Drexler Quotes & Sayings

I grew up in the Bronx. I used to remember going to all these fancy stores in Manhattan to run errands or whatever, and I felt intimidated, like they did not talk to me because I was from the Bronx. I never want anyone to be intimidated by fashion. Fashion is fun or, at least, should be. — Mickey Drexler

It's a lot easier to see, at least in some cases, what the long-term limits of the possible will be, because they depend on natural law. But it's much harder to see just what path we will follow in heading toward those limits. — K. Eric Drexler

After realizing that we would eventually be able to build molecular machines that could arrange atoms to form virtually any pattern that we wanted, I saw that an awful lot of consequences followed from that. — K. Eric Drexler

I couldn't stand not controlling my own product from how it's manufactured to how it's sold. — Mickey Drexler

When you say something, and a thousand people are hearing it, you hope you leave an impression. — Mickey Drexler

I would like Madewell jeans to be the Levi's of its generation. — Mickey Drexler

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In — Madeline Drexler

In a business, you have a vision, and you follow the vision. You have to execute. And then you have to learn how to run a good business. And I think if you look at the characteristics of any successful fashion business, it's all about that. — Mickey Drexler

But this Ruth Mummert...he felt things for her he had never felt for Salome. Was that love, also? If it were, it was like a fire that warmed him and threatened to burn him all at once. — Jan Drexler

Steve Jobs, if he had lived, was gonna design an iCar. I think cars have an extraordinary opportunity for cool design. — Mickey Drexler

If you don't get trained for your SATs in America today, you are at a disadvantage. Training is expensive and a lot of kids don't get trained, perhaps. So I also identify with the kid or the person who has grown up in environments like I've grown up in. — Millard Drexler

First, as I've always said, it all starts with product, which means having the right assortment, styles, and fits. Second is price, where we strive to offer the best quality, style, and design at a fair value. This is critically important, given the highly promotional environment we are operating in. And third, traffic. — Mickey Drexler

Data is very important, but you have to be good at reading the data in an emotional way. If you look at a selling report, there's an emotional trend to what's selling. — Mickey Drexler

I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things. — K. Eric Drexler

Even then his thoughts did not turn to prayer but to Abbie and to what she would think about his lack of prayerfulness and that surely she would have immediately broken out in prayer. "Doesn't matter now," he whispered and felt that he could not cry out to God.
~William Drexler the Third — Gwenn Wright

If you think you know the consumer better than anyone, then you're in real trouble. So we take a close watch. You spend time in stores. — Mickey Drexler

While 2015 was challenging, we implemented many strategic and operational initiatives to improve our business and better position J.Crew for the future. — Mickey Drexler

Nature draws no line between living and nonliving. — K. Eric Drexler

I, Larry Vail, do hereby confess
To murdering Merry in her little dress.
To strangling and raping and making a mess.
To all of these charges the answer is yes. — Rosalyn Drexler

All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father's home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out
behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in. — Gwenn Wright

We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out. — Gwenn Wright

You have to build a team, but someone's got to lead, and someone's got to be unpopular at times. — Mickey Drexler

Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there. — K. Eric Drexler

Celebrities have nothing to do with style. — Mickey Drexler

I always wanted to have my own company. It was a psychological issue. — Mickey Drexler

My greatest concern is that the emergence of this technology without the appropriate public attention and international controls could lead to an unstable arms race. — K. Eric Drexler

I like someone who's focused and can tell me what they've done well and not well and who's very open, honest, and self-aware. — Mickey Drexler

I never wanted to compete on price in my history because on price, you don't always win. — Mickey Drexler

What is fashion? I don't know. — Mickey Drexler

It takes a long time to get a reputation for quality. There are people in our industry, they're basically copiers. Look at the cars on the streets. They all look alike. But if you put quality into a product, then have it validated, you have huge credibility. — Mickey Drexler

When I was young in the business, I felt anything I wanted to buy personally and professionally was always too expensive. — Mickey Drexler

Growing up, I always wanted a bedroom of my own. — Mickey Drexler

If you get a pant that fits the woman, as all women know, you get a loyal customer for life. — Mickey Drexler

My personal opinion about the world is that it's homogenized. — Mickey Drexler

I didn't like the name 'personal shopper.' That makes it sound like too much of a commodity and not personal enough. — Mickey Drexler

I've yet to see a correlation in my industry between great social media and great numbers. — Mickey Drexler

There are too many retailers. There are too many brands. There are too many designers. There are too many discount stores, and the predator online companies are selling discount like crazy. — Mickey Drexler

The other advantage is that in conventional manufacturing processes, it takes a long time for a factory to produce an amount of product equal to its own weight. With molecular machines, the time required would be something more like a minute. — K. Eric Drexler

Christopher Columbus discovered America in a blue-and-white sailor shirt, and since then, men have been wearing blue and white shirts. — Mickey Drexler

Any powerful technology can be abused. — K. Eric Drexler

I'm looking forward to partnering with TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners. This transaction is a clear endorsement of J. Crew and the hard work and dedication of all of our associates. — Mickey Drexler

I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else. — K. Eric Drexler

I think I was the youngest, fastest-promoted buyer in the history of Bloomingdale's. — Mickey Drexler

In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools. — K. Eric Drexler

On the molecular scale, you find it's reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds. — K. Eric Drexler

The person is a resume, not what's on a piece of paper. Whoever gives advice about resumes in college should be dismissed. Titles don't matter. GPAs don't matter, nor does what school you go to. — Mickey Drexler

The British invented the classic look. Men's apparel was created in London, the great English style. You have to respect this country's suits, shirts, shoes, luggage. — Mickey Drexler

I don't buy art. I'd rather buy a beautiful location or a beautiful site than buy art. A beautiful home is like owning a beautiful painting, except you can live in it. — Millard Drexler

These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady's things - hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell. — Gwenn Wright

If you take all the factories in the world today, they could make all the parts necessary to build more factories like themselves. So, in a sense, we have a self-replicating industrial system today, but it would take a tremendous effort to copy what we already have. — K. Eric Drexler

You can't run a business without taking risks. — Millard Drexler

Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies. — K. Eric Drexler

Fashion is guaranteed to never always be right. — Mickey Drexler

I'm looking for best practices constantly. Apple has beautiful design, beautiful product, incredibly functional. But mostly it's about picking product, getting behind it, marketing it and introducing it to a customer. What they've done just inspires me. — Millard Drexler

Creativity runs on automatic, no matter what's happening in other parts of my life. I can't help myself. It's been in me, and it evolves in me over the years. It's a condition in me. — Millard Drexler

I define leadership as: Emotionally, you own your business. You own it with passion. And you either have or you don't have an economic investment. But when you have all three of those, you are the boss from Day One, and you care every single day more than anyone. — Mickey Drexler

Hong Kong has always been a dynamic and exciting and high-energy city, and it has that New York thing going on, and people here care about how they look. — Mickey Drexler

When I started at Bloomingdale's as a buyer, Alexander's was a discounter across the street, and every time Alexander's had something that we had at Bloomingdale's, we'd have to meet price. I didn't really want to be in a business where I had no control over my inventory, the value of my inventory. — Mickey Drexler

It is our job as always to focus on what we can control in the business. — Mickey Drexler

You know what ends up on the markdown racks? All the weird colors. Guys don't wear orange or citron. — Mickey Drexler

Gap was essentially the American wardrobe that was well-priced, and it was attractive, and it was happy, and it had great color, and it has jeans, and I think we did the same with Old Navy. And I think we do the same with J.Crew at a much higher level, Madewell at another level. — Mickey Drexler

Jobs described Mike Markkula's maxim that a good company must "impute"- it must convey its values and importance in everything it does, from packaging to marketing. Johnson loved it. It definitely applied to a company's stores. " The store will become the most powerful physical expression of the brand," he predicted. He said that when he was young he had gone to the wood-paneled, art-filled mansion-like store that Ralph Lauren had created at Seventy-second and Madison in Manhattan. " Whenever I buy a polo shirt, I think of that mansion, which was a physical expression of Ralph's ideals," Johnson said. " Mickey Drexler did that with the Gap. You couldn't think of a Gap product without thinking of the Great Gap store with the clean space and wood floors and white walls and folded merchandise. — Walter Isaacson

Everything has a trend to it; I don't care if it's appliances or engines. I always ask, 'What has a company done in the past five years that somebody's noticed?' — Mickey Drexler

Ann Taylor - great name, great real estate, shitty business. Gap -great name, great real estate, declining business. J.Crew - Hellooo? Great name, better fashion image than the Gap. — Millard Drexler

The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler. — K. Eric Drexler

Service drives a lot of my decisions. — Mickey Drexler

Protein engineering is a technology of molecular machines - of molecular machines that are part of replicators - and so it comes from an area that already raises some of the issues that nanotechnology will raise. — K. Eric Drexler

Every single day, I'm curious about everything. Curiosity is finding answers to things. — Mickey Drexler

I'm an agent of change all day long, and I want to meet other people like that. — Millard Drexler

I like to prove things wrong. — Millard Drexler

An international race in the relevant technologies is getting under way at this point, not necessarily with an understanding of where that race leads in the long run, but strongly motivated by the short-term payoffs. — K. Eric Drexler

But while doing that I'd been following a variety of fields in science and technology, including the work in molecular biology, genetic engineering, and so forth. — K. Eric Drexler

I find, in merchandising and design and creative, a business school degree isn't particularly helpful. — Mickey Drexler

I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers. — Millard Drexler

My office has no walls. You can't be removed from your team to be successful. You have to be respectful of others. — Mickey Drexler

I love to work. I have a passion for what I do. — Millard Drexler

I loved the fact that if you put goods on the floor, you could watch them sell. — Mickey Drexler

The play takes place on a ramp, hanging from a ramp, below a ramp, and to the sides of a ramp. — Rosalyn Drexler

You banter, and you talk, and you get a sense of the speed of thinking and flexibility ... It's not terribly scientific, but I interview a dozen or two dozen people a week, and I get a certain vibe reasonably fast. — Mickey Drexler

I'm always looking over my shoulder, needing to stay ahead of the game. — Millard Drexler

You can't separate the clothes from the stores, from the environment. — Mickey Drexler

But if we can manage it so people don't have things forced on them that they don't want, I think there's every reason to believe things can settle out in a situation that is recognizably better than the one we're stuck in today. — K. Eric Drexler

Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology ... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole. — K. Eric Drexler

My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development. — K. Eric Drexler

Customers don't just want to shop: they want to feel that the brand understands them. — Mickey Drexler

Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler and I used to argue for hours about who the best athletes are. I thought football players were better overall. — Warren Moon

If you don't care about the lapel or the buttons or the fit, then you are doing a disservice to the consumer. We're all inside the tunnel, speaking the language of business, but we need to speak the language of customers. — Mickey Drexler

I hire a lot of waiters, waitresses. Someone who's successful has a background that's not predictable. — Mickey Drexler

America's companies are built to destroy creativity. — Millard Drexler

The pace of innovation continues to increase, and the Information Revolution holds a hint of what may lie ahead. Taken together, the parallels between APM-based production and digital information systems suggest that change in an APM era could be swift indeed - not stretched out over millennia, like the spread of agriculture, nor over centuries, like the rise of industry, nor even over decades, like the spread of the Internet's physical infrastructure. The prospect this time is a revolution without a manufacturing bottleneck, with production methods akin to sharing a video file. In other words, APM holds the potential for a physical revolution that, if unconstrained, could unfold at the speed of new digital media. — K. Eric Drexler

When someone you love dies, he becomes your enemy; he fights you tooth and nail from a hidden position; he successfully raids what small provisions you have gathered to keep yourself going. — Rosalyn Drexler

Most obstacles are inspiration. — Millard Drexler

The No. 1 thing is the product. The goods have to be good, but I care about how you feel about it. — Mickey Drexler

Today we have big, crude instruments guided by intelligent surgeons, and we have little, stupid molecules of drugs that get dumped into the body, diffuse around and interfere with things as best they can. At present, medicine is unable to heal anything. — K. Eric Drexler

If you get someone right out of college - and I meet a lot of them - you're not going to get a lot of experience at all, so you have to feel the ambition and desire, which is based on a lot of factors. — Mickey Drexler

People put 'study abroad' on their resume. I actually like when they don't study abroad because that means they aren't entitled. — Millard Drexler

We have secured names and trademarks with either loose ideas or intentions, or with our imaginations. Sometimes things come of it, or they don't. — Mickey Drexler

I think it's in my mind, and it's driven me my entire life, and it is to offer customers tasteful clothes at good value, meaning it lets the world - or more of the world - afford to dress well. — Mickey Drexler

I call them associates; I don't like the word 'employee.' — Mickey Drexler

What matters is hard work, and emotional intelligence. — Millard Drexler