I have become aware on my travels that when a country loses the connection between its history and its traditional dress, something truly precious is lost.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
All over Africa, people are wearing what Americans once wore and no longer want. Visit the continent, and you'll find faded remnants of secondhand clothing in the strangest of places.
I love bringing the colors and textures of other cultures. If I wear a dress that I bought from a street vendor in Bali on a red carpet, it's a way of bringing my travels with me.
Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.
If fashion has a political significance, it is probably culturally, as a camouflage.
Fashion is part of our culture, and it's about more than just a pretty dress.
When you really are country, and you don't just wear it like a piece of clothing or something, you really can't get away from it. It just is who you are.
I've admired historical clothes like Victorian gowns since I was a child, and it's what motivated me to go into fashion.
Fashion only seems to make sense if it's rooted in some dimension of history or if it feels like a continuation of an idea.
Some of the country stuff in the past has been so polished - if you were a guy with a nice pair of jeans, a big belt buckle and nice hat, you were country.
I think, to me, the sheer joy of fancy dress is that it allows you to take a break from our very carefully considered and constructed identities.