Sunday 15 March 2009

My kind of people: Coco Chanel's words of wisdom


1 Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.

2 Fashion passes, style remains.

3 Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.

4 In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

5 A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

6 The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

7 As long as you know men are like children, you know everything.

8 Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

9 How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

10 Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

11 The best color in the whole world, is the one that looks good, on you.

12 A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future.

13 Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

14 A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.

15 If a man talks bad about all women, it usually means he was burned by one woman.

16 I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.

17 There goes a woman who knows all the things that can be taught and none of the things that cannot be taught.

18 Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

19 There is time for work, and time for love. That leaves no other time.

20 There are people who have money and people who are rich.

21 I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.22 Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

23 Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

24 Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

25 Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.

26 Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

27 My friends, there are no friends.

28 Great loves too must be endured.

29 A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.

30 Elegance is refusal.

31 Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

32 I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.

33 Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.

34 Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

35 Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

36 It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure.

37 I don't know why women want any of the things men have when one the things that women have is men.

38 A woman has the age she deserves.

39 Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.

40 Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: 'One must not hide that!' Then someone tells you: 'The shoulder is on the back'. I have never seen women with shoulders on their backs.

41 When I can no longer create anything, I'll be done for.

42 Material things aside, we need no advice but approval.

43 Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

44 Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

45 I was the one who changed, it wasn't fashion. I was the one who was in fashion.

46 A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion.

47 Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is difficult.

48 May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life.

49 In fashion, you know you have succeeded when there is an element of upset.

50 I've never done anything by halves. My reason for choosing diamonds is that, dense as they are, they represent the greatest worth in the smallest.

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