Thought for the day

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something, and that something is to a large extent outside the control of our conscious minds. James Laver

Thought for the day

Diana Vreeland

Three-tenths of a good appearance are due to nature; seven-tenths to dress. Chinese saying.

Thought for the day

I should like my dress to be a poem about myself, my persona, the outward and visible presentation of my individuality. And that particular mode and fabric and manner which I should choose might not at all recommend itself to my next-dooor neighbour. Indeed, I hope it would not. For the loveliest and most human thing about humanity is the infinity of its types and modes of manifestation.

'A Girl Graduate'
Pall Mall Gazette 1884

Thought for the day

Saul Bellow

Poets, artists, and men of genius in general are seldom coxcombs, but often slovens; for they find something out of themselves better worth studying than their own persons. William Hazlitt

Thought for the day

Often I have turned into [London's] old clothes market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through . . . Monmouth Street, with its empty suits . . . Silent are they, but expressive in their silence: the past witnesses and instruments of woe and joy, of passions, virtues, crimes, and all fathomless tumult of good and evil in 'the prison called life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom old clothes are not venerable. Thomas Carlyle

Thought for the day

It is eleven years since I have seen my figure in a glass. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable, I resolved to spare myself such mortifications for the future. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Thought for the day

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 Bell

Thought for the day

Dandyism is a state of being composed entirely of nuances - as always occurs in extremely old and extremely civilised societies. Jules Amedee Barbey D'Aurevilly

Thought for the day

Fond pride of dress is sure an empty curse; E'er Fancy you consult, consult your purse. Benjamin Franklin

Thought for the day

A plain, genteel dress is more admired, and obtains more credit, than lace and embroidery, in the eyes of the judicious and the sensible. George Washington

Thought for the day

Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Jane Austen

Thought for the day

The impulse and the will to carry through an unorthodox style are no casual matter. Kennedy Fraser

Thought for the day

You wouldn't know me to see me dressed! James Whitcomb Riley.

Thought for the day

Fashion comes from a dream. Dior

Thought for the day

Marguerite Duras by Avedon, 1993

People stop in amazement at the elegance of the foreigner who walks along unseeing. Like a queen . . . She's dressed in old European clothes, scraps of brocade, out-of-date old suits, old curtains, old models, moth-eaten old fox furs, old otterskins, that's her kind of beauty, tattered, chilly, plaintive and in exile, nothing suits her, everything's too big, and yet it looks marvellous. Marguerite Duras

Thought for the day

Fashion must be the intoxicating release from the banality of the world. Diana Vreeland

Thought for the day

For your own sake you should give her a new gown; for variety of dresses, rouses desire, and makes an old mistress seem every day a new one. William Wycherley 1640 -1716

Thought for the day

'What shall I wear?' is society's second most frequently asked question.The first is, 'Do you really love me? No matter what one replies to either one,it is never accepted as settling the question. Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

Thought for the day

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Conrad Aiken

Thought for the day

Fashion is cleavage, style is collarbones. Betty Sue