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Smart Words on Fashion and Art From the People Who Know it Best

Anyone can give advice on fashion. However, for some matters, it’s best to leave opinion to the experts. After all, they’re the ones who managed to make a living out of this zany industry we call fashion, managing to endure day in and day out the trials and tribulations of one of the craziest businesses in the world. But it’s those experts who know fashion the best. So when it comes to tips and words of wisdom, it’s pretty much best to just listen to them. No list of quotes on fashion would be complete without the reigning queen of it all, Coco Chanel. Practically the most powerful woman to ever exist in couture, Chanel understood what it meant to work hard, and also understand what it was that made a woman beautiful. She also always had something to say about style, like this famous and often-repeated quote: “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.”For designer Issac Mizrahi, fashion just wasn’t enough–he had to have a television show, too. After years in the business, he’s got more than enough insight and zany quotes to fill several books, let alone a single article. Here’s one: “I don’t like people to feel completely described by the clothes they wear of mine. I want them to feel that they’re describing themselves.”Part model, part musician, part actress, Grace Jones was one of the seminal figures of the 1970s downtown New York scene. Her influence in the modeling world is still felt, and she was one of the few performers who did a truly decadent job of dressing herself: “Models are there to look like mannequins, not like real people. Art and illusion are supposed to be fantasy.”You can’t really talk about fashion without talking about Madonna. Though she might be all grown up now, her 1980s attire launched a thousand teenage girls to run around the mall and copy her style. On making it: “I think the ultimate challenge is to have some kind of style and grace, even though you haven’t got money, or standing in society, or formal education. I had a very middle, lower-middle class sort of upbringing, but I identify with people who’ve had, at some point in their lives to struggle to survive. It adds another color to your character.”Once a fixture of the explosive after-hours seen in 1980s London, Simon Foxton still lives and works as a stylist today. He was one of the first stylists of the 1980s to make it from the club flyers to the glossy magazines of Milan and New York. Famous quote: “For the last three or four decades it has been the streets [setting trends], and maybe now it’s gone back to the designers again and they’re the ones who are coming up with the goods and setting the trends.”Fashion designer Jeremy Scott is known for his hilarious and fabulous fashion shows in Paris. Since relocating to Los Angeles, he’s managed to grab the attention of major States-side celebrities. Famous quote: “I’ve never met someone that I thought, oh my god what the — is she doing with my clothes? It’s always cute kids and that’s the most flattering. It’s people I would like to know or would like to talk to, people who have similar interests too. That’s the whole thing about fashion: it’s not only about the clothes but also about the people.”A man who knows what it’s like to turn a name into a brand, Ralph Lauren set the bar for accessible yet proper fashion and what it means to create a lifestyle instead of just a garment. Famous quote: “I’d like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressing for other people, that they’re wearing what they like and what suits them. It’s not a status thing.”


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