quotations about clothes
Clothes themselves are believed to be merely shifting ephemera on the surface of life, and so it is very easy to consider them trivial and to concentrate instead on the seriousness of what they mean. Deep personal concern about the details of one's own clothes may still be supposed to indicate a shallow heart and a limited mind; but serious thinkers, faced with the obvious power of dress even over very profound spirits, have been led to treat clothes as if they were metaphors and illustrations.
ANNE HOLLANDER
Seeing Through Clothes
I'm tired of waking up in the same clothes
And the same holes in my skin
The same notes in the same hair
And the same words to the same songs in my head
LOW
"Same", The Curtain Hits the Cast
I cannot pretend to do sculpture and make a woman the ridiculous pedestal of my pretensions. To render clothing poetic, yes--but one must preserve its dignity as clothing.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
I, who love woman, wanted to give her clothes in which she could be comfortable, in which she could drive a car, yet at the same time clothes that emphasized her femininity, clothes that flowed with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.
COCO CHANEL
attributed, Mademoiselle Chanel
Because they share the perpetually idealizing vision of art, clothes must be seen and studied as paintings are seen and studied--not primarily as cultural by-products or personal expressions but as connected links in a creative tradition of image-making.
ANNE HOLLANDER
Seeing Through Clothes
Apes are apes though clothed in scarlet.
BEN JOHNSON
The Poetaster
The clothes I wear say nothing about me, but judging me for what I wear says enough about you.
GEORGY
Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, Life of Johnson
Western clothing is not a sequence of direct social and aesthetic messages cast in a language of fabric but, rather, a form of self-perpetuating visual fiction, like figurative art itself.
ANNE HOLLANDER
Seeing Through Clothes
I'm sick of wearin hand-me-down, raggedy hood clothes
Call me ugly, man I wish a b**** would clothes
Go out to the club, yea we probably should clothes
Yea, uh, say I got on my good clothes, what
Uh, say I got on my good clothes
Yo, forty dollars I done got me some good clothes
LITTLE BROTHER
"Good Clothes", Getback
They are just clothes, shoes, and bags, you could say. And people do say it, day after day. But I think they are more than just clothes, shoes, and bags. They are a large part of a woman's character and tell us a bit of her story without saying a word.
NINA GARCIA
The Little Black Book of Style
I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult. Today they gave me comfort of a kind. I was wearing the right clothes for a hard day.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
See where she comes, apparell'd like the spring.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Dressing is a way of life. It brings you joy. It can give you freedom and liberation, help you to find yourself and to move without restraint. Isn't elegance forgetting what one is wearing?
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
You wash them clothes
Swee dee dee
And hang 'em on the line
I can see by the way
You wash them clothes
Your cookin' must be fine
CAT POWER
"Sweedeedee"
I like to watch the way a model moves in my clothes, the way she gives them life, or if they are wrong, stillborn, the way her life rejects them.
YVES SAINT LAURENT
Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1983
The soul of this man is his clothes.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
All's Well That Ends Well
Clothes as text, clothes as narration, clothes as a story. Clothes as the story of our lives. And if you were to gather all the clothes you have ever owned in all your life, each baby shoe and winter coat and wedding dress, you would have your autobiography.
LINDA GRANT
The Thoughtful Dresser
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Polite Conversation