Jason Wu Quotations

When I moved to America, I knew I wanted to be a designer. I never imagined one of my dresses would end up in the Smithsonian.

My favorite thing about Taiwan is the food.

I would buy Barbies and take them apart and then remake their looks. I used them for hairstyling. It was a whole process. I had a lot of dolls - like 150.

I have been wanting to do beauty for years and to pair with an international beauty company. It will solidify the image of Jason Wu as a world. All my shows have a distinctive hair and makeup look. It feels so natural for me; the woman who wears my clothes would have my makeup as part of her beauty regime.

I don't feel comfortable talking about the specifics of how it all comes together, but the truth is, I don't ever know when Michelle Obama is going to wear my clothes! She, like everyone else, picks her outfits and wears them when she wants - sometimes two or three times. It's not ever calculated.

I don't believe that you have to dress in a masculine way to seem powerful. I think that the way a woman dresses doesn't have to be so aggressive. Being feminine is a powerful feature in itself. Power is in a person's demeanor.

I'm an American designer. It's important to riff on that. I remember, when my mom and I first came to the States, she was so shocked that everyone was so dressed down in sandals and shorts. It's not quite like that in Asia. To give that a superluxurious makeover? For me to make street wear? It's sort of chic to do it.

I make very proper clothes. But I was never that person. For a long time, I thought that was the image I needed to have for my brand. And I thought that's the person that I needed to be. Because it gave me a distinct image that no one can deny.

I happen to like selling clothes as much as creating them. It isn't relevant unless it sells.

My mom is a really good cook. We used to make dumplings together.

My Chinese zodiac is a dog. But I'm an exception because of how much I love cats.

There is always going to be that luxury customer out there. I have clients who buy $10,000 dresses and clients who buy $60 dresses. It's not so much about the money. Design is a mentality.

Brizo has been my single biggest sponsor since I began as a designer. Brizo wanted to be involved in many different areas of design - they had already worked with several architects, and fashion was an area they were interested in moving into.

There's something to be said about a girl who knows what she wants. One of my favorite girls to dress is Diane Kruger. It's always so easy with her. I know her body and what works. When it's right, it's not a lot of effort.

I've been known to create clothes that are very formfitting and feminine.

The Taiwanese are big on tea. I think it's nice to slow down a bit. It's very much a custom.

I've always loved the rustic, slightly worn style of Canvas and that element of an artisanal hand. It's so inherently chic.

It's quite a pure relationship, designer and muse. I think a beautiful dress on the wrong woman could mean nothing. It has to be the right woman and the right clothes. That's why you need that personal touch.

Designers have always shown outlandish and exuberant clothes, but that hasn't always translated to the streets.

That's the fun thing about fashion: it changes. One day, we're into short, the next we're into full length for day, or half short and long.

A perfectly fitted sheath dress that can take you from day to night is something that every woman should have in her closet. You can't go wrong with black, but a little bit of color is nice. I love a lot of color, personally. You can accessorize a sheath dress. Look at how Michelle Obama accessorizes clothes to make them her own.

I made a rule not to be on reality shows.

I never thought of myself as being limited to fashion. I'm a designer, and if you have a vision, you can apply that to anything.

I love a little bit of glamour and I love tall girls.

I think a beautiful dress on the wrong woman could mean nothing. It has to be the right woman and the right clothes. That's why you need that personal touch. I mean, that's why I went into this business to begin with.

I realized the importance of archiving. So I save key pieces from my collections, as well as any red-carpet things that become iconic. I always ask for that stuff back. I'm like, "It's going in my archives."

I woke up one day and I was like, "I don't have anything to save for myself for the future." That's when I started archiving things. I take four or five things that are really key to each collection, and I restore them or, in some cases, remake parts of them, and archive them.

You're always in the mode of creating the next season. It's so fast, and in two months, the collection you just did is already old, and it's always next, next, next.

In American culture you leave home at 18. In the Asian culture, your parents don't really want you to leave home. So my parents just thought I was going to be one of those kids. I was like, "I'm never going to make a living at whatever I do." I just liked pretty things.

I didn't understand anything about fashion until I moved to Canada when I was 9. That's when I learned English and was exposed to fashion magazines.

I had a hard time in middle school. I was never really quite me until I was 16 or 17, and things like bullying didn't matter anymore.

It's nice to be able to be whoever you want to be. I moved to New York for that reason. I think I am a very good example of how you really can do whatever you want to do without having any kind of prerequisite experience of any of kind of connection. None of my family members came from this world.

I was very preppy in my childhood. I also went through an anti-clothing moment where I just wanted to wear sweats because I'd just moved to Canada. My mom was always trying to get me into proper clothes, but I never wanted to wear them, and now that's all I wear.

This is the hardest thing I've ever done, being in fashion business, because that's what it is at the end of the day, a business, and you have to make sure it works.

I think it's really important to make things your own in your voice. I started when I was 23, and in the beginning of my career, there was this expectation of a young designer being edgier, cooler, more downtown. But I was never that person.

I guess I accidentally became a part of history. Honestly, when you're young and you're a designer, you have a goal, but that is not the kind of goal that you even think it's possible to achieve.

In designing for the first lady, I tried to sort of be in her shoes, but I didn't really look at her as an important political figure. I looked at her as a woman who would like to wear a beautiful dress to an important gala.

Actually, I'm probably 99-and-a-half percent plastic now.

I miss All Stars, by the way. I was just telling people: how am I going to get by until January?

When I was growing up, you sort of did the unthinkable. You did something that has never really been replicated.

when I moved to Canada in '93, I started reading fashion magazines, and that's where I spotted the M.A.C ad that RuPaul were in. That's sort of how I first "met" you - in the red bodysuit. That was so iconic to me.

The way my mom dressed was one of my earliest inspirations, in those '80s suits with shoulder pads and things like that. For years, I ran away from that style. But now, all I want to do is shoulder pads and nipped-in waists and padded hips and peplums and poufed dresses.

My parents loved me, and I think they realized that I was probably not going to have a normal 9-to-5 job. For the longest time, my dad thought that I was just going to be home until I was, like, 35, which, weirdly, is completely normal in Asian families.

The polishedness and the sophistication were what I was interested in. I mean, give me a polka dot, a floral print, a pleated dress, a big fur coat, that was always my language, and it wasn't very "in" when I was starting out, so I had a difficult time in the beginning.

For a while, I just thought that I wanted to be an illustrator because that's all I wanted to do. I also did some sculpting. It was always very artsy and very feminine, everything that I did.

My mom used to take me to antique shows, which I hated because everything was so dusty and old and there were all these weird ladies selling their antiques. We call them "eclectic" now. But it was really amazing that I was exposed to that when I was younger. Now that I have my own taste, I understand it more.

I would love to take an old space and restore it to exactly the way I want it. Like an old factory, just something with great bones and lots of character. I'd take an old house and flip it into something very modern inside, or the other way around.

I don't collect things per se, but I do pick up things as I go. Like, in my studio I have an old sewing machine from Germany that my dad gave me, and then something else that I got from a friend in India, and a piece of flooring from one of my shows.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't know anything about politics. Every time I go to Washington, I feel like I'm in Legally Blonde.

I love the idea of working with women because I always feel like a man designing womenswear needs women around him to really have a sense of what they're doing.

The idea of transformation is super-important to me. You can see it in the way I approach things. I have never been a clean-faced, freshly scrubbed hair person. I'm the New York designer who doesn't do that. I think about the hair and makeup almost as much as I think about the clothes because it all has to work.

As a designer you have to just do whatever you want to do. The second I came to terms with that, it transformed my work.

The worst thing is to be a designer and create work that isn't honest. You have to be honest. Otherwise, you'll always be a reaction to what other people do and you'll always be one step behind.

What I was interested in wasn't popular and young, but I never really deviated from doing it. I just decided that I was going to go full force into exactly what I wanted. I think there's a certain comfort that comes with age and experience, and when I got that, I think my work got better.

I need to feel like I'm part of something. I need to feel part of the world when I go to sleep.

I always have the TV on. When there's no TV, I play music. I like having noise. I think that's why New York is so suitable for me, because it's never really fully quiet.

My parents are very comfortable with the way that I am, and I think they've always been. Without that, I don't think that I would have ever have been able to grow into the person that I am today. I never felt like I was hiding anything from them.

When I was 12 or 13 I already knew that I was gay. And then my interests were not conventional. So I was very different, in every sense of the word. And in an all-boys school, that's tough.

My cats are really sassy and sophisticated, but most importantly, they are picky.

I love the romance of Paris. I love Angelina [tearoom and pastry shop]. I always get a Mont-blanc [pastry] there.

I love old architecture. I love collecting furniture, mixing really earthy things with the very polished. I don't come from an interiors background, so I'm not an expert. I just enjoy going to antiques shows and finding interesting things.

I don't know if I would want to come back as anything but me. I feel really satisfied. I don't really want to be anyone else. I just feel like I've gotten everything I signed up for as me. I'm happy as me.

I hope I am the antithesis of disposable fashion.

Being feminine in the way you dress doesn't have to compromise who you are as a woman or your career.

Designers have always shown outlandish and exuberant clothes, but that hasnt always translated to the streets.

I think what I create is serious fashion, but I don't want to keep my focus on that. You have to look at a lot of different things. I mean, people are always surprised when they find out that my favorite show is RuPaul's Drag Race.

I am an Asian designer. I was born in Taiwan. That is who I am. But I am a designer, like any designer of any race. Growing up in the '80s in Taiwan, the arts were not considered a career.

I think clothing is transformative. When you put something really beautiful on, you feel something. In so many ways, were always playing a form of dress-up - its just a grown-up, much chicer version of it. Its nice to be able to be whoever you want to be.

I hope being gay isn't the most interesting thing about me.

My inspirations come from everywhere. It's important to look at everything and anything.

We all want to be a little glamorous, a little playful and a little mischievous at times.

I worked 10 years as a toy designer before I started my career as a fashion designer. It's something I just fell into and really liked.

Buy things you truly love, things that are special, but not a lot of them. It's about value, not quantity.

I came from product design originally - I had been designing dolls for a toy company since I was 16 - so I'm used to working with plastic and different things. I had an innate interest in objects.

I dress some of the most successful women in the world, and meeting these women rubs off on you. A few years ago, the woman was someone I imagined in my head. Now they're real. It's important my work evolve along with me and that I show more facets of myself.

I call white the most powerful non-color; it's clean, optimistic, powerful.

A lot of my peers don't think about collaborating the way I do. My approach is to imagine my world. The Jason Wu woman isn't just floating around in a beautiful dress. I like to know where she's going, what she likes. I'm not just in the fashion business. I'm in the lifestyle business.

A lot happened in Vancouver. It was my first Western experience. I learned English, which is my second language. I became very acquainted with Western culture. I had my first sewing machine when I was 9. I trained in fashion illustration when I was in school.