FASHION QUOTES IV
quotations about fashion
Fashion is the sorceress to whose spell we all succumb, the tyrant whose will not one of us dares dispute, the ignis fatuus whose wavering flame we follow, indifferent to the nature of the ground through which we are led. Bog or brake--what does it matter? so long as we go precisely as we are told, and obey that mysterious and capricious leader of ours, we are all right; and if we do fall into odd places meanwhile, that is not our own fault but rather the misfortune of the times.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"The Follies of Fashion", Ourselves, Essays on Women
Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Fashion is a striving to overcome the spatial divide between classes, to overcome the invidious comparisons between "them and us", to catch up and overtake the "in crowd". In other words, what it would like to do is to abolish the very incline that enables the fashion dynamic to exist.
MICHAEL CARTER
Fashion Classics from Carlyle to Barthes
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
Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.
QUENTIN CRISP
Wisdom for the Soul
If we were all wise we should do well; but are we not too silly yet to be left free to follow each her own desires? The very foolishness of our fashions, I am afraid proves this; and the almost as striking foolishness of our dissent shows how little we can combine revolt with prudence, and how our opposition to black is not necessarily white.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
"The Follies of Fashion", Ourselves, Essays on 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
Fashion as a belief is manifested through clothing.
YUNIYA KAWAMURA
Fashion-ology
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
The irrational aspect of fashion is very important; fashion provides a field for the expression of fetishistic and magical impulses and beliefs.
ELIZABETH WILSON
"Fashion and Modernity"
Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich.
NICOLAS CHAMFORT
attributed, Many Thoughts of Many Minds
The fashion industry is not interested in making women feel better about themselves. Fashion is about making people want something they are unlikely to get ... and any satisfaction achieved is fleeting and faintly disappointing.
HADLEY FREEMAN
Guardian, Sep. 9, 2009
Fashion is an international language.
SUE JENKYN JONES
Fashion Design
Fashion is unjustly spoken of as presiding only in the festive dance, the lighted hall, the crowded court. Would that her influence were confined to these alone! but, alas! we find her in the most sedate assemblies, cooling down each tint of coloring that else might glow too warmly, smoothing off excrescences, and rounding angles to one general uniformity of shape and tone. Her task, however, is but a short one here, and she passes on through all the busy haunts of life, neglecting neither high nor low, nor rich nor poor, until she enters the very sanctuary, and bows before the altar, not only walking with the multitude who keep the holy day, but bending in sable sorrow over the last and dearest friend committed to the tomb. Yes, there is something monstrous in the thought, that we cannot weep for the dead, but fashion must disguise our grief; and that we cannot stand before the altar, and pronounce that solemn vow, which the deep heart of woman alone can fully comprehend, but fashion must be especially consulted there.
SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS
The Women of England
Whatever does not pretend at all has style enough.
BOOTH TARKINGTON
The Magnificent Ambersons
Fashion is a product of a society with more than one class in it and where upward movement between classes is both possible and desirable. Thus it would seem that, as soon as this kind of society exists, as soon as modern, capitalist society exists, fashion exists.
MALCOLM BARNARD
Fashion as Communication
I would argue that fashion is a space where industry articulates issues of identity and signification for the purposes of competitive advantage to such a degree that culture and economy become mutually constitutive to the extent of being analytically inseparable.
ADAM BRIGGS
Fashion and Modernity
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
There are certain things that even fashion cannot justify.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Fashion! -- a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
The Rosciad