Suzy Menkes

With a global society hungry for luxury, distribution and supply chains are now as important for executives as a hands-on feel for products.

I find some collections to be more vibrant than others, but the designers who last are those who are able to continue to be creative within the mold they have cast, usually right at the beginning of their careers.

I was trained as journalist never to use the word 'I,' never to put my own opinion there. In fact, if you had a dollar or a euro for every time I use the word 'I,' you would be a poor person. But this is not true in general. I like the idea of being able to stand away and make a judgement.

Change is good; it's what fashion is all about.

Clothes, as much as music, have an eerie echo of time and place.

Shoes? I have loved them all: '60s pumps; white Courreges ankle boots; platform soles from the first time around, in the '70s; more boots - ankle, calf, and knee-high; 1980s sneakers; pin heels and wedges; Mary Janes and stilettos.

As a journalist, I cannot help imagining with excitement a new era with a face-off between Hedi Slimane at YSL and Raf Simons at Dior - a magnificent battle of style and wills to echo the Armani/Versace, Gucci/Prada or even Chanel/Schiaparelli face-offs of earlier years. But I remind myself that this is not a game of chess.

If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion? The answer goes far beyond the collections and relates to the speed of fast fashion. There is no longer a time gap between when a small segment of fashion-conscious people pick up a trend and when it is all over the sidewalks.

The natural end of an era, as designers whose houses bear their names grow old and pass away, combined with the arrival of digital cameras and Internet exposure, has created a perfect storm.

Who needs to graduate from Central Saint Martins in London or New York's Fashion Institute of Technology when a homemade outfit can go viral on YouTube with millions of hits?

In the mid-1990s, when I stopped having to run from the shows to the film developing lab and first saw digital images, I blessed technology and was convinced that my working life was changing for the better.

Minimalism? It is something I appreciate as an art form but leave to others - unless you count a collection of warhorse-workwear Yves Saint Laurent trouser suits. Maybe my penchant for hippie-deluxe eccentricity came from an escapist dream of a different world. It was tough being a working mom in the 1970s.