Raf Simons quotes:

My point of view is that if I love a certain kind of beauty, I want more of that beauty. I don't need 200 different beauties.

I dont want to show clothes, I want to show my attitude, my past, present and future. I use memories and future visions and try to place them in todays world.

Computers let people avoid people, going out to explore. It's so different to just open a website instead of looking at a Picasso in a museum in Paris.

Dress codes and gestures and attitudes have always inspired me, as has youth culture in general, although now I question it more. If you analyze youth cultures over history, there has always been something strict about them - you have to be like this or like that.

In my opinion, Christian Dior was never, ever theatre.

My aim is a very modern Dior, but at the end of the day, I also look back,

You cannot have adoration without being criticized.

One of the first things I picked up when I was very, very young out of a record store was work from Peter Saville - the early things he used to do for Factory Records.

I see there is a lot of behaviour in men's fashion, which is systematic. It's a lot about all these kind of clothes that can be easily combined with each other, and it's less and less, I think, about making a fashion statement.

You can instantly spot a Chanel woman, so I want to develop the Dior woman.

I fantasise about what the future could be in terms of aesthetic and psychology. It's the most difficult thing to do because you have to start from the past - your favourite architect, your favourite song - you take it all with you.

The fashion thing is something I do, and yes, it is definitely also becoming a part of myself and my personality. It also doesn't really feel like a job, either: it's a dream or a passion or something.

Antwerp literally was a trash hole, but fashion changed that. The designers there were extreme, and their work was hard to understand. But now, people from all over the world come to Antwerp to shop.

Berlin is in a state of transition. There are lots of people who don't stay here. They pass through. They might not 'clean up,' but they mature. It is a city where people spend a significant time in their lives, and then they move on.

Every weekend, I'm on the highway to Antwerp. I need to be there, to have the calm. It's a whole different life: I jump on my bike, and it's so small, I can be anywhere in a minute. I like to be at home when there's free time because when you're at a big company, you're constantly surrounded by 30 people.

Fashion is such an octopus. You're connected to so many people: suppliers, pattern makers, production teams, marketing teams, vendors.

As an industrial designer, you design the thing by yourself, and then it goes away from you, whereas fashion is in constant relation to the body and to psychology. It makes it more complicated, and it makes it more challenging.

I want to get away from couture just being done for a picture or for a single moment on the red carpet. I want to try and convince women that couture can be worn in the day and that there's a reality and relevance there, because that's what Mr. Christian Dior wanted.

We Belgians love when we can go to L.A. because the city is amazing and the climate is fantastic.

Our society wants things to grow, and our society wants things to become bigger and bigger. Everything has to be put under the spotlight.

There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art. When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice.

I am somebody who focuses on a dialogue between generations - that's the drive of my work. I believe the young generation take the power; they'll take over at one point, but the older generation, they'll push it away only because of the fear. I'm the opposite; I'm curious.

Somewhere, in some city in America, someone is wearing my clothes, and I'm happy with that.

I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, 'What should I do now?' It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant.

I don't see Dior as something that could become mine. I see it as a dialogue with the women who wear it. I want to stay connected to them rather than to an abstract brand.

For me, Warhol made so much sense.

My inspiration is endless; I can't define it. It is a constant flow and evolution. In general, I'm taking it from everywhere. People get nervous when they walk with me, as I'll see something and suddenly have to text it to myself.

I was growing up in the New Wave period, but that wasn't allowed in school. I remember moments when they wouldn't let four people dressed in black stand together on the playground.

My challenge is to find a beautiful balance: to make women beautiful, to make a woman dream to wear a beautiful outfit.

I'm not an isolated person. The more I connect to people, the more I have the feeling that things work.

I'm not so rock and roll. I'm more techno.

My ideas for the next collection always happen a couple of months before the show. I have learned to shut up and not bother my assistants with it.

My dad only ever talked about two things: bicycles and Mercedes.

L.A. interests me, the whole band scene and relaxed carefree feel, but it does not mean you have to dress like a hippy.

The Chanel woman? I don't even need to see; I smell her from round the corner.

Fashion has a long interest in collaborative situations.

My whole life, I've always had to be surrounded by creative things. I find it relaxing to be in touch with creations by other people.

I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.

I'm a designer, and for me, things are always evolving, and such evolution is necessary.

If I see a fashion show with literal influences, it doesn't make me think any more. It doesn't make me dream.

The fashion world doesn't know the word 'stop,' so you have to make sure there are sublime moments every day.

I'd like to see fashion slow down a bit. What freaks me out about fashion today is the speed - the speed of consuming, the speed of ideas. When fashion moves so fast, it takes away something I always loved, which is the idea that fashion should be slightly elusive. Hard to grasp, hard to find.

I was raised in a very happy nest by very happy people, and I like to think that those are enough ingredients to make me succeed at Dior.

My mother was a cleaning lady all her life.

And even being in the middle of it, at the LVMH group with Dior, there are certain parts of it that I'm just not really in, because it's not in me or my nature. The whole scene around it, the events, the photography ... It's never really been my thing. But I don't take a critical position on people who are very much about that either.

Becoming a fashion designer is agreeing with the fact that what you experience or what you see as free is also connected to a system. Does that mean giving up your freedom? I still don't know the answer. There's a very different kind of psychology going on in the fashion scene than in art.

But overall I want to make sure people fall in love with the clothes and that they are satisfied

I always try to connect with what's happening in the world-reality, modernity, the 21st century, all that - and with Jil it started to feel very disconnected from the outside and how women were looking at fashion, experiencing fashion, interpreting fashion.

I don't find it difficult anymore, because these days, Raf is only men and Dior is only women. I found it much more complicated when I was doing Jil Sander for men and women. It wasn't that it was the same, but I'm specific about where I want to go, and when you suddenly have to do two men's collections in the same moment, that was more difficult.

I find it fascinating to see the fact that women want to buy things that they see on men.

I have so much respect for John [Galliano]s technical skill and the fantasy, its just something that I dont find relevant now, especially when it restricts a woman, because in every other area they have so much freedom.

I know this independence is what people like most about my brand.

I like very much to put on fashion shows.

I never really have to sit at a desk thinking, "What should I do now?" It doesn't work like that for me, and it never has. My thinking process is constant. The difference is that once I was in Antwerp only doing two men's shows a year. And the weird thing is I thought I was busy then.

I see my position in that whole Dior construction very differently from my own brand. My own brand will stand or fall because of me. Dior won't fall if I fall. It will also still stand if I'm not there. I'm coming in there and it's like a - I don't know the English word - like a passage.

I think it's different in fashion, because even if I would be an outsider, I would still be in the middle of the whole world of contemporary fashion. But it's interesting to think what outsider fashion could be. Does it mean to be completely disconnected from the regular system or just disconnected style-wise?

I wanted an idea of the future, a new femininity. I wanted you to feel that you wouldn't quite know where these women were coming from and where they were going to.

I would prefer to use the word free. I think the Dior thing is so much freer. There was not so much free about Jil's way of working.

I'm very attracted to things that I can't define.

I'm shy, but not on a one-to-one basis. Over the years, I have become acclimatised to a bit of publicity.

I'm usually very attracted to things that I can't define. If something's too clear, it's very often not inspiring to me anymore.

I'm very scared sometimes that fashion might attack its own magic by the amount of exposure,

In fashion, general people will look to the piece itself. [Some designers] concentrate on, 'How can I make this seam look special?' or 'What am I going to do with that button so it looks interesting?' I am not interested in that. At the moment, I am more interested in the shape and the form. I have a big desire to make clothes without defining them.

It felt wrong for me to stay totally connected to that very strict way of approaching the heritage - what it can be, what it cannot be. That was also the period where I really thought, "No, let's open it up."

It was a challenge for me to see how I could deal with that at Jil, and I had a lot of doubt about it. I wondered if maybe it was just better to do your own thing in the long run, like an artist.

I've always seen myself as a small entity, and it will always stay like that. I'm not changing. But I think the big challenge for me taking on the Dior thing is to see how I can connect that to such a huge institution.

My own show with Sterling Ruby, for example, seems like such a huge disconnection from Dior couture, but then I think, yeah, in both collections there was a very strong focus on the human hand and the actual work of people making garments. So in that sense, they were completely related. But I didn't realize that during the process.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.

Sometimes it's more a matter of collaboration which matters in a collection.

The Dior heritage is so broad. It has a strong presence in the work. So, when people have to define it quickly, it's, like, the Bar jacket and the movement and the luxury and the Belle Ã?poque and so much more.

The fashion world doesn't know the word stop, so you have to make sure there are sublime moments every day.

The future, for me, is romantic, I don't understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don't know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. That I find fascinating.

The psychology for the person who's actually doing it is completely different. I think I probably needed to put that [hired-hand] psychology in my own head to be able to do the job. Otherwise it would just be too scary. People outside make it much bigger than me. I'm not saying in my head, "Oh, my god, what an amazing idea!" It scares me if I would do that.

Unlike fashion, art isn't applied. It doesn't have to serve anybody. It doesn't have to be there for any other reason than to give an impression of what the world is about.

We are very excited to re-launch the collaboration with Fred Perry. We have great appreciation for the heritage of the brand as well as their dynamism in guiding the brand towards the future. Their openness to create synergies between both our brands will bring interesting, creative results.

Well, my own men's collection always felt very free back in the days before Jil. Once you make it this kind of dialogue with other people, with a fashion show and clients and whatever, it becomes something else. Free meets not so free.

When artists connect to a system because they want to make a living, it's their own choice. In fashion, designers don't have that choice. I know everybody mentions Azzedine Alaïa, but he's been going for a long time in the system - showing to people, selling to clients - and I think it's admirable how he's transformed it into his own system in a way, but it's still a system.

When it's only clothes, that is not satisfying enough for me. I don't think I could do this for 10, 20 years if that was all. It also has to be about a psychology or a mentality or a concept.

You do what you do. Or you do what you have to do. I don't know how to explain it better. I think that in the moment, you can't see connections, but sometimes afterwards you do.