132 Fashionable Quotes

Fashion has always been a dynamic realm where self-expression meets creativity. It's a language without words, spoken through fabrics, colors, and styles. Those who truly appreciate the artistry and cultural significance of fashion understand that it extends beyond mere clothing—it's a reflection of our times, our identities, and our dreams. With this in mind, we've meticulously curated a collection of the top 132 fashionable quotes that capture the essence of style, elegance, and individuality. Whether you're a fashion enthusiast seeking inspiration or simply appreciate the wisdom imbued in sartorial expressions, these quotes are sure to spark your imagination and perhaps even influence your next wardrobe choice. Dive in and let these words of wisdom from fashion icons, designers, and cultural tastemakers inspire your journey through the ever-evolving world of fashion.

1. “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” - Oscar Wilde

2. “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” - Oscar Wilde

3. “It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen.” - Dolly Parton

4. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.” - Hillary Rodham Clinton

5. “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

6. “It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of a man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire... Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.” - Jane Austen

7. “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

8. “Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.” - Dave Barry

9. “...you don't have to be perfect to be pretty” - Carson Kressley

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

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

12. “I adore fringe.” - Diana Vreeland

13. “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

14. “Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.” - Quentin Crisp

15. “Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?” - Dorothy Parker

16. “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” - Coco Chanel

17. “Why nowadays there's a new fashion every day.” - Leo Tolstoy

18. “As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.” - Anna Godbersen

19. “True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.” - Nicole Richie

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

21. “She was wearing a purple T-shirt, with a skinny black dress over it that made you remember how much of a girl she was, and trashed black boots that made you forget.” - Kami Garcia

22. “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

23. “During the shoot in November 2003, I was vaguely aware of the stylist’s sulky demeanor and eye-rolling vibe, but I blocked her out. Some fashion people are snotty drama queens; this is not news. Whatever was going on with her, I was determined to be positive and not get infected by her energy. Later, Fiorella told me that the entire time I was in makeup, the stylist had been clomping up and down the hall, sputtering into her cell phone, “I can’t believe I have to style a FAT GIRL!” Believe it, bitch. ” - Crystal Renn

24. “Make up is generally there to make you look better, not make you look like you're wearing make up.” - Hadley Freeman

25. “Logos are the bleating of the insecure, desperate for acceptance by the chronically shallow. ” - Hadley Freeman

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

27. “The Countess was considerably younger than her husband. All of her clothes came from Paris (this was after Paris) and she had superb taste. (This was after taste too, but only just. And since it was such a new thing, and since the Countess was the only lady in all Florin to posses it, is it any wonder she was the leading hostess in the land?)” - William Goldman

28. “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

29. “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

30. “Sometimes comfort doesn't matter. When a shoe is freakin' fabulous, it may be worth a subsequent day of misery. Soak in Epsom salts and take comfort in the fact that you're better than everyone else.” - Clinton Kelly

31. “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

32. “What a strange power there is in clothing.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

33. “Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.” - Quentin Crisp

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

35. “I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes -- it's about all kinds of change” - Karl Lagerfeld

36. “Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English--but are great in remembering signs” - Karl Lagerfeld

37. “Success nullifies. You then have to do it again, preferably differently” - Karl Lagerfeld

38. “For me, Chanel is like music. There are certain notes and you have to make another tune with them” - Karl Lagerfeld

39. “The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine” - Karl Lagerfeld

40. “Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

42. “I know the fashion is that everything is fair game [for comedy material] but I don't believe that.” - Craig Ferguson

43. “High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.” - Christopher Morley

44. “I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldn’t exist anymore.” - Sophie Kinsella

45. “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

46. “The most important thing to wear is a smile.” - Ann Taylor

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

48. “We live in a dark and romantic and quite tragic world.” - Karl Lagerfeld

49. “Fashion and music are the same, because music express its period too.” - Karl Lagerfeld

50. “You make all the fashion statements just by dressing up your mind.” - Jason Mraz

51. “I think it's cool to wear roadkill. If I died and somebody wanted to wear my teeth around their neck to VMAs, I'd feel honored.” - Ke$ha

52. “In all, his outfit required nearly two thousand man-years of research and development, eight barrels of oil, and sixteen patent and trademark infringement lawsuits. All so he could possess casual style. A style that, in logistical requirements, was comparable to fielding a nineteenth-century military brigade.But he looked good. Casual.” - Daniel Suarez

53. “I want everyone to wear what they want and mix it in their own way. That, to me, is what is modern.” - Karl Lagerfeld

54. “Fashion Fact: Most people make the assumption that I wear trendy shades the majority of the time (often indoors) to protect my eyes from the elements. But in fact it's the reverse. I'm protecting the elements from the brilliance of my eyes.” - Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino

55. “I had an interview once with some German journalist—some horrible, ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists—maybe a week after—and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see-through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me, ‘It’s impolite; remove your glasses.’ I said, ‘Do I ask you to remove your bra?” - Karl Lagerfeld

56. “Fashion is about going ahead, not about memory.” - Karl Lagerfeld

57. “And one more thing: Sometimes comfort doesn’t matter. When a shoe is freakin’ fabulous, it may be worth a subsequent day of misery. Soak in Epsom salts and take comfort in the fact that you’re better than everyone else.” - Clinton Kelly

58. “I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble.” - Karl Lagerfeld

59. “What do women want? Shoes.” - Mimi Pond

60. “I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.” - Tim Gunn

61. “The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.” - Oscar Wilde

62. “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

63. “Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which psychoanalysis is powerless to bestow.” - Sebastian Horsley

64. “It is impossible to be completely abstract about clothes because they have no life unless they are worn. They must fit onto a body or they do not exist.” - Elizabeth Hawes

65. “No garment which distorts the shape and motion of the wearer is beautiful, nor s any garment beautiful which emphasizes more than one or at most two of your sexual characteristics.” - Elizabeth Hawes

66. “Fashion sighs after trends. I want timeless elegance. Fashion has no time. I do. I say: Hello Lady, how can I help you? Fashion has no time to even ask such a question, because it is constantly concerned with finding out: What will come next? It is more about helping women to suffer less, to attain more freedom and independence.” - Yohji Yamamoto

67. “Like all trial attorneys, he knew the importance of not dressing too well.” - Michael Crichton

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

69. “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

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

71. “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

72. “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

73. “A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.” - Sophia Loren

74. “Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.” - Coco Chanel

75. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott

76. “I have to admit that I'm up to my neck in frivolity, buried in dresses to the point of ruin! Fifteen different garments! My wardrobe jam-packed! My girl, this is not the way for an old woman to behave - particularly since you never wear anything but black and white, or a little grey, so that you always look as though you were in the same dress. Why fritter away your money so absurdly? (22 August 1919)” - Liane de Pougy

77. “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

78. “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.” - E.M. Forster

79. “And now, I'm just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.” - Lady Gaga

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

81. “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

82. “Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy - but mysterious. But above all black says this: "I don’t bother you - don’t bother me".” - Yohji Yamamoto

83. “Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow she was really almost beautiful.” - Francesca Lia Block

84. “Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.” - Karl Lagerfeld

85. “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

86. “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

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

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

89. “I'm a risk taker and i've always been like that that, especially when it comes to fashion” - Christina Aguilera

90. “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

91. “I believe my life has a value, and i don't want to waste it thinking about clothing.I don't want to think about what i will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion?” - Michael Crichton

92. “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

93. “The loner who looks fabulous is one of the most vulnerable loners of all.” - Anneli Rufus

94. “Every morning in the middle of nowhere, without electricity or anyone to impress, I'd take great care in picking out my outfit and hover in front of a business card-size mirror to apply my lip gloss and check my eyebrows. I also felt I had a strong case for bringing a little black dress on expeditions. Village parties spring up more often than you might expect, and despite never having been a Girl Scout, I like to be prepared.” - Mireya Mayor

95. “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

96. “Don’t overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.” - Karl Lagerfield

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

98. “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

99. “Bow ties are cool.” - Steven Moffat

100. “When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?” - Jennifer Egan

101. “A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn't touch them, I thought they completed the outfit.” - Mireya Mayor

102. “In the fashion industry, everything goes retro except the prices.” - Criss Jami

103. “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

104. “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

105. “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

106. “I think in black.” - Gareth Pugh

107. “To me, clothing is a form of self-expression - there are hints about who you are in what you wear.” - Mark Jacobs

108. “We have work to do if you are not to be a total failure like high-waisted, acid-wash jeans.” - Libba Bray

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

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

111. “Nothing, again, could be more prosaic and impenetrable than the domestic energies of Miss Diana Duke. But Innocent had somehow blundered on the discovery that her thrifty dressmaking went with a considerable feminine care for dress--the one feminine thing that had never failed her solitary self-respect. In consequence Smith pestered her with a theory (which he really seemed to take seriously) that ladies might combine economy with magnificence if they would draw light chalk patterns on a plain dress and then dust them off again. He set up "Smith's Lightning Dressmaking Company," with two screens, a cardboard placard, and box of bright soft crayons; and Miss Diana actually threw him an abandoned black overall or working dress on which to exercise the talents of a modiste. He promptly produced for her a garment aflame with red and gold sunflowers; she held it up an instant to her shoulders, and looked like an empress. And Arthur Inglewood, some hours afterwards cleaning his bicycle (with his usual air of being inextricably hidden in it), glanced up; and his hot face grew hotter, for Diana stood laughing for one flash in the doorway, and her dark robe was rich with the green and purple of great decorative peacocks, like a secret garden in the "Arabian Nights." A pang too swift to be named pain or pleasure went through his heart like an old-world rapier. He remembered how pretty he thought her years ago, when he was ready to fall in love with anybody; but it was like remembering a worship of some Babylonian princess in some previous existence. At his next glimpse of her (and he caught himself awaiting it) the purple and green chalk was dusted off, and she went by quickly in her working clothes.” - G.K. Chesterton

112. “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

113. “She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.” - Oscar Wilde

114. “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

115. “Coco Chanel used to talk about wearing more than one string of pearls. Why wear one if you can wear two, or something to that effect. I think that one string of pearls is just fine. But that's because my pearls are black, hers were white.” - C. JoyBell C.

116. “Respect is not creative ... Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore — and then you get something out of her.” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

118. “You must remember, Madame Harris, elegance is in the details.” - Lynn Sheene

119. “Fashion is life-enhancing and I think it's a lovely, generous thing to do for other people” - Vivienne Westwood

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

121. “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

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

123. “That civet-jasmine blend you're wearing tonight absolutely clashes with the third-level formal style of your dress, you know.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

124. “To tell you the truth, I dislike anything that is in fashion.” - Maraso

125. “...our witness, one Edward Littleton, was as gay as Elton John's handbag.” - Ann Somerville

126. “I had no name for that particular hue of orange, other than unfortunate.” - Rachel Caine

127. “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

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

129. “But it was fantasy, and she knew it. It was her fantasy, and the fantasy of everyone else who would look at her and at her pictures; and it would stop being real the moment the man with the camera stopped clicking.” - Umair Naeem

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

131. “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

132. “Vincent laughed. "No, you still need to look like a Helian.""So I should burn everything to a crisp?""Well, that would definitely get your mother's attention, but I think that she's looking for something more sophisticated and less... scary.” - Heather James