Clothes make the poor invisible. America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.
—Michael Harrington (1928–89) American Socialist, Writer, Political Activist, Academic
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
It’s not that I don’t want to be a beauty, that I don’t yearn to be dripping with glamour. It’s just that I can’t see how any woman can find time to do to herself all the things that must apparently be done to make herself beautiful and, having once done them, how anyone without the strength of mind of a foreign missionary can keep up such a regime.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899–1979) American Actress, Playwright
The fear of becoming a ‘has-been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
How to dress? When the money is going from you wear anything you like. When the money is coming to you, dress your best.
—Common Proverb
No man is esteemed for colorful garments except by fools and women.
—Walter Raleigh (1552–1618) English Courtier, Navigator, Poet
You couldn’t tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation.
—Irvin S. Cobb (1876–1944) American Humorist, Short Story Writer, Columnist
You know, one had as good be out of the world, as out of the fashion.
—Colley Cibber (1671–1757) English Playwright, Poet, Actor
Society is founded upon cloth.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
So dress and conduct yourself so that people who have been in your company will not recall what you had on.
—John Newton (1725–1807) English Clergyman, Writer
All women’s dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.
—Lillian Hellman (1905–84) American Playwright, Dramatist, Memoirist
Fashion is a tyrant from which there is no deliverance; all must conform to its whimsical.
—French Proverb
All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Nor is the people’s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.
—Hannah Arendt (1906–75) German-American Philosopher, Political Theorist
Avoid singularity.—There may often be less vanity in following the new modes, than in adhering to the old ones.—It is true that the foolish invent them, but the wise may conform to, instead of contradicting them.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Plain dealing is a jewel, but they that wear it are out of fashion
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
We should conform to the manners of the greater number, and so behave as not to draw attention to ourselves.—Excess either way shocks, and every wise man should attend to this in his dress as well as language; never be affected in anything, but follow, without being in too great haste, the changes of fashion.
—Moliere (1622–73) French Playwright
Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Fashion must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
The mere leader of fashion has no genuine claim to supremacy; at least, no abiding assurance of it. He has embroidered his title upon his waistcoat, and carries his worth in his watch chain; and if he is allowed any real precedence for this, it is almost a moral swindle—a way of obtaining goods under false pretences.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
The fashion doth wear out more apparel the man.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
So soon as a fashion is universal, it is out of date.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian Novelist
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
—Robert Bresson (1907–99) French Film Director
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Judge not a man by his clothes, but by his wife’s clothes.
—Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar (1864–1930) Scottish Businessperson
To be happy is of far less consequence to the worshippers of fashion than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Women’s sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.
—Angela Carter (1940–92) English Novelist
My weakness is wearing too much leopard print.
—Jackie Collins (1937–2015) English Romance Novelist
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
We act the way we dress. Neglected and untidy clothes reflect a neglected and untidy mind.
—Unknown
Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike.
—Eric Bentley (1916–2020) British-born American Drama Critic
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe the fashions of the place where he is.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Woman’s first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.
—Cole Porter (1892–1964) American Composer, Lyricist