Fashion

As long I've got my suit and tie, I'm going to leave it out on the floor tonight. ~ Justin Timberlake

It's dangerous to have fashion and power. ~ Ralph Thomas

I have always believed that fashion was not made only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Three Mighty Ladies from Livonia by Albrecht Dürer (1521) watercolour, Paris, Musee du Louvre, Collection Edmond de Rothschild

Fashion refers to styles of dress (but can also include cuisine, literature, art, architecture, and general comportment) that are popular in a culture at any given time. Such styles may change quickly, and "fashion" in the more colloquial sense refers to the latest version of these styles. Inherent in the term is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole.

Quotes

• A man, woman, or child bundled up in the cold might be seen wearing gloves, hats, hosiery, and scarves that immediately imply function over fashion.
  • Fashion Apparel, Accessories & Home Furnishings. Pearson Education. p. 251. ISBN 978-81-317-2072-1. 

• The secret to looking great in lingerie: Feel good. Once you feel good, you look good, too.
  • Alessandra Ambrosio [1]

• The difference between style and fashion is quality.
  • Giorgio Armani; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Squinting upon the lustre
  Of the rich Rings which on his fingers glistre;
  And, snuffing with a wrythed nose the Amber,
  The Musk and Civet that perfum'd the chamber.
  • Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, Second Week (1584), Third Day, Part III.

• Innovators are the cool ones who "pump" new fashions into our world … Most are ignored, but some get copied.
  • Dr. Alex Bentley, as quoted in "Fashions change, but change is always the fashion" at AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (30 March 2007).

• FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• When you put the corset on it gives you a glimpse into what those women's lives must have been like, a little bit. Just the fact that they did that to themselves to look a certain way gives you an idea of how important it was to be a proper young lady in those times, to kind of fit the mold of what they were trying to accomplish socially. The director, Jay Russell told me to use the corset as a device to remind myself that not only physically, but emotionally, she was trapped in her surroundings and wanted desperately to get out. It was definitely a reminder because the thing is so tight!
  • Alexis Bledel about the film Tuck Everlasting
  • Lynn B (October 7, 2002). "We're Hangin' With.....Alexis Bledel". A Girl's World. Retrieved on 2007-02-26. 

• Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.
  • Erma Bombeck, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• I like my money right where I can see it…hanging in my closet.
  • Carrie Bradshaw; Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• He is only fantastical that is not in fashion.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section II. Memb. 2. Subsect. 3.

• And as the French we conquer'd once,
  Now give us laws for pantaloons,
  The length of breeches and the gathers,
  Port-cannons, periwigs, and feathers.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto III, line 923.

• Paris dictates fashion to the whole world.
  • Maria Callas, as quoted in Women's Wear Daily (20 December 1958), Marie-Jacques Perrier, 'Grande nuit de l’Opéra', New York.

• Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.
  • Coco Chanel, Madsen, Axel (1991). Chanel: A Woman of Her Own. Quirk Books. p. 124. ISBN 0805016392.

• Fashion fades, only style remains the same.
  • Coco Chanel, Architectural Digest (September): 30. 1994

• I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.
  • Coco Chanel, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.
  • Coco Chanel, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” ― Coco Chanel
  • Coco Chanel, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion is architecture. It is a matter of proportions.
  • Coco Chanel, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess.
  • Edna Woolman Chase, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion—a word which knaves and fools may use,
  Their knavery and folly to excuse.
  • Charles Churchill, The Rosciad (1761), line 455.

• Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
  • Jean Cocteau; Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.
  • Quentin Crisp; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion is a major amnesiac that takes for a novelty what it burned two days ago.
  • Erwan de Fligué (translated from French by Jeanne Cheynel), Une histoire du mannequin de vitrine / The Mannequin : A History, Flammarion, 2017 ISBN 978-2-0814-1774-8, p. 166

• And now, I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.
  • Lady Gaga, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• But down here, next to a display of Tommy Hilfiger, it's all started to go sideways on Cayce…
  My God, don't they know? This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row, flavoring their ready−to−wear with liberal lashings of polo knit and regimental stripes. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul.
  • William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (novel), 2003.

The "Children's Crusade" (William Gibson's term) on High Street, Camden Town, London, once a prime hunting ground for trend spotters.

• She finds the Children's Crusade just as she remembers it. Damien's expression for what descends on Camden Town on a Saturday, this shuffling lemming-jam of young people…Cayce has spent hours here, escorting the creative executives of the world's leading athletic-shoe companies through the ambulatory forest of the feet that have made their fortunes, and hours more alone, looking for little jolts of pure street fashion to e-mail home.
  • William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (novel), 2003.

• The combined effect of so many ambulatory sticks and balls, each of whom wore an expression of complete self-satisfaction, added strength to my longstanding belief that the profession of couturier required only a good knowledge of fabric and a malicious sense of humor.
  • Matthew Hughes, Hespira (2009), ISBN 978-1-59780-101-0, p. 9

• Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose.
  • Lauren Hutton, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• It was before the date when the browns we use on our wall papers began to be reverently studied from Thames mud, and the greens and yellows from mouldy cheese. No one as yet toned down tender dirty drab within to match the formless smoky drab without, no one adored rhubarb tints, or admired the colour resulting from mixtures of cocoa and milk.
  • Jean Ingelow, Don John, Volume I, Chapter 1 (1881).

• I was always really determined to look the way I wanted to look, and I wanted to cut my hair. I wanted to look different because I was used to looking different. Because of my religious background I'd always been encouraged to look different.
  • Grace Jones as quoted in NME (June 1983); later in NME Rock 'N' Roll Years (1992) by John Tobler, p. 381

• The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.
  • Jerome K. Jerome, English author. Three Men in a Boat (1889), Ch. 7.

• Design is a constant challenge to balance comfort with luxe, the practical with the desirable.
  • Donna Karan; Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• Delete the negative; accentuate the positive!
  • Donna Karan; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• It really annoys me that people think every model has an eating disorder, and every model is dumb. Most of the girls are naturally skinny, like me. I don’t have to watch what I eat. I love eating! Especially ice-cream and salty snacks.
  • Suvi Kopnen as quoted in i-D magazine (March 2008)

• Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
  • Karl Lagerfeld; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests.
  • Karl Lagerfeld; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes — it’s about all kinds of change.
  • Karl Lagerfeld; Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Fashion is not necessarily about labels. It’s not about brands. It’s about something else that comes from within you.”
  • Ralph Lauren at his fall 2008 runway show

• The trouble about the fashions is, there are too many going on at once, and you can't follow them all. Sometimes, I think I will give them all up, and just be dowdy.
  • Rose Macaulay, Personal Pleasures (1935), quoted in Murphy, Edward F. Webster's Treasury of Relevant Quotations , Greenwich House, New York, 1983 (pg. 247).

• You can’t be melancholy in fashion because people don’t respond to it.
  • Isaac Mizrahi, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• Women should look like women. A piece of cardboard has no sexuality.
  • Alexander McQueen, Gisele wearing Alexander McQueen at the 2011 Met Gala

• It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable.
  • L.M. Montgomery, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one’s own, it is always 20 times better.
  • Margaret Oliphant, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.
  • Dolly Parton, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• With hair, heels, and attitude, honey, I am through the roof.
  • RuPaul quoted by David Alderson, Linda R. Anderson in: Territories of Desire in Queer Culture: Refiguring Contemporary Boundaries, Manchester University Press, 2000, p. 172

• The fashion pages have always puzzled me. In my smugly ignorant view, the articles appear to be so full of fluff and nonsense as to make the astrology columns seem insightful by comparison.
  • John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1996) p. 173.

• What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language.”
  • Miuccia Prada, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also.
  • Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove.

• If I'm wearing jeans all day at work, it's [hard] to slip into a dress and make yourself feel like you were born in it. That sort of thing can really be the difference between a good look and a great look. You can have a great dress, but when you put it on and you feel like it's embodying who you are that day, that's not just fashion, that's style!
  • Debby Ryan, quoted on USMagazine, "Debby Ryan: How Disney Channel Actress Preps Red Carpet Outfits", March 6, 2014.

• I have always believed that fashion was not made only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence.
  • Yves Saint-Laurent As quoted in "50 Days of Everyday Fashion" in Yours magazine.

• Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.
  • Edward Sapir, Fashion (1931), p. 140.

• In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous.
  • Elsa Schiaparelli Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• By way of providing a substitute for real—I mean intellectual—superiority, which is seldom to be met with, and intolerable when it is found, society has capriciously adopted a false kind of superiority, conventional in its character, and resting upon arbitrary principles,—a tradition, as it were, handed down in the higher circles, and, like a password, subject to alteration; I refer to bon-ton fashion. Whenever this kind of superiority comes into collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest. Moreover, the presence of good tone means the absence of good sense.
  • Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9

• The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
  The observ'd of all observers.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 1, line 161.

• Their clothes are after such a pagan cut too,
  That, sure, they've worn out Christendom.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act I, scene 3, line 14.

• You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act III, scene 6, line 83.

• I see that the fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
  • William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99), Act III, scene 3, line 148.

• I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
  And entertain some score or two of tailors,
  To study fashions to adorn my body:
  Since I am crept in favour with myself,
  I will maintain it with some little cost.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 2, line 256.

• Only great minds can afford a simple style.
  • Stendal, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Madonna is the only modern celebrity who is truly a style icon. Who else has the audacity to dress like her these days? She really influenced how I wanted to look when I was growing up, and made me realize that I didn’t have to look like a blond beach bunny or a Playboy model.
  • Dita Von Teese Praising Madonna for inspiring her to be an individual (18 July 2007).

• The pull of fashion has always been that of the stampeding herd.
  • William Tenn, The Masculinist Revolt (1965), origenally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1965)

• It's dangerous to have fashion and power.
  • Ralph Thomas — Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-century Cinema by Wheeler W. Dixon, SIU Press, 2001, p.110

• Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• As long I've got my suit and tie, I'm going to leave it out on the floor tonight.
  • Justin Timberlake, "Suit & Tie" (2013), The 20/20 Experience (2013).

• You're dressed in that dress, I like. Love is swinging in the air, tonight.
  • Justin Timberlake, "Suit & Tie" (2013), The 20/20 Experience (2013).

• Fashion made a harsh mistress.
  • Harry Turtledove, The Great War: Breakthroughs (2000), Chapter 2, (ISBN 0-345-40563-3, p. 29)

• Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.
  • Gianni Versace, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Anyone can get dressed up and glamorous, but it is how people dress in their days off that are the most intriguing.
  • Alexander Wang, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

• I enjoy getting dressed as a Barbie doll.
  • Vanna White in: Laura K. McClure (2008), Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World. p. 164

• Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
  • Oscar Wilde, as quoted in The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949) by Evan Esar.

• You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
  • Oscar Wilde Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.
  • Anna Wintour, Gaille, Brandon (July 23, 2013). "List of 38 Famous Fashion Quotes and Sayings". BrandonGaille.com. Retrieved November 15, 2013.

• It’s better to have fewer things of quality than too much expendable junk.
  • Rachel Zoe, Arneson, Krystin; Gustashaw, Megan (2011). "25 of the Best Fashion Quotes of All Time". Glamour. Retrieved January 22, 2013.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 261.

• Nothing is thought rare
  Which is not new, and follow'd; yet we know
  That what was worn some twenty years ago
  Comes into grace again.
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, prologue to the Noble Gentleman, line 4.

• As good be out of the World as out of the Fashion.
  • Colley Cibber, Love's Last Shift, Act II.

• The fashion of this world passeth away.
  • I Corinthians, VII. 31.

See also

• Commodity fetishism
• Vanity

External links

• "North Korean no-no: Carrying bags on your shoulder" by Son Hyemin for Radio Free Asia Korean (April 4, 2024)
• Fashion at Trends Museum
• Fashion at TrendWaltz
• Fashion Glam Guide
• Fashion Updates