97 Inspiring Fashion Quotes

Fashion is more than just clothing; it's a powerful form of self-expression and an ever-evolving art that captures the spirit of the times. Whether you're a dedicated follower of haute couture or someone who finds joy in thrift store treasures, the world of fashion offers endless inspiration. Quotes from designers, stylists, and icons have the magic to encapsulate the essence of style, empowering us to embrace our individuality and express our unique personalities. In this curated collection of the top 97 inspiring fashion quotes, you'll find words that not only celebrate the creativity and diversity of fashion but also motivate you to explore your own style journey.

1. “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

2. “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

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

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

5. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” - Henry David Thoreau

6. “Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?” - David Sedaris

7. “I adore fringe.” - Diana Vreeland

8. “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

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

10. “It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. "A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.” - David Sedaris

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

12. “Whoever said that money can't buy happiness, simply didn't know where to go shopping” - Bo Derek

13. “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

14. “The human body is the best work of art.” - Jess C. Scott

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

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

17. “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

18. “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

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

20. “Chanel is an institution, and you have to treat an institution like a whore – and then you get something out of her” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

22. “When a woman smiles,then her dress should smile to” - Madeleine Vionnet

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

24. “ I want to find a designer that can represent me. I want to find a celebrity that reflects me. So far I’ve been dressing in cotton-polyester blends. It’s what Jerffrey Dahmer wore.” - Christy Leigh Stewart

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

26. “The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.” - Karl Lagerfeld

27. “I would like to be a one-man multinational fashion phenomenon.” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

29. “If you stick to something doggedly, you are off to a bad start.” - Karl Lagerfeld

30. “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

31. “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

32. “He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He look like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.” - Rick Riordan

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

34. “Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.” - Karl Lagerfeld

35. “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

36. “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

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

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

39. “Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.” - Gwyneth Paltrow

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

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

42. “The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don't wear her.” - Mary Quant

43. “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

44. “Your own gown is most delicately suitable, both to the occasion and to yourself,' to be translated: Your gown is insipid and entirely forgettable. If you wear it on every other occasion this entire season, no one will notice or care.” - Anne Perry

45. “Ideas about a person's place in society, his role, lifestyle, and ego qualities will lose their hold as the cohesive forces in society disintegrate. Subculture values will proliferate to such a bewildering extent that a whole new class of professionals will arise to control them. Such a Transmutation Technology will deal in fashions, in ways of being. Lifestyle consultants will become the new priests of our civilizations. They will be the new magicians.” - Peter J. Carroll

46. “My role in all of this is very simple. I make clothing like armor. My clothing protects you from unwelcome eyes.” - Yohji Yamamoto

47. “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

48. “Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.” - Coco Chanel

49. “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

50. “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

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

52. “She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.” - Jeannette Walls

53. “Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!” - Coco Chanel

54. “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

55. “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

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

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

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

59. “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

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

61. “Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?” - Yves Saint Laurent

62. “Fact: I don't know of a single girl who doesn't wish the show-it-all boxer-shorts phenomenon would go away as well. Guys, we just don't want to see your underwear. Truthfully, we believe that there is a direct correlation between how much underwear you show and how much you've got upstairs, if you know what I mean.” - Lisa Samson

63. “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

64. “I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world peace and a Prada handbag, I'd dither. (I'm not proud of this, I'm only saying.)” - Marian Keyes

65. “I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.” - Karl Lagerfeld

66. “Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard - all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment - even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.‘Take hold of yourselves,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.’‘It will work, Lady Granddaughter.’ Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. ‘You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child - Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.” - Kristin Cashore

67. “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

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

69. “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

70. “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

71. “I think in black.” - Gareth Pugh

72. “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

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

74. “All is fair in fashion and war.” - Thisuri Wanniarachchi

75. “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

76. “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

77. “[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

78. “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

79. “Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you'll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you'll run into every ex you have.” - Tim Gunn

80. “It's not very easy to grow up into a woman. We are always taught, almost bombarded, with ideals of what we should be at every age in our lives: "This is what you should wear at age twenty", "That is what you must act like at age twenty-five", "This is what you should be doing when you are seventeen." But amidst all the many voices that bark all these orders and set all of these ideals for girls today, there lacks the voice of assurance. There is no comfort and assurance. I want to be able to say, that there are four things admirable for a woman to be, at any age! Whether you are four or forty-four or nineteen! It's always wonderful to be elegant, it's always fashionable to have grace, it's always glamorous to be brave, and it's always important to own a delectable perfume! Yes, wearing a beautiful fragrance is in style at any age!” - C. JoyBell C.

81. “I’ve seen daggers pierce the chest,Children dying in the road,Crawling things hooked and baited,Rapists bound and then castrated,Villains singed in public square.Yet none these sights did make me cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.” - Roman Payne

82. “These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.” - Karl Lagerfeld

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

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

85. “I dress the way I want. I don`t pretend to be someone I`m not.” - Britney Spears

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

87. “On first impressions, John seemed more cynical and brash than the others, Ringo the most endearing, Paul was cute, and George, with velvet brown eyes and dark chestnut hair, was the best-looking man I'd ever seen. At the break for lunch I found myself sitting next to him, whether by accident or design I have never been sure. We were both shy and spoke hardly a word to each other, but being close to him was electrifying.” - Pattie Boyd

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

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

90. “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

91. “And my dream for you..........., is that you'll catch a glimpse of what I love so much about fashion: It's boldness and creativity, the confidence that it takes to stand before a camera and let your image be captured, even though you aren't perfect, the peace to be truly okay with how others see you.” - Lauren Scruggs

92. “Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you place your hands in the prayer positions. Matter of fact, I urge all my followers to forgo nail polish permanently and replace it with expertly applied soot. The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.” - John Waters

93. “Be classy. Anything but trashy.” - Coco Chanel

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

95. “All I can tell you about fashion and style is this: buy and wear what makes you happy.” - John Jannuzzi

96. “The believer is not a slave to fashion.” - Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

97. “When you say ugly you mean your beauty is not now in style.” - Héctor Abad Faciolince