We wanted to step off our island and add the color of the third world. We got gold cigarette paper and stuck it around our teeth. We really did look like pirates and dressed to look the part.

I was the first person to have a punk rock hairstyle.

But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I've been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make - and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn't quite work.

But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.

It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

I don't have faith in young people any more. I don't waste time trying to communicate with them.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don't understand.

All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for rubbish.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

Every time I have to look up a word in the dictionary, I'm delighted.

If you hear Anarchy in the UK today your hair stands on end. It gives you the shivers.

The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas.

Don't just eat McDonald's, get something a bit better. Eat a salad. That's what fashion is. It's something that is a bit better.

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don't care attitude about clothes. You don't care, you just do it and it looks great.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn't care about suffering. I always did.

I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I never look at fashion magazines. I find them incredibly boring.

More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who's spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

My biggest criticism is how can people be so easily satisfied? Even people with talent.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don't see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

I don't follow politics much.

Prince Charles is definitely my hero; he uses his position to do only good in this world.

I was a punk before it got its name. I had that hairstyle and purple lipstick.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline... because you need to be alone to find out anything.

I've always felt heroic about my life... As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn't think that was the case at all. My parents didn't treat me as a girl.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don't notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.

There's nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

The French have got taste.

I'm not sure what I think about current fashion, though. A few years ago, I would have said it's really, really bad and you hardly ever see anybody looking good. There must be some very good designers in the world.

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

What I'm always trying to say to the consumer is: buy less, choose well, make it last.

There is so much that people take for granted.

It's a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

I don't feel comfortable defending my clothes. But if you've got the money to afford them, then buy something from me. Just don't buy too much.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that's rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

I think it is a good thing to buy less and choose well - it's good for the environment and to be fair it's also good for me because my clothes are quite expensive.

When I was a little girl you used to learn to sew all the holes in things, darning socks, but nobody mends things anymore.

I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.

In the morning, I practice 15 minutes of yoga.

My beauty secret is absolutely no sun.