Quotes About Fashion and Clothes

[zamb]

Clothes should be as interesting on the inside as on the outside, even if you enjoy it totally alone its important.
-Geoffrey Beene

[333]

I have put this quote on the Yohji designer's thread but thought that non Yohji fan can appreciate this quote as well.

"My concept for this main brand was that after trying so many fashion, when people are very tired of everything, then come. I can satisfy you. Because of it's simple-ness.

In simpleness, I am hiding things. Bomb. Excitement. Secret excitement."

- Yohji Yamamoto

Extracted from an audio interview

[lazyguru]

Everyday it accumulates…the constant challenge of not giving up because you think that something is not possible, or that you can’t do it anymore. There is no respite in this. Noticing social trends, looking at what other designers are doing, analyzing markets, thinking commercially, worrying about journalists, all serves no purpose for me in the work of making new things. And so I can concern myself only in the search for new things. It is, in a way, extremely simple. It is the only weapon I have. But of course it is also extremely difficult. Simple in the thinking but different in the realization.

I feel things have changed a little for the better since the ’80s when I first came to Paris. There are more people now who think conceptually, whose ideas come from feelings.

It is true to say that the very big enterprises rule the fashion world. This is especially true in Japan and that is a sad situation. I worry sometimes that creation will lose out to media overkill and market driven enterprises. But I have to believe that what will ultimately be significant, what will win in the end, what will last, is true creation.

- Rei Kawakubo, Spring 2000

[MJRH]

George Bernard Shaw

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

[trentk]

Proust on hidden details in fashion:

"I would discover in the blouse beneath it a thousand details of execution which had had every chance of remaining there unperceived, like those parts of an orchestral score to which the composer has devoted infinite labour albeit they may never reach the ears of the public: or in the sleeves of the jacket that lay folded across my arm I would see, I would drink in slowly, for my own pleasure or from affection for its wearer, some exquisite detail, a deliciously tinted strip, a lining of mauve satinette which, ordinarily concealed from every eye, was yet just as delicately fashioned as the outer parts, like those gothic carvings on a cathedral, hidden on the inside of a balustrade eighty feet from the ground, as perfect as are the bas-reliefs over the main porch, and yet never seen by any living man until, happening to pass that way upon his travels, an artist obtains leave to climb up there among them, to stroll in the open air, sweeping the whole town with a comprehensive gaze, between the soaring towers."

[MJRH]

oscar wilde on fashion and women's dress

after reading faust's signature for the umpteen thousandth time, i suddenly realized i didn't know its context. here it is. i've bolded a couple of the more brilliant lines. wilde also addresses the topic of masculinity in dress that frequently crops up in these parts. first paragraph's a bit off topic but the rest is spot on. enjoy.

---

It is, however, not merely in fiction and in poetry that the women of this century are making their mark. Their appearance amongst prominent speakers at the Church Congress some weeks ago, was in itself a very remarkable proof of the growing influence of women’s opinions on all matters connected with the elevation of our national life, and the amelioration of our social conditions. When the Bishops left the platform to their wives, it may be said that a new era began, and the change will no doubt be productive of much good. The Apostolic dictum, that women should not be suffered to teach, is no longer applicable to a society such as ours, with its solidarity of interests, its recognition of natural rights, and its universal education, however suitable it may have been to the Greek cities under Roman rule. Nothing in the United States struck me more than the fact that the remarkable intellectual progress of that country is very largely due to the efforts of American women, who edit many of the most powerful magazines and newspapers, take part in the discussion of every question of public interest, and exercise an important influence upon the growth and tendencies of literature and art. Indeed, the women of America are the one class in the community that enjoys that leisure which is so necessary for culture. The men are, as a rule, so absorbed in business, that the task of bringing some element of form into the chaos of daily life is left almost entirely to the opposite sex, and an eminent Bostonian once assured me that in the twentieth century the whole culture of his country would be in petticoats. By that time, however, it is probable that the dress of the two sexes will be assimilated, as similarity of costume always follows similarity of pursuits.

In a recent article in La France, M. Sarcey puts this point very well. The further we advance, he says, the more apparent does it become that women are to take their share as bread-winners in the world. The task is no longer monopolised by men, and will, perhaps, be equally shared by the sexes in another hundred years. It will be necessary, however, for women to invent a suitable costume, as their present style of dress is quite inappropriate to any kind of mechanical labour, and must be radically changed before they can compete with men upon their own ground. As to the question of desirability, M. Sarcey refuses to speak. “I shall not see the end of this revolution,” he remarks, “and I am glad of it.” But, as is pointed out in a very sensible article in the Daily News, there is no doubt that M. Sarcey has reason and common sense on his side with regard to the absolute unsuitability of ordinary feminine attire to any sort of handicraft, or even to any occupation which necessitates a daily walk to business and back again in all kinds of weather. Women’s dress can easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; but most women refuse to modify or adapt it. They must follow the fashion, whether it be convenient or the reverse. And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. From the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of health, every principle of hygiene. While from the point of view of simple ease and comfort it is not too much to say that, with the exception of M. Félix’s charming teagowns, and a few English tailor-made costumes, there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that can be worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer. The contortion of the feet of the Chinese beauty, said Dr. Naftel at the last International Medical Congress, held at Washington, is no more barbarous or unnatural than the panoply of the femme du monde.

And yet how sensible is the dress of the London milkwoman, of the Irish or Scotch fishwife, of the North-country factory-girl! An attempt was made recently to prevent the pit-women from working, on the ground that their costume was unsuited to their sex, but it is really only the idle classes who dress badly. Wherever physical labour of any kind is required, the costume used is, as a rule, absolutely right, for labour necessitates freedom, and without freedom there is no such thing as beauty in dress at all. In fact, the beauty of dress depends on the beauty of the human figure, and whatever limits, constrains, and mutilates is essentially ugly, though the eyes of many are so blinded by custom that they do not notice the ugliness till it has become unfashionable.

What women’s dress will be in the future it is difficult to say. The writer of the Daily News article is of the opinion that skirts will always be worn as distinctive of the sex, and it is obvious that men’s dress, in its present condition, is not by any means an example of a perfectly rational costume. It is more than probable, however, that the dress of the twentieth century will emphasise distinctions of occupation, not distinctions of sex.

– Oscar Wilde in “Literary and other Notes” in The Woman’s World, Volume 1, (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), p. 39. A facsimilie reprint of (London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1888).

(source)

[Faust]

/\ glad my signature was the source of inspiration.


"What good are the fancy ties and the nice suits if you can't get a hard on anymore?"

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

[Deuce]

"Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak"

[stephlinn]

"I like beans... and greens"
-yohji yamamoto

[galia]

In fact, the beauty of dress depends on the beauty of the human figure, and whatever limits, constrains, and mutilates is essentially ugly, though the eyes of many are so blinded by custom that they do not notice the ugliness till it has become unfashionable.

I couldn't disagree with this more. most people have less than attractive bodies, and displaying them in spandex and tracksuits (or flip flops in the case of their feet) is not doing anyone any favors. there's fashion, which is often ridiculous, there is "comfort dressing", which is usually plain repulsive, and then there's the politeness of not inflicting yourself on the world. The latter is even truer of mind and opinion, but it's certainly true of bodies as well. why must everyone be so entitled...

[trentk]

Proust's reaction to a stranger's clothes

"I had already observed with delight, in the thick of a crowd of journalists or men of friends of the actresses, who were greeting one another, talking, smoking, as though in a public thoroughfare, a young man in a black velvet cap and hortensia-coloured skirt, his cheeks chalked in red like a page from a Watteau album, who with his smiling lips, his eyes raised to the ceiling, as he sprang lightly into the air, seemed so entirely of another species than the rational folk in everyday clothes, in the
midst of whom he was pursuing like a madman the course of his ecstatic
dream, so alien to the preoccupations of their life, so anterior to
the habits of their civilisation, so enfranchised from all the laws of
nature, that it was as restful and as fresh a spectacle as watching a
butterfly straying along a crowded street to follow with one's eyes,
between the strips of canvas, the natural arabesques traced by his
winged capricious painted oscillations."

[Fade to Black]

Oh, how I feel this:

"The nation was fighting ugly ground wars in two countries, the planet was heating up like a toaster oven, and here at the 9:30, all around him, were hundreds of kids... with their sweet yearnings, their innocent entitlement - to what? To emotion. To unadulterated worship of a super-special band. To being left to themselves to ritually repudiate, for an hour or two on a Saturday night, the cynicism and anger of their elders. They seemed.. to bear malice towards nobody. Katz could see it in their clothing, which bespoke none of the rage and disaffection of the crowds he'd been a part of as a youngster. They gathered not in anger but in celebration of their having found, as a generation, a gentler and more respectful way of being. A way, not incidentally, more in harmony with consuming."

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

I can really identify with the rage of the narrator in this passage. Thanks for sharing.

[trentk]

on the lack of new youth culture styles. lol.

“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.” - John Waters

[Faust]

lmao. he's too awesome.

[laika]

(relevant here as a critique of the relentless discourse on quality)

"In an aristocracy of wealth everyone, even the poorest, is potentially wealthy both in legal theory and in private fancy. In such a society, therefore, all individuals are equally entitled, it is felt, so far as their pockets permit, to the insignia of fashion. This universalizing of fashion necessarily cheapens its value in the specific case and forces an abnormally rapid change of fashion. The only effective protection possesed by the wealthy in the world of fashion is the insistence on expensive materials in which fashion is to express itself. Too great an insistence on this factor, however, is the hall mark of wealthy vulgarity, for fashion is essentially a thing of forms and symbols, not of material values."

-Edward Sapir