A beautiful dress may look beautiful on a hanger, but that means nothing. It must be seen on the shoulders, with the movement of the arms, the legs, and the waist.
A dress is not a dressing. It is made to be worn. One wears clothes with the shoulders. A dress should hang from the shoulders.
A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion.
A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.
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.
A woman can be over dressed but never over elegant.
A woman has the age she deserves.
A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.
A women who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.
Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!
An elegant woman should be able to do her marketing without making housewives laugh. Those who laugh are always right.
As long as you know men are like children, you know everything.
As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.
Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.
Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.
Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.
Elegance is refusal.
Fashion changes, but style endures.
Fashion fades, only style remains the same.
Fashion has become a joke. The designers have forgotten that there are women inside the dresses. Most women dress for men and want to be admired. But they must also be able to move, to get into a car without bursting their seams! Clothes must have a natural shape.
Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.
Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.
Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
Fashion is made to become unfashionable.
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.
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.
Fashion passes, style remains.
Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.
Great loves too must be endured.
Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.
Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but has to be someone
I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.
I don’t do fashion, I am fashion.
I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one the things that women have is men.
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.
I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.
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.
I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.
I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well-dressed.
I was the one who changed, it wasn’t fashion. I was the one who was in fashion.
If a man speaks badly about all women, it usually means he was burned by one woman.
If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent their growing.
In fashion, you know you have succeeded when there is an element of upset.
In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.
Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.
It is always better to be slightly underdressed.
It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure.
I’ve never done anything by halves.
Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.
Learn the difference between style and fashion.
Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.
Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends.
Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.
Material things aside, we need no advice but approval.
My friends, there are no friends.
Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.
Nothing goes out of fashion sooner than a long dress with a very low neck.
One can get used to ugliness, but never to negligence.
Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is difficult.
Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.
Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.
Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.
The best color in the whole world, is the one that looks good, on you!
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
There are people who have money and people who are rich.
There goes a woman who knows all the things that can be taught and none of the things that cannot be taught.
There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!
There is no fashion for the old.
There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
There is time for work, and time for love. That leaves no other time.
Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.
True generosity means accepting ingratitude.
When I can no longer create anything, I’ll be done for.
‘Where should one use perfume?’ a young woman asked. ‘Wherever one wants to be kissed,’ I said.
Wherever one wants to be kissed.
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.
Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.
Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.
Women think of all colors except the absence of color. I have said that black has it all. White too. Their beauty is absolute. It is the perfect harmony.
Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
