On Kanye West
Interviewer: What do you think about Kanye talking about he can't break into the fashion world and they are not accepting him?

First of all, I love Kanye West. I've had the good pleasure of knowing him, I knew his mother - rest in peace - when he was coming up and she was an amazing human being. It is true when he talks about wanting to do this for the last decade, cause I've had those conversations, I think everybody in the industry has had an conversation with Ye on trying to break in.

But he is just a bowl of contradiction, you know? I love him but that's kinda what's human about him, because you see the same frustration that dogs all of us for like waiting for the gate-keeper to let them in. But the thing about Kanye that I don't understand is, why the hell do he need those gate-keepers? Kanye, you don't need those gate-keepers. You have built so much power and love, maybe 50 hate you and 50 hate you but that 50% is big. You don't need Anna Wintour, you don't need Paris, you don't need them.

And don't begrudge T-shirts as a starting point. That's a great part of our journey being able to come from the street, from the garage painting T-shirts till being able to make suits and things I've made in my career. I'm crazy lucky like who the hell am I. I'm the kid who was selling T-shirts in my garage. So when I see Kanye get so frustrated and be like only if, that, then-scenario. You don't need their co-sign!

There is a major to shift peoples perspective and intellectual understanding of what luxury is. Luxury says who? Luxury says who? Because they codified what luxury means and you walk in these churches of luxury. Like I don't get it, let's be intellectually honest, Ralph Lauren greatest of all time in terms of American designer but how many times have you walked into Ralph Lauren mansion and there's more help there than customers, and then you walk into like the [?] and there's tables of Ralph Lauren polo shirts folded. Alright, let's be intellectually real about this, ok?

So the point is don't begrudge the products that you make they have to be defined by a certain price-point threshold. Real people love you Kanye. I think he is going through an honest place, we don't know how it's like to be in his shoes. Like he said, he feels like an caged animal. His world and our world is apples and oranges. So he just wants to get it out and I think maybe because he feels like he has all those controls, it's all right there on the keyboard when it comes to music and he knows it's more distributed the production of fashion and he's afraid, let's be honest, he is afraid to try on his own and potentially screw up. And he's tried it and he's been ridiculed and it's not fair. Like yo Kanye go back into the pool, go back into the pool don't wait for someone else to splash the water out for you, splash it yourself.

Interviewer: That's what I think hurts us as fans because we grew up fans of Kanye West the rebel who did things his own way, but now this guy is like begging for people to help him and be accepted, it's like he's locking himself into the cage.

I talk about this in the book - gatekeepers. We give so much power to them, when you should be focusing about the goalkeeper. The people that's actually gonna transact. We're backwards from your customer. Do you know how many people I've met of my peers that built their entire business to become media darlings, to be loved by the gatekeepers and then their business sucks.

And stop working on the future, that's the other problem his dogged by which we're dogged by. We close our eyes, we visualize this place we wanna go and it's like boom right in front of us but when you open your eyes you can't see it. The course to actually get there is not like your exceptions, there's no straight lines in nature. Why are you trying to design your exceptions that way? Man made straight lines just to organize stuff, to get us in line so we could go work on farms and work in factories. There's not one vein in your body that's straight. So why are you trying to imagine your future on a straight line? And why are you trying to imagine your future on some George Jetson flying car stuff? How about 20 minutes from now?