FASHION QUOTES IV
quotations about fashion
There is not so variable a thing in Nature as a lady's head-dress.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Spectator, Jun. 22, The Spectator, Jun. 22, 1711
The erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever catching it up.
JAMES LAVER
New Society, February 2, 1984
But what can we say of the fashion which dyes the hair, paints the cheeks, blackens the eyelids with antimony to make the orbit look larger and the lashes longer, or that expands the pupils with belladonna, no matter at what cost of complexion or future eyesight? What too can we say of the fashion which uncovers the arms and neck in the evening after having clothed them through the day in flannel, or velvet, or in warm wadded stuffs? Women threatened with bronchitis or rheumatism sit all day long in a warm room muffled up to the throat in thick material; at night they uncover below their shoulders, and go out in the cold winter air with just an opera cloak thrown over their shivering skins. But this is fashion; and none of us dare disobey it; none of us dare go out in the evening with dresses made after the pattern of our morning ones, or wear in the morning low bodices and short sleeves to at least equalize the risk, and inure us to the evening attire without damage. There is no intrinsic reason why we should not all be sitting in low-bodices and short sleeves at this very moment, though we will make it ten o'clock; but if we were, we should be thought mad or bad or both, and not even our staunchest friends would stand by us.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"The Follies of Fashion", Ourselves, Essays on Women
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
The irrational aspect of fashion is very important; fashion provides a field for the expression of fetishistic and magical impulses and beliefs.
ELIZABETH WILSON
"Fashion and Modernity"
The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antigue; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.
GEORGE COMBE
A System of Phrenology
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
OSCAR WILDE
An Ideal Husband
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad
Fashion is an international language.
SUE JENKYN JONES
Fashion Design
Fashion is the sorceress to whose spell we all succumb, the tyrant whose will not one of us dares dispute, the ignis fatuus whose wavering flame we follow, indifferent to the nature of the ground through which we are led. Bog or brake--what does it matter? so long as we go precisely as we are told, and obey that mysterious and capricious leader of ours, we are all right; and if we do fall into odd places meanwhile, that is not our own fault but rather the misfortune of the times.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"The Follies of Fashion", Ourselves, Essays on Women
Fashion is all about who you are. It's about expressing your individuality and showing the world your personality. Fashion is not about looking like everyone else. So stand out!
LAURIE MCELROY
The New V.P.
Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.
YVES SAINT-LAURENT
New Woman
Girls do not set the fashions. They may and do exaggerate them, because there is very little else to distinguish one girl from another in the crowd, and because they are silly; but it is the woman who is just beginning to be on the wane, la femme presque passée, who wants to look still youthful and girlish, from whom proceed nine-tenths of the devices to conceal the figure and delude the eye.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"The Follies of Fashion", Ourselves, Essays on Women
We are but a day in this world, and in that day the fashion is changed a thousand times: all seek liberty, yet all deprive themselves of it.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
The Divine Comedy
Fashion is unjustly spoken of as presiding only in the festive dance, the lighted hall, the crowded court. Would that her influence were confined to these alone! but, alas! we find her in the most sedate assemblies, cooling down each tint of coloring that else might glow too warmly, smoothing off excrescences, and rounding angles to one general uniformity of shape and tone. Her task, however, is but a short one here, and she passes on through all the busy haunts of life, neglecting neither high nor low, nor rich nor poor, until she enters the very sanctuary, and bows before the altar, not only walking with the multitude who keep the holy day, but bending in sable sorrow over the last and dearest friend committed to the tomb. Yes, there is something monstrous in the thought, that we cannot weep for the dead, but fashion must disguise our grief; and that we cannot stand before the altar, and pronounce that solemn vow, which the deep heart of woman alone can fully comprehend, but fashion must be especially consulted there.
SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS
The Women of England
Singularity in dress argues eccentricity of character. A queer cut of the coat represents a crotchet in the brain.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
NICOLAS CHAMFORT
attributed, Many Thoughts of Many Minds
I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting ... but whatever it's worth I did it.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
"Some fashion wisdom from Yves Saint Laurent", USA Today, June 1, 2008
I would argue that fashion is a space where industry articulates issues of identity and signification for the purposes of competitive advantage to such a degree that culture and economy become mutually constitutive to the extent of being analytically inseparable.
ADAM BRIGGS
Fashion and Modernity