excerpts from Professor Karl’s handwritten manifesto:

• “Fashion as history is beyond fashion, and it is not only limited to clothes.”

• “Fashion is about the harmony between utility and beauty. But the sense of beauty in fashion changes quickly — nearly as quickly as fashion itself. Some people tell us that utility is itself the essence of beauty. That may be OK for sportswear (such an important part of fashion today and not always the best). I think there has to be another dimension to it, and Harold is our visionaire in that area. You don’t design a dress only because it’s easy to wear. It should be — but that reason alone could make fashion a bore.

• “A new fashion can appear having the same origins in inspiration and admiration in the past of fashion. The danger is for us designers to be too exposed to the seduction of the past.”

• “The great designers of the past were certainly not humble people, but they worked in the days before media buzz. What helps most of us a lot in a way, promotion (and self-promotion), did not exist before. It’s also something that makes our approach to fashion different (too different?). But what will survive from all that?”

• “It is difficult to work out your own vision of fashion without being haunted by the beauty of the work of the people before us — even if they were also not immune to all kind of influences and inspirations to achieve a strong vision and a unique style.”

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