very nature of doing something new and free meant something that was against authority.”

— Rei Kawakubo

35. “Every time before a collection, I say, “I don’t want it to come out. I want to cancel it. It’s not good. I haven’t achieved anything.””

— Rei Kawakubo

36. “I am a clothes maker, and that’s all I am. I only want to talk about the making of the clothes. I don’t feel the need to go out there and explain that.”

— Rei Kawakubo

37. “I’d make my whole collection with just one square of fabric. I wouldn’t do anything else; everything had to be made from one square. This is just one example.”

— Rei Kawakubo

38. “Most of the things I read from journalists are, you know, a little bit simplified and easy.”

— Rei Kawakubo

39. “I haven’t yet made clothes that I have been totally satisfied with, and maybe I never will.”

— Rei Kawakubo

40. “The very, very first thing that I wanted was to make a living – be independent and have a job. It might have come later, that kind of reaction to the boringness of fashion.”

— Rei Kawakubo

41. “My approach is simple. It is nothing other than what I am thinking at the time I make each piece of clothing, whether I think it is strong and beautiful. The result is something that other people decide.”

— Rei Kawakubo