Has the current recession affected your approach to fashion? I actually did a show a year ago—my spring show—that was all about what’s going on right now. It was Marie Antoinette meets Madonna, and it was really about that whole energy in the air. And then the stock market crashed the day before my show, and it was like, “Hi! I read the papers, I watch CNN, I’m out in life, I hear people, I can sense what’s going on.” At that point in time gas was a huge issue, so I called the show “Let Them Eat Gas,” because everyone I knew was bitching about gas prices. It didn’t matter how wealthy or affluent these people were, and it was all different ranks of people, and they were all complaining. To me, it was like we were heading toward the French Revolution, but in a global state, and that was where the whole sense went for that.

There’s certainly that sense of energy right now. Do you feel that there’s a sort of renaissance on the horizon? I think this is a great time for creative people! That is for sure! So maybe we can call that part of the renaissance. You see it with the fact that Lady Gaga has had such huge success. And she’s not the run-of-the-mill pop star. There’s a massive amount of people react-ing to this person, and she’s been wearing kryptonite and such—it’s nothing like Britney Spears was. That right there shows me that it’s true: people are wanting to be more unique, something more unusual.

If I talk about myself, the winged shoes I did for Adidas sold out in two days in the middle of a recession in January when people aren’t supposed to buy anything. So I was like, Okay, here are these people who think wings on your shoes are ridiculous. They wouldn’t have imagined that it could resonate, but because it was something that people hadn’t seen before, they wanted it. There was a desire for something new. I feel that people want more than they say they can handle—and more of it. People are al-ways trying to talk down, dumb things down for the mass culture, and my point is don’t dumb it down.

Do you think people will start to expend more effort on reinventing themselves? I don’t know. That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know what the answer is. The thing is no matter what it is that you do, you have to put time into it. Beethoven played and played and played and played. Yes, he might have naturally had some abilities as a child, but it was all that practice that made him so amazing.

That ethic of hard work seems to be lacking these days. With a lot of people, there’s a false sense of entitlement. I agree! I agree about the entitlement. A lot of people don’t want to work or try to spend time developing something. Right now there are a lot of spoiled little bitches that need a good whoppin’.

Indeed! Tell me, then, what does the Jeremy Scott future look like? Hopefully twice as exciting and just as fun. I want to keep pushing things further and hopefully trade ideas with pop culture, and keep my finger firmly pressed on the fast-forward button.