The 101 Best Fashion Quotes of All Time

Whether it is a fictional character like Carrie Bradshaw dropping some truth bombs, real-life icon Coco Chanel sharing her infinite wisdom, or Simon Doonan sounding off about, well, anything, the best fashion quotes are ones that say so much with a few short words.

Behold the 101 best style quotes of all time.

1. “Fashion is what you’re offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose.” — Lauren Hutton

2. “I love women. I’m trying to do beautiful things with them. I’m not trying to insult them. My life is not about that.” — Calvin Klein

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3. “You either know fashion or you don’t.” — Anna Wintour

4. “You can never take too much care over the choice of your shoes. Too many women think that they are unimportant, but the real proof of an elegant woman is what is on her feet.” — Christian Dior

5. “I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.” — Diana Vreeland

6. “What I’ve done, Coco Chanel would never have done. She would have hated it.” — Karl Lagerfeld

7. “The customer is the final filter. What survives the whole process is what people wear. I’m not interested in making clothes that end up in some dusty museum.” — Marc Jacobs

8. “I think there is beauty in everything. What ‘normal’ people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.” — Alexander McQueen

9.  “Shoes transform your body language and attitude. They lift you physically and emotionally.” — Christian Louboutin

10. “I like my money right where I can see it: hanging in my closet.” — Carrie Bradshaw

11. “I always feel that if you’re gonna be uncomfortable and unhappy in something, just because you think it’s in or it’s chic, I would advise you to be happy rather than well-dressed. It’s better to be happy.” — Iris Apfel

12.  “Trendy is the last stage before tacky.” — Karl Lagerfeld

13. “Pure, intense emotions. It’s not about design. It’s about feelings.” — Alber Elbaz

14. “I have always believed that fashion was not only to make women more beautiful, but also to reassure them, give them confidence.” — Yves Saint Laurent

15. “Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak.” — Rachel Zoe

16.  “It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic by fashion.” — Yves Saint Laurent

17. “Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.” — Bill Cunningham

18. “When you hear designers complaining about the challenge of their profession, you have to say: don’t get carried away—it’s only dresses.” — Karl Lagerfeld

19. “Always dress like you’re going to see your worst enemy.” — Kimora Lee

20. “Fashion is not necessarily about labels. It’s not about brands. It’s about something else that comes from within you.” — Ralph Lauren

21. “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” — Coco Chanel

22. “Clothes mean nothing until someone lives in them.” — Marc Jacobs

23. “We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.” — Yves Saint Laurent

24. “Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.” — Sir Francis Bacon

25. “Girls do not dress for boys. They dress for themselves, of course, each other. If girls dressed for boys, they’d just walk around naked at all times.” — Betsey Johnson

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26. “Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.” — Vivienne Westwood

27. “People say, ‘What do you mean you want to help the world, but you’re so concerned about fashion?’ It’s illegal to be naked. It is something that is extremely important.” — Kanye West

28.“When I first moved to New York and I was totally broke, sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I felt it fed me more.” — Carrie Bradshaw

29. “Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment.” — Alexander McQueen

30. “Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.” — Yves Saint Laurent

31. “We don’t need fashion to survive, we just desire it so much.” — Marc Jacobs

32. “In a machine age, dressmaking is one of the last refuges of the human, the personal, the inimitable.” — Christian Dior

33. “Clothes are like a good meal, a good movie, great pieces of music.” — Michael Kors

34. “The joy of dressing is an art.” — John Galliano

35. “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 you live.” — Gianni Versace

36. “Fashion somehow, for me, is purely and happily irrational.” — Hedi Slimane

37. “I don’t want a politician who’s thinking about fashion for even one millisecond. It’s the same as medical professionals. The idea of a person in a Comme des Garcons humpback dress giving me a colonoscopy is just not groovy.” — Simon Doonan

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38. “I think that because I’m overweight, [my] fantasy was lightness. So I project my fantasy to the clothes, and now all I do is light, light clothes because it’s the one thing I don’t have. That is why I’m too afraid to lose weight because then I might make heavy clothes.” — Alber Elbaz

39. “When you go to a nice restaurant, you want to be relaxed and have a drink and everything, you want to look at people who look well. You don’t want to look at some slob with an open shirt and a hairy chest. At least I don’t.” — Iris Apfel

40. “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness, simply didn’t know where to go shopping.” — Bo Derek

41. “Fashion has to reflect who you are, what you feel at the moment, and where you’re going.” — Pharrell Williams

42. “You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody.” — Diana Vreeland

43. ”What you wear is such an expression of who you are. That’s like someone picking out who I’m going to date!” — Diane Kruger, on not working with a stylist

44. “”I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.” — Coco Chanel

45. “I’m a very down-to-earth person, but it is my job to make that earth more pleasant.” — Karl Lagerfeld

46. “I wouldn’t take it as a compliment if someone looked at one of my shoes and said, ‘Oh, that looks like a comfortable shoe.’ There is a heel that is too high to walk in, certainly. But who cares? You don’t have to walk in high heels.” — Christian Louboutin

47. “I adore wearing gems, but not because they are mine. You can’t possess radiance, you can only admire it.” — Elizabeth Taylor

48. “Conformity is the only real fashion crime. To not dress like yourself and to sublimate your spirit to some kind of group identity is succumbing to fashion fascism.” — Simon Doonan

49. “I know what women look good in. I don’t think the rules ever change.” — Michael Kors

50. “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

 

51. “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.”— Wednesday Addams

52. “Make it simple, but significant.” — Don Draper

53. “A great dress can make you remember what is beautiful about life.” — Rachel Roy

54. “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” — Coco Chanel

55. “People will stare. Make it worth their while.” — Harry Winston

56. “When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else.” — Iris Apfel

57. “Buy less, choose well.” — Vivienne Westwood

58. “Style is very personal. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is forever.” — Ralph Lauren

59. “To me, style is all about expressing your individuality freely and courageously.” — Timothy John

60. “Too much good taste can be very boring. Independent style, on the other hand, can be very inspiring.” — Diana Vreeland

61. “You’re never fully dressed without a smile.” — Little Orphan Annie

62. “Real style is never right or wrong. It’s a matter of being yourself on purpose.” — G. Bruce Boyer

63. “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” — Edith Head

64. “Walk like you have three men walking behind you.” — Oscar de la Renta

65. “Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.” — Yves Saint Laurent

66. “Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.” — Jean Cocteau

67. “Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.” — Marilyn Monroe

68. “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” — Coco Chanel

69. “Fashion changes, but style endures.” — Coco Chanel

70. “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” — Orson Welles

71. “I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day.” — Stephanie Perkins

72. “Style; all who have it have have one thing: originality.” — Diana Vreeland

73. “Clothes have nothing until someone lives in them.” — Marc Jacobs

74. “I can’t concentrate in flats.” — Victoria Beckham

75. “Playing dress up begins at age 5 and never really ends.” — Kate Spade

76. “Real style is never right or wrong. It’s a matter of being yourself on purpose.” — G. Bruce Boyer

77. “Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?” — Yves Saint Laurent

78. “Style is primarily a matter of instinct.” — Bill Blass

79. “Style is very important. It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style lasts forever.” — Ralph Lauren

80. “Women who wear black lead colorful lives.” — Neiman Marcus

81. “If loving fashion is a crime, we plead guilty.” — Unknown

82. “You can have anything you want if you dress for it.” — Edith Head

83. “I feel that flip-flops are the downfall of many relationships. It’s, like, first it’s the flip-flops, and then it’s the sweatpants…it’s the gateway drug to no sex.” — Lady Gaga

84. “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion ha to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” — Coco Chanel

85. “Trendy is the last stage before tacky.” — Karl Lagerfeld

86. “Always dress like you are going to see your worst enemy.” — Kimora Lee Simmons

87. “When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.’”— Caitlin Moran

88. “I am anti-pants.” — Lena Dunham

89. “I have four bedrooms in my house. One is for guests, the other three are for closets.” — André Leon Talley

90. “When you don’t feel to dress means that you are depressed. You need a fashion shower.” — Anna Dello Russo

91. “There was a photo of me with weird sunglasses on and a green sweatshirt, some striped thing, with tights and cowboy boots … I just saw that photo and thought, ‘God, I look crazy.’” — Mary-Kate Olsen

92. “I really would not call myself a fashion icon. I would call myself somebody who gets dressed by professionals … I would call me more of a monkey.” — Jennifer Lawrence

93. “Table for three: you, me and my bag.” — Instagram

94. “I was at school when Britney Spears’ ‘Baby One More Time’ came out. I changed my uniform to look like hers. I just looked slutty after that, so thank you, Britney.” — Alexa Chung

95.  “The message of a leopard-print jumpsuit is clear: ‘I am a huntress who delights in eating the offal of her prey.” — Simon Doonan

96. “Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.” — Oscar Wilde

97.  “I like Cinderella; she has a good work ethic and she likes shoes.” — Amy Adams

98. “What’s becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.” — Lupita Nyong’o

99. “Fashion says ‘me too’ style says ‘only me’” — Anonymous

100. “I’ve always thought of accessories as the exclamation point of a woman’s outfit.” — Michael Kors

101.  “I was like, ‘What’s Margiela?’ back then.” — Kim Kardashian, on a pair of Maison Margiela boots Kanye bought her back in 2008

Originally published April 2016. Updated April 2017.