112 Inspiring Fashion Quotes

Fashion is a vibrant tapestry woven with threads of creativity, expression, and individuality. Whether it’s a daring new trend or a timeless classic, fashion speaks to the essence of who we are and who we aspire to be. In this curated collection of 112 inspiring fashion quotes, you'll find insights and musings from some of the most innovative minds in the industry. These quotes capture the essence of style and the transformative power of fashion, offering inspiration for any fashion enthusiast looking to elevate their personal style or deepen their understanding of fashion's profound impact on our lives. Join us on this journey through words as we celebrate the art of dressing and the joy of self-expression.

1. “Even on the most solemn occasions I got away without wearing socks and hid that lack of civilization in high boots” - Albert Einstein

2. “Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.” - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

3. “Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy.” - Erma Bombeck

4. “Fashions fade, style is eternal.” - Yves Saint Laurent

5. “I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot!” - Marilyn Monroe

6. “There is one other reason for dressing well, namely that dogs respect it, and will not attack you in good clothes.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future.” - Coco Chanel

8. “People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.” - Dolly Parton

9. “I'll never wake up in a good mood again.I'm tired of these stinky boots” - Jim Morrison

10. “I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up” - Frank O'Hara

11. “I put on some make-up, turn on the 8-track, and I'm pulling the wig down from the shelf - suddenly I'm Miss Punk Rock Star of Stage and Screen and I ain't ever turning back!” - John Cameron Mitchell

12. “Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.” - Tiger Woods

13. “What fun is it being cool if you can't wear a sombrero?” - Bill Watterson

14. “The Devil's out of fashion.” - Dodie Smith

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

16. “Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us.” - Virginia Woolf

17. “Even if you fall on the runway, I wouldn't blame you. It would mean that we made a mistake in choosing you.” - Ai Yazawa

18. “A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting. ” - Christian Dior

19. “Hiking is sort of like strip poker: by the end, all the participants are hot, sweaty, and nearly naked, and the winner is the person who wore the most layers.” - Winona Dimeo-Ediger

20. “Are not couturiers the poets who, from year to year, from strophe to strophe, write the anthem of the feminine body?” - Roland Barthes

21. “I love the confidence that makeup gives me.” - Tyra Banks

22. “I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic.” - Tim Gunn

23. “He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you?” - David Nicholls

24. “this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off.” - David Levithan

25. “When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

26. “Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos.” - Rene Konig

27. “Clothes can suggest, persuade, connote, insinuate, or indeed lie, and apply subtle pressure while their wearer is speaking frankly and straightforwardly of other matters.” - Anne Hollander

28. “You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word.” - Elizabeth Bibesco

29. “Fashion changes, but style endures.” - Coco Chanel

30. “It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.” - Henry David Thoreau

31. “Guilty feelings about clothes are totally unnecessary. A lot of people earn their living by making clothes, so you should never feel bad.” - Karl Lagerfeld

32. “A respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul” - Karl Lagerfeld

33. “Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests” - Karl Lagerfeld

34. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.” - Craig Ferguson

35. “I'm so not interesting in having to try and make something out of foil."What, you didn't like the poncho with wraparound leggings?"It was beyond hideou- wait a minute. You watch that show?"My mom loves it."But your suppose to be sulking in the basement getting ready to light fires."What can I say? I'm a failure as a teenager. I watch TV with my mom.” - Elizabeth Scott

36. “Let's face it -- if I could scrap in a full-length bodysuit, I would.” - Lain Ehmann

37. “And once we reach the city, my stylist will dictate my look for the opening ceremonies tonight anyway. I just hope I get one who doesn't think nudity is the last word in fashion.” - Suzanne Collins

38. “I'm sure they didn't notice anything but you. You should wear flames more often," he says. "They suit you.” - Suzanne Collins

39. “We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.” - Karl Lagerfeld

40. “In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and even clothes, the discussion of fur is childish.” - Karl Lagerfeld

41. “There will be days that you don’t want to dress up and if you have some decent looking athletic wear, you can give the illusion that you’ve just been working out, as opposed to giving up on life.” - Big Mama

42. “I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.” - Karl Lagerfeld

43. “The woman is the most perfect doll that i have dressed with delight and admiration.” - Karl Lagerfeld

44. “He’s always asking: ‘Is that new? I haven’t seen that before.’ It’s like, Why don’t you mind your own business? Solve world hunger. Get out of my closet.” - Michelle Obama

45. “The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.” - G.K. Chesterton

46. “Whenever I see people with their collars up, I'm tempted to point it out to them like you would for someone who has a food stain on their shirt or food in their teeth, as if to say, 'Your fashion sense is so offensive I'm assuming it's some sort of accident you'll want to fix.” - Stephan Pastis

47. “I don't do fashion, I AM fashion.” - Coco Chanel

48. “Women want to wear what they do because of what goes on in their heads. Their size and shape have practically nothing to do with it.” - Elizabeth Hawes

49. “If you are the type who truly longs to be a Southern Belle at all times, regardless of taking twice the space available in bus, subway or elsewhere, you had best remove yourself to a large estate replete with servants.” - Elizabeth Hawes

50. “[Looking like a straight girl] means wearing clothes that seek and destroy comfort. These are garments designed by gay men to attract heterosexual men. The straight girl is simply the hanger for an inside joke.” - Mary Dugger

51. “I've no idea when I'm going to wear it, the girl replied calmly. I only knew that I had to have it. Once I tried it on, well... She shrugged. The dress claimed me.” - Isabel Wolff

52. “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.” - Oscar Wilde

53. “Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one's own, it is always twenty times better.” - Margaret Oliphant

54. “That was when I first observed a phenomenon I now call the "New York Slide": you offer your words to try to communicate and connect with someone, but your words just hit a brick wall the person has erected to ward off human contact- the words slide down it and roll away.” - Kelly Cutrone

55. “I'd urge you to try German Riesling because it's delicious, but I fear you'll be more impressed if I tell you it's cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know-- what's now and happening. (Do you really think clunky square-toed shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because that's what fashion dictates, you slut.)” - Jay Mcinerney

56. “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.” - Karl Lagerfeld

57. “You could dress it up with a sequined headband,” Magnus suggested, offering his boyfriend something blue and sparkly. “Just a thought.” “Resist the urge, Alec.” Simon was sitting on the edge of a low wall with Maia beside him, though she appeared to be deep in conversation with Aline. “You’ll look like Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.” “There are worse things,” Magnus observed.” - Cassandra Clare

58. “There's more to clothing than just adornment. It does more than merely change how the world perceives us. It changes how we perceive ourselves.” - Jacqueline Carey

59. “A beautiful dress may look beautiful on a hanger, but that means nothing. It must be seen on the shoulders, with the movement of the arms, the legs, and the waist.” - Coco Chanel

60. “I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.” - Yves Saint Laurent

61. “Clearly the sight of a well-muscled forearm incited a woman to utter depravity. How else to explain the invention of cuffs?” - Tessa Dare

62. “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.” - Coco Chanel

63. “A girl’s got to use what she’s given and I’m not going to make a guy drool the way a Britney video does. So I take it to extremes. I don’t say I dress sexily on stage - what I do is so extreme. It’s meant to make guys think: ‘I don’t know if this is sexy or just weird.” - Lady Gaga

64. “Sometimes she wore Levi's with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties' taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids' sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney characters.” - Francesca Lia Block

65. “Buy what you don’t have yet, or what you really want, which can be mixed with what you already own. Buy only because something excites you, not just for the simple act of shopping.” - Karl Lagerfeld

66. “Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.” - Karl Lagerfeld

67. “Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.” - Karl Lagerfeld

68. “I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.” - Oscar Wilde

69. “Okay, let's see if I got this straight. The butt is the new breast, and the lower back is the new ankle. Now if only we could figure out where the brain has moved.” - Celia Rivenbark

70. “Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.” - David & Leigh Eddings

71. “I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers. I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals.” - Mary Rose O'Reilley

72. “After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, "Oh! Life is so hard!" and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.” - Anton Chekhov

73. “It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.” - Anna Wintour

74. “No one looks or feels attractive when angry.” - Allan Lokos

75. “Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” - Anna Wintour

76. “She took a moment to lament her lack of parasol. Every time she left the house, she felt keenly the absence of her heretofore ubiquitous accessory.” - Gail Carriger

77. “Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography. You could wear, once more, your own life in all its stages, from whatever they wrapped you in when you emerged from the dark red naked warmth of the womb to your deathbed.” - Linda Grant

78. “Perhaps the most irrational fashion act of all was the male habit for 150 years of wearing wigs. Samuel Pepys, as with so many things, was in the vanguard, noting with some apprehension the purchase of a wig in 1663 when wigs were not yet common. It was such a novelty that he feared people would laugh at him in church; he was greatly relieved, and a little proud, to find that they did not. He also worried, not unreasonably, that the hair of wigs might come from plague victims. Perhaps nothing says more about the power of fashion than that Pepys continued wearing wigs even while wondering if they might kill him.” - Bill Bryson

79. “It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. People who couldn't afford wigs tried to make their hair look like a wig.” - Bill Bryson

80. “For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.” - Bill Bryson

81. “It's not a concert you are seeing, it's a fashion show.” - Freddie Mercury

82. “Jenna slipped in wearing an outfit that I can only describe as Hello Kitty Goes Goth.” - Rachel Hawkins

83. “I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.” - Jim Butcher

84. “Part of being a conscious human being, is having an intention. And if you put an intention into whatever you do, it’s definitely going to be more satisfying in the end” - Daphne Guinness

85. “[how can anyone] be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.” - Thomas More

86. “French girls still have the Jane Birkin culture. You can go just like that, without makeup, without managing your hair.” - Emmanuelle Alt

87. “It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction.” - Cameron Conaway

88. “Right now, all white people are either wearing or coveting a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. These sunglasses are so popular now that you cannot swing a canvas bag at a farmer's market without hitting a pair. In fact, at outdoor gatherings you should count the number of Wayfarers so you can determine exactly how white the event is. If you see no Wayfarers you are either at a country music concert or you are indoors.” - Christian Lander

89. “Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics” - Coco Chanel

90. “Well, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.” - Barbara Kingsolver

91. “I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting, so that when I am dead and gone people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.” - Alexander McQueen

92. “[Piper] rushed to get dressed. By the time she got up on deck, the others had already gathered—all hastily dressed except for Coach Hedge, who had pulled the night watch. Frank’s Vancouver Winter Olympics shirt was inside out. Percy wore pajama pants and a bronze breastplate, which was an interesting fashion statement. Hazel’s hair was all blown to one side as though she’d walked through a cyclone; and Leo had accidentally set himself on fire. His T-shirt was in charred tatters. His arms were smoking.” - Rick Riordan

93. “From time to time, you may see a girl wearing her black opaque tights as pants. They are, in fact, not.” - Nina Garcia

94. “Elegance is elimination.” - Cristóbal Balenciaga

95. “... look treasured” - Treasure Stitches

96. “you are what you wear” - Treasure Stitches

97. “The most pleasant and alluring curve on a woman is the smile” - Treasure Stitches

98. “Newsflash she already has body image issues. It's an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates. Her hands are too small, her feet are too big, her hair is too straight, too curly, her ears stick out, her bums too flat, her nose is too big and, you know, nothing you can say will change how we feel. What men don't understand is, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right makeup it just... It, it hides the flaws we think we have. They make us look beautiful to ourselves. That's what makes us look beautiful to others.Used to be all she needed to feel beautiful was a pink tutu and a plastic tiara.And we spend our whole lives trying to feel that way again.” - Richard Castle

99. “Even the simplest things had a glorious pointlessness to them. When buttons came in, about 1650, people couldn't get enough of them and arrayed them in decorative profusion on the backs and collars and sleeves of coats, where they didn't actually do anything. One relic of this is the short row of pointless buttons that are still placed on the underside of jacket sleeves near the cuff. These have been purely decorative and have never had a purpose, yet 350 years later on we continue to attach them as if they are the most earnest necessity.” - Bill Bryson

100. “My motto for fashion: If you can’t afford to make an elegant statement, make a ridiculous one.” - Stacey Jay

101. “Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?” - Ron Sider

102. “fabrics doesn't make exquisite dresses, it is the stitches.” - Treasure Stitches

103. “I'm always right, always wrong. Dressing bad's like loving you there is nothing i haven't worn. Nothing, I haven’t said before. You are nothing I haven’t felt before.” - Tegan Quin

104. “I was sufficiently recovered from my nervous condition – or else the booze was beginning to work – to be able to discuss with Rudi the merits of checked or striped trousers, which had been the great debate among the London nobs that year. I was a check-er myself, having the height and leg for it, but Rudi thought they looked bumpkinish, which only shows what damned queer taste they had in Austria in those days. Of course, if you’ll put up with Metternich you’ll put up with anything.” - George MacDonald Fraser

105. “One should never confuse fashionable with beautiful” - Beth Fantaskey

106. “She let her mind drift, thinking about new lingerie designs, wishing she'd brought along her sketchpad. Inspiration could strike at the most inconvenient times--in the shower, in the car, on this road--but she was grateful it was with her again, an old companion with whom she was getting reacquainted, pleased to find they could take up where they'd left off, as if there'd been no estrangement at all.” - Heather Barbieri

107. “Evening fashions have to be fabulous.Don't be just better...be the BEST.” - Tony Bowls

108. “While clothes may not make the woman, they certainly have a strong effect on her self-confidence, which, I believe, does make the woman.” - Mary Kay Ash

109. “Remember this: No one is looking at your imperfections; they're all too busy worrying about their own.” - Isaac Mizrahi

110. “Good grief," said Merlin. "You look like the bastard child of Dumbledore and David Bowie. No, sorry, Dumbledore and Ziggy Stardust.” - FayJay

111. “Paris and Fashion. Books and Art. What would one be ... without the other?” - Peggy Kopman-Owens

112. “Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.And falsehoods the truths of other people.Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” - Oscar Wilde