Quotes & Sayings About Fashion Designers

Today, there is no fashion, really. There are just ... choices. Women dress today to reveal their personalities. They used to reveal the designer's personality. Until the 70s, women listened to designers. Now women want to do it their own way. There are no boundaries. And without boundaries, there is no fashion. — Oscar De La Renta

We're making clothes - we aren't saving the world. I'm not saying that designers aren't artists, but at the end of the day, we make clothes. Hopefully we make beautiful clothes with a message, but in the end it's for people to wear. I think that the hype of fashion has come down a level. — Joseph Altuzarra

Fashion was in a crisis up until the mid-'90s and, when it came out of the crisis, it was a very different place. It was a place that nurtured and cultivated young entrepreneurial designers. — Tim Gunn

I don't at all want to resemble some of these young designers who ask hallucinating prices for rags that are so in fashion now, that six months later, they are old-fashioned! I love vintage boutiques, I love to customize my clothes. And then, with my friends, we regularly exchange togs. — Milla Jovovich

I think it's a great thing to support fashion and support designers. — Delphine Arnault

I came from a different world from other designers because I already had such a strong fan base that was interested in fashion. You have to give the little divas something. — Christian Siriano

Tailoring was considered to be a world that was very traditional, and basically going out of fashion. Fashion designers did not have a real link with tailoring or tradition, so I fused the two worlds together. — Ozwald Boateng

London is very fashion-forward. Everyone's very stylish, and the designers are great. It's very my style, grungy and feminine - a bit of everything. — Jessica Hart

I have a showroom where we experiment with twelve cakes. We develop sketches and ideas for cakes for the next season. We work with the top fashion designers to see what type of lace they are using or work with the top florist for us to be able to make various sugar roses or flowers. — Ron Ben-Israel

For modern fashion designers, bones are beautiful. I don't know why, but so many people are obsessed with the skeletal look. — Marie Helvin

I love clothes. I don't know a woman who doesn't. But generally women are intrigued with fashion. Designers are almost making fun of us at times. — Olivia Newton-John

Don't you think that a lot of designers get into fashion because they have something about themselves that they don't like? — Narciso Rodriguez

Even during the golden age of fashion, you had haute couture houses where the designers didn't have money. — Olivier Theyskens

The Council of Fashion Designers of America is a national neurotic society of creative leaders in various fields of fashion. — Oscar De La Renta

For my film 'Fashion,' like an investigative journalist, I went about knowing the people, the models, the fashion designers. Similarly with the corporate world. — Madhur Bhandarkar

I don't think there is the same space for fashion designers to create like Yves was doing it. So, it's that he's one of the last, great geniuses in fashion. — Gaspard Ulliel

One doesn't want fashion to look ridiculous, silly, or out of step with the times - but you do want designers that make you think, that make you look at fashion differently. That's how fashion changes. If it doesn't change, it's not looking forward. And that's important to me. — Anna Wintour

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. — Coco Chanel

Anyone who thinks designers don't talk to editors, and editors don't talk to stores doesn't know what's happening ... It's called crossover, sampling all references in music, art and fashion. — Marc Jacobs

Paris is one of the fashion capitals of the world and such an incredible breeding ground for designers. You can't help but find it an inspiring place. — Alice Temperley

It's often said that costume designers are a faceless group of people. But we can contribute to fashion in a way that might be new and different. — Colleen Atwood

'Vogue' has the power to make and break - whether it's fashion trends, designers, models, and yes, even industry practices. — Tyra Banks

Fashions fade, style is eternal. - Yves Saint-LaurentThe most important thing to remember is that you can wear all the greatest clothes and all the greatest shoes, but you've got to have a good spirit on the inside. That's what's really going to make you look like you're ready to rock the world. - Alicia KeysIt's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together. — Alexander McQueen

It is important always to have really original talent. There are lots of good designers that make attractive clothes and make women look beautiful. But at the same time, one doesn't want to lose the idea that there is someone out there who can change the way you look at fashion. — Anna Wintour

You don't need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don't wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children's trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance. — John Waters

I'm only waiting for Lindsay Lohan's fashion collection to come out. Ten years from now, there may be no real designers left. — Vera Wang

The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season). — Milan Kundera

Maybe it's low-wage work in general that has the effect of making feel like a pariah. When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the anchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly - the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party. And in a sense she would be right: the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment. Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample. The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the temple. — Barbara Ehrenreich

You always hear about fashion's success stories. How a starlet lost an earring one night and by the next morning, the entire country was wearing one earring. Or how sweaters made a comeback in a drugstore, or a First Lady influenced how we dressed during her reign. But what about the losers? The fashions that came and went out the same day? The hopes and dreams of designers that were shattered by the sound of fifty million women ... laughing themselves to death. — Erma Bombeck

Brazil has its own fashion identity. Many very talented Brazilian designers show every season at Sao Paulo and Rio fashion weeks. — Gisele Bundchen

I think it's cool that London Fashion Week is about young designers trying wacky things. — Alexa Chung

As a Business Ambassador, I am delighted to help both new and established British designers receive the recognition they deserve in the global fashion arena. — Tamara Mellon

Fashion is what you're offered four times a year by designers. And style is what you choose. — Lauren Hutton

Tell me, why do former young designers who are now in their middle 40s have to redo the 1960s and 70s. Why they cannot invent fashion for today? — Karl Lagerfeld

I always look at the work of fashion designers as if they were art. — Zubin Mehta

As the fashion carousel spins ever faster, the concern is that, while the stream of newness never runs out, there's going to be a good deal more crash and burn among designers in the future. — Suzy Menkes

With celebrity being our new religion, it's increasingly difficult to start up on your own. Talented young designers are more likely to either go and work for celebrity brands or huge fashion houses than ever before. — Alice Temperley

There's a tendency to think that young designers only do fantasy fashion, but I'm more interested in making clothes that women can afford. — Alexander Wang

My role as the chair of the fashion department at Parsons put me face to face with all the big designers, retailers, and editors. Since I was moving in these new circles regularly, I realized I needed to do something about my own personal style. It was really Diane von Furstenberg who gave me the nudge. — Tim Gunn

I represent a body image that wasn't accepted in high fashion before, and I'm very lucky to be supported by the designers, stylists, and editors that I am: ones that know this is fashion; this is art. It can never stay the same. It's 2015. — Gigi Hadid

As the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, I represent the designers. And while we can by no means take the blame for eating disorders, we can play our part in addressing this important issue. — Diane Von Furstenberg

I saw young women in the street dressing in a way that I thought was influencing the designers. Fashion was being influenced by all sorts of different people, and culture and also across the street. So I saw more as a trickle up, than a trickle down influence. When I came to Vogue, that's what I wanted it to reflect. — Anna Wintour

I'm really not for famous people who design a line for a company, when you know it's not really them creating it but a team of designers, especially when there are so many talented people who've taken the time to go and study fashion. — Bonnie Wright

It was only when I began modeling at 18 that I really began enjoying fashion and reading any fashion magazine I could get my hands on, and developing a profound respect for designers, fashion and how to wear it. — Poppy Delevingne

The designers, photographers and models I work with, they are really hard-working people who are devoting their lives to fashion. They're kind of like nuns of fashion. — Alber Elbaz

We are talking about mutated women, the result of cruel genetic experiments performed by fashion designers so lacking in any sense of human decency that they think nothing of putting their initials on your eyeglass lenses. The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates. If a normal woman puts on clothing designed for these unfortunate people, she is quite naturally going to look like Revenge of the Pork Person. — Dave Barry

Fashion designers only occasionally tread outside the realm of clothes as pure commodity. When they do, the results are often a muddled, self-conscious message. — Robin Givhan

My mother was a beauty queen in her hey day. That's where I learnt a little about makeup and hair ... I had never picked up or even seen a 'Vogue' before I was 17. I had no idea about fashion, magazines, models or designers. No idea. — Kylie Bax

What we considered to be so much part of our everyday fashion vocabulary today, where we see all these designers restarting with these big houses, was just beginning then [in the 90th]. — Roopal Patel

Dear London, British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country. With your help, we would like to see these numbers rise for the good of our industry, our talented designers, and our reputation worldwide. — Natalie Massenet

And which new designers are most likely to have the right habits? The ones who have formed the right truces and found the right alliances. Truces are so important that new fashion labels usually succeed only if they are headed by people who left other fashion companies on good terms. — Charles Duhigg

It's so funny because when I talk about fashion and menswear designers, it's really like a small percentage of my head. I don't mind talking about it, but I always worry that it's gonna seem to the outside world that that's all I think about. — Albert Hammond Jr.

I think the relationship is very tenuous between fashion and art. Many designers have built relationships with artists, which is not something I personally did. But it's true, sometimes you see artists working for a designer or a brand on some specific project or taking care of their environment and making an amazing store. — Olivier Theyskens

Speaking of high-end shoe designers, in 2011 it was fascinating to see the design company of Christian Louboutin try to stop the company Yves Saint Laurent from producing high heels with red soles, claiming that Louboutin was the originator of the red sole. Louboutin lost, and I was glad. He was not the first person to paint a sole, and I am wary of patenting a color, like Tiffany blue. Why should we grant that entire history to Louboutin and say there are no predecessors and should be no successors? — Tim Gunn

The fashion industry is often charged with having kept its blinders on as one Seventh Avenue company after another lost employees to AIDS. Consumers, it was feared, would shun the racks of designers whose names were associated with the disease. And to stand up against AIDS would, in many minds, confirm the business's stereotypical image. — Michael Shnayerson

I feel like fashion was much more exclusive. There weren't as many parties. There weren't as many social gatherings. It wasn't required that designers have events to lure customers or editors or any of that - it was about a show. If there was a dinner or a party, people would go out after. New York nightlife was about late nights and dancing. — Roopal Patel

Fashion Week is so important for designers. — Diane Von Furstenberg

I really don't think about making fashion statements. Just like any other woman or girl, I like to dress up. I think I'm fortunate enough to be dressed by some of India's best designers and to have the opportunity to wear their wonderful creations. But I have never made a conscious effort to try and be a fashion icon or something. — Sania Mirza

I'd love to go to fashion week! I'm learning more about designers, thanks to 'Pretty Little Liars' costume designer, Mandi Line. — Lucy Hale

Although the art world is frequently characterised as a classless scene where artists from lower-msddle-class backgrounds drink champagne with high-priced hedge-fund managers, scholarly curators, fashion designers and other "creatives," you'd be mistaken if you thought the world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimenting with ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion. In a society where everyone is looking for a little distinction, it's an intoxicating combination. — Sarah Thornton

The present fashion system is too hard - there are too many collections. The designers have no time to think! Money is too important. Schedules are too crazy. — Azzedine Alaia

We are being accused that some models are anorexic. But we as fashion designers cannot be blamed, because you know, when I talk to women around the world, rich and poor and young and old and intellectual and not, what they want to be is skinny. You ask them, 'What is your dream?' It's to be skinny. That's all they want. — Alber Elbaz

We, as designers, have a job with so many possibilities and connections. We are connected to so many different portals, from art to movies to music to design. Fashion is always evolving. Actually, the field is huge. I don't think there is another profession that is so open to so many possibilities. — Miuccia Prada

If I'm doing something in fashion, I will try to respect the 'laws' of the business, but I will try to keep my integrity and my respect for the designers and for my readers. — Carine Roitfeld

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Alexander McQueen was one of the greatest fashion designers of his generation. His genius, sometimes provocative, admired and saluted by all, constantly opened new perspectives. Visionary and avant-garde, his creations took their inspiration from both tradition and timeless hyper-modernity. — Francois-Henri Pinault

There's something about the fashion world that I like, which is, I see a lot of the designers really have affection for other designers. — Harvey Weinstein

I am happy that thousands of students, young designers and fashion people will be able to see and study my work in every aspect of it. — Valentino Garavani

Working in a store and being a shop assistant, if you don't know what to do and you like fashion, I think it's a great way of getting into the business because you do windows, cleaning, and everything. That was my school for two years, working in a shop, and that's how I met people in magazines and designers. — Nicola Formichetti

Previous first ladies seemed to feel the need to wear a sort of uniform, whereas Michelle Obama likes fashion and is very comfortable in fashion. She's happy to mix high and low, and she loves emerging designers. That will do nothing but good for our industry. — Anna Wintour

In fashion, general people will look to the piece itself. [Some designers] concentrate on, 'How can I make this seam look special?' or 'What am I going to do with that button so it looks interesting?' I am not interested in that. At the moment, I am more interested in the shape and the form. I have a big desire to make clothes without defining them. — Raf Simons

Fashion is an illusion. It's a multibillion-pound industry that has to appear frivolous. Designers work and work and work, all night sometimes. — Philip Treacy

Sometimes I feel like what's hard for fashion designers to do is take looks from off the runway and actually put it into existence, into reality. That's really the hard part. — ASAP Rocky

There are not many designers who are truly creative and literate. Most are self-indulgent, illiterate, fashion-mongering, service people trying to bridge a message between a product and an audience. — Ivan Chermayeff

Some designers are so airy-fairy people can't connect with them. I hope people can relate to me, to a normal person who just happens to be a fashion designer, that people can take me as they find me. It's not the designer's job to care about what people think. Whatever else I've done, I've never tried to be something that I'm not. — Alexander McQueen

I'm a fashion designer. What I do is artistic, but I'm not an artist because everything I do is destined to be sold. That's not to say that you can't be an artist and a fashion designer. I think some designers are artists. — Tom Ford

I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions. — Suzy Menkes

Fashion is about affordable luxury ... To succeed, designers need to be affordable, wearable, accessible, and aspirational. — Tommy Hilfiger

A wise friend once told me, 'Don't wear what fashion designers tell you to wear. Wear what _they_ wear.' His point being that most designers, no matter what they throw onto the runway, favor simple, flattering pieces for themselves. — Tina Fey

I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether they're the invention of artistic people or directors, musicians. I think music and art and fashion designers inspire me and I like characters. — Marc Jacobs

I'm not sure what I think about current fashion, though. A few years ago, I would have said it's really, really bad and you hardly ever see anybody looking good. There must be some very good designers in the world. — Vivienne Westwood

I think that young British designers have a kind of fearlessness in they way they approach fashion. — Monika Chiang

Fashion is very tough, and we shouldn't forget that before designers were money-makers, they were artists. — Carine Roitfeld

As I have written before, one of my favorite parts of my job as CEO of Moda Operandi is the opportunity I get to explore international fashion scenes to discover new talent, and then being able to introduce these designers to our community of fashion-savvy customers worldwide. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

The craziest thing about fashion people in general, not just designers, is that it's always, "Oh my God, you lost weight! I love your hair!" Or "Oh, you're so tan!" Or, "You're so skinny! I love your shoes!" These are fashion icebreakers. Everyone's always looking at each other. — Michael Kors

I think someone's biggest competition is themselves. I stand out as a 'fashion' designer and not to be confused with, (people who call themselves 'clothing' designers, who just print designs or logos on pre-existing t-shirts), because what I have created is custom fashions that are a personal extension of myself and my personality. It's pretty unique since there is only one of me. — Ashley Purdy

I have fashion designers that I definitely respect. After working for a few years in the industry, you want to branch out and do your own thing and I think that's something that has always been important to me is strengthening the brand and just sticking to "this is who we are, this is our identity, this is who we're going to be". I definitely respect other designers but I don't necessarily have one that I look up to. — Lauren Conrad

Fashion designers are dictators of taste. — Karl Lagerfeld

Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy. — Erma Bombeck

Antwerp literally was a trash hole, but fashion changed that. The designers there were extreme, and their work was hard to understand. But now, people from all over the world come to Antwerp to shop. — Raf Simons

You are not the problem but fashion designers, who are limiting themselves creatively. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

My fashion resolution for 2015 is to continue to be inspired by all of the great designers of the past and present while keeping true to my style and myself. — Bella Hadid

I love that you can have the language between the two worlds of technology and fashion, because I don't think that many designers get to do that. — Stella McCartney

I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!' — Vivienne Westwood

The beauty of the soul enfold in spiritual-life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You can tell when someone is driven by labels. If something is couture, they think it's important and wear it and sometimes make a terrible fashion mistake. People are shocked that I know so little about designers. — Zoe Kravitz

Today's designers don't care if fashion has no relationship to human anatomy. — Oleg Cassini

There are some designers who flash and burn - Courreges is an example of that. But he still marked fashion history. And I don't think that longevity is always a badge of honor. Modern brand management means that we are always celebrating birthdays, when what is exciting about fashion is innovation, not repetition. — Suzy Menkes

When you hear designers complaining about the challenge of their profession, you have to say: don't get carried away-it's only dresses. — Karl Lagerfeld

My style has definitely grown since moving to New York and working on 'Gossip Girl.' I'm more aware of a lot of designers and I'm more aware of fashion. — Jessica Szohr