I feel happy when I work. I don't care if tomorrow I will be fired.
— Alessandro Michele
Gender and sex are about rules which we have invented, but we are animals; we belong to nature.
With a brand like Gucci, you have to give something that belongs to beautiful Italian culture in terms of craftsmanship and materials.
I have a lot of suits, but I'm not the kind of person who looks good in a suit. Suits are too serious for me. They are better if you can break the rules, so that's why I always try to add something crazy to them.
When I started to work at Gucci, I tried literally to destroy everything.
I always lose every single pencil I ever had. So I can draw with everything. With pencil, with pen.
I don't have a problem to say I am a good merchandiser, because I love objects.
My father was a shaman. He told me that time doesn't exist. He didn't use a clock. He didn't know when my birthday was.
I think that fashion, for a long time, has been in a prison. Without freedom. I think that without freedom, with rules, it's impossible to create a new story.
I think that there is not really a difference between a 'Peanuts' and a beautiful Renaissance painting. There is something very romantic in the 'Peanuts' - it's at the same level of a novel or a Jane Austen story or a beautiful embroidered rose fabric. It is a piece of romanticism.
There is something special about the beauty in the unclear, the ambiguity, the in-between that you can't totally recognise.
The more you are different, the more interesting. The more you are not like me, the more I want to get to know more about you.
Beauty has no boundaries, no rules, no colors. Beauty is like a religion. You can include everything inside it.
The way you dress is really the way you feel, the way you live, what you read, your choices. That's what I want to put into Gucci.
For me, reworking the past over and over again is a way not to trivialise the garments and not to obsess over hem lengths. What I am interested in, as a matter of fact, is telling a story and, if someone sees fragments of other stories in it, be my guest. I don't have to justify myself. What is urgent for me is what I want to say.
For me, my way to think about everything in fashion is a very baroque way.
Some women are forced by men to look a certain way to be accepted by the general public, and I find that terrible.
I like it when I see people dressed on the street, and it looks like Gucci, but it's not. It means you are doing something right.
I never want to go out wearing something sad.
I'm not scared of beauty, but if you fall in love with a beautiful man, it's not easy. It's easier to be in love with an ugly man. Beauty has a kind of power.
For me, fashion is something that makes you feel alive, that expresses something of you: if you are sad, if you are happy.
I understand that people want to see just the posh side of fashion, but fashion is a lot of work.
My way to think about creation is like the end of the world. I love confusion. So music and image, picture, fabrics, people, person, talk: That's my way to work. And food. And perfumes. I love perfumes. And flowers and plants, and dresses and vintage.
I have something inside of me that every day tells me that nature and beauty is the soul, the meaning, of our life. And I also love Hollywood and cinema.
Sometimes when people talk about me in fashion, I feel - I don't want to say uncomfortable, but I still don't believe that I'm in 'fashion.'
My life - it's a piece of work. And my work is a piece of life.
Fashion is the most beautiful illusion you can have.
My mum was obsessed with dress... so, in my house, there was always the obsession about aesthetics. She was obsessed with the idea that a beautiful movie is the one where you're so involved you won't go to the toilet during it, or you'll fall asleep with your make-up on after.
I'm very curious. I feel more comfortable surrounded by people not like me.
I love couture, but the other side of me loves the street, and I think the mix of these two can create something new.
I think we need to dream.
I am brazen. For me, creating means regurgitating, distorting, and assembling everything that has passed through me and continues to do so.
I love just a stage.
I really don't consider Kim Kardashian sexy. She's like one of those primordial sculptures of fertility, like the Venus of Willendorf.
I don't feel the pressure of the market - otherwise, I wouldn't be able to work.
Vintage is my vocabulary... like the notes of a musician.
All of us, we are not one thing: we're always between two worlds, and the idea of not being sure is very appealing to me.
I never wanted to be a creative director.
I am a collector of jewels, old jewels.
I spend a lot of time in Paris, in Milan, and in New York, and Rome is a little bit different. There is something in Rome, incredible, like in a Fellini movie. Everybody's screaming and laughing very loud. It's something that can give me more energy in terms of freedom.
I am obsessed with fashion, like my mother, and I am obsessed with art, like my father.
For me, nothing is old. I don't know why. If a dress is beautiful, and it's very personal, I think it can live forever.
I had two different kind of parents. My mother was obsessive with movie stars and cinema and Hollywood because she worked in movies. And my father was obsessed with beauty everywhere - in art, in nature, animals.
The idea of my fashion shows is that you can't understand where you are; it's something surreal.
There is something in Shanghai that is very exciting and alive - the idea of a city with two different souls, one from today and another from a long time ago, is amazing.
To be against something or someone, it's a dangerous thing.
My apartment is full of antique pieces, but I put everything together like a modern installation.
I grew up with a father who didn't wear a watch, and this has permanently marked my relationship with time.
Clothes are endless possibilities for meaning because with every change or different association, you are a different person.
I have the soul of a director.
