quotations about fashion
Choose thy clothes by thine own eyes, not another's.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
The apparel oft proclaims the man.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
A good model can advance fashion by ten years.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Ritz, no. 85
All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
LIN YUTANG
The Chinese Mercury, 1937
Fashion ... is most capricious in her favours, often running from those that pursue her, and coming round to those that stand still. It were mad to follow her, and rash to oppose her, but neither rash nor mad to despise her.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Fashion is an inherent part of human social interaction and not the creation of an elite group of designers, producers, or marketers. Because of its basis in individual social comparison, fashion cannot be controlled without undermining its ultimate purpose, which is the expression of individual identity. If self-identity were never in doubt and social comparison never took place, there would be no demand for fashion, and there would be no need or opportunity for style change.
AUBREY CANNON
The Cultural and Historical Contexts of Fashion
Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
He alone is a man, who can resist the genius of the age, the tone of fashion, with vigorous simplicity and modest courage.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
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 political, especially when you're in a marginalized community. We have been left out of fashion since forever. But now we're getting a foothold. I think it is political for a fat woman to wear a bikini or a crop top or to basically exist in a world that's telling them that they should not exist.
GABI GREGG
interview, Cosmopolitan, December 11, 2017
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
We smile at the women who are eagerly following the fashions in dress whilst we are as eagerly following the fashions in thought.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.
BOOTH TARKINGTON
The Magnificent Ambersons
Fashion is an international language.
SUE JENKYN JONES
Fashion Design
Fashion as a belief is manifested through clothing.
YUNIYA KAWAMURA
Fashion-ology
Feminist readings of fashion have often portrayed it as a kind of conspiracy to distract women from the real affairs of society, namely economics and politics. Fashion has been seen as a device for confining women to an inferior social order, largely because it demands an unequal expenditure of time and money by women on activities which do not attract the professional attention and efforts of men. Fashion works to intensify self-absorption and thereby reduces the social, cultural and intellectual horizons of women.
JOANNE FINKELSTEIN
After a 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