15 Quotes About Fashion That Will Change How You Live Your Life

Who doesn’t love a good quote? We’ve yet to meet the woman, and apparently there’s a reason for that. In an interview with Fast Company, media psychology expert and communications consultant Scott Sobel said, “Humans are aspirational. We want to look up to role models and leaders … their words affect us on a primal level.” In essence, we love an idol, and hold her opinions in higher regard than the musings of an average Jane. Furthermore, Ward Farnsworth, author of Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric, explained that most of us have an “appetite for well-expressed wisdom, motivational or otherwise.” Well-expressed wisdom, indeed.

Such words of wisdom, from leaders and role models or otherwise, affect us by communicating beauty and things of the spirit. In the form of poetry, scripture, or something pithy from a favorite guru, good quotes bring sweetness and enlightenment into our lives. They uplift and become words to live by. To aspirational beings like ourselves, a good quote is life-sustaining.

You know what else is – perhaps somewhat surprisingly – life-sustaining? A really good outfit. (It’s true.) At the surface level, fashion may seem frivolous or vain. Silly even. We imagine a fashion-skeptic countering our above assertion with, “Is it really worthwhile to make such a fuss about what we wear?” When compared to lofty ambitions like defeating poverty and conjuring world peace, the skeptic might have a point. But we’d argue that’s only one (very small) way of looking at it. To the same skeptic, we’d ask, “Is art worthwhile? What about beauty?” Do we really need anything beyond that which sustains us physically and emotionally? 

Aspirations of Beauty

As obviously aspirational beings, I’d suggest that we do. Because even when our physical and emotional needs aren’t perfectly met at any given moment (whose continuously are?), our souls yearn for more. In an interview about his famous Ted Talk, artist Theaster Gates described the “human thirst for beauty, for the sublime, the emotionally enriching, the spiritual” – even amid economic struggle. Similarly, spiritual leader Bob Proctor unqualifiedly said, “Spirit is always for growth and fuller expression.” The creation and consumption of beauty is one way this fullness of expression is accomplished and the appetite for the sublime satisfied.

Beauty Is the Way

What does this have to do with fashion? Simply put, to many around the world, fashion is beauty. Celebrated fashion designer Giambattista Valli once described to Vogue, in no uncertain terms, the beauty that is fashion. Of the revivification of good fashion post-pandemic, he said, “[This] beauty gives your soul moments of instinctive, complete happiness. Beauty is definitely the best therapy.” Furthermore, famed designer – with one of the best names in fashion – Vivienne Westwood once said, "Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, is worth doing well.” In other words, good fashion is life-enhancing beauty, an end to itself, and worthy of our time and attention. 

Remain unconvinced? The who’s who of fashion is certainly up to the challenge. The following 15 quotes from fashion designers and the like undeniably prove that fashion is life (with the accompanying permission to go shopping), beginning with the queen of modern fashion herself.

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

2. “Beauty gives your soul moments of instinctive, complete happiness. Beauty is definitely the best therapy.” – Giambattista Valli

3. “You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” – Edith Head

4. "Don't be into trends. Don't make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way you live." – Gianni Versace

5. “It was fine just so long as it was fashion, for fashion is always right.” – Christian Dior

6. "Style is something each of us already has, all we need to do is find it." – Diane von Furstenberg

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. "Fashions fade, style is eternal." – Yves Saint Laurent

9. "You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody. I’m not talking about lots of clothes.” – Diana Vreeland

10. "Luxury is the ease of a T-shirt in a very expensive dress." – Karl Lagerfeld

11. "The best things in life are free. The second best are very expensive." – Coco Chanel

12. "Fashion is very important. It is life-enhancing and, like everything that gives pleasure, it is worth doing well.” – Vivienne Westwood

13. "A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste – it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against." – Diana Vreeland

14. "If you love something, wear it all the time. Find things that suit you. This is how you look extraordinary." – Vivienne Westwood

15. “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” – Coco Chanel

Closing Thoughts

Artist Theaster Gates said, “At every level of the human experience, we are looking for the beautiful, something that gives priority to our souls, not just our physical needs. We drink in nature, we yearn to commune with the beautiful, we crave the sublime, so that’s why the starting point for everything I do is the beautiful, not the practical.” And while your flavor of beauty doesn’t necessarily have to look like the latest petit four-inspired confection sent down the runway at Moschino, beauty for beauty’s sake is clearly an end itself, and the key to a life well-lived.

So if, to you, the pinnacle of beauty is found in the latest Giambattista Valli collection, you are seen, heard, and likely one of the happiest women in the room. Because if fashion is beauty, and beauty is life, then fashion = a sublime, rapturous, bliss-filled and “eau de divinité”-infused life. 

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