Quotations about Clothing

The finest clothing made is a person's skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this. ~Mark Twain


Unmentionables - those articles of ladies' apparel that are never discussed in public, except in full-page, illustrated ads. ~Changing Times


A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together. ~James H. Boren


I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn't itch. ~Gilda Radner


If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it. ~Albert Einstein


People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile. ~Lee Mildon


It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. ~Henry David Thoreau


When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. ~Lois McMaster Bujold


Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. ~Henry David Thoreau


I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes. ~Robert A. Heinlein


Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden


Seldom do people discern
Eloquence under a threadbare cloak.
~Juvenal


If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck? ~Linda Ellerbee


I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking. ~Lin Yutang


A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined. ~Anne Petry


I talk to him when I'm lonesome like; and I'm sure he understands. When he looks at me so attentively, and gently licks my hands; then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say naught thereat. For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that. ~W. Dayton Wedgefarth


Just around the corner in every woman's mind - is a lovely dress, a wonderful suit, or entire costume which will make an enchanting new creature of her. ~Wilhela Cushman


A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you. ~Françoise Sagan


Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that. ~Charles Dickens


When in doubt, wear red. ~Bill Blass


Women usually love what they buy, yet hate two-thirds of what is in their closets. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


What a strange power there is in clothing. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer


Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. ~Mark Twain


There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they would mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. ~Virginia Woolf


A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time. ~Laurence Sterne


Shopping tip: You can get shoes for 85 cents at the bowling alley. ~Author Unknown


O what a sight were Man, if his attires
Did alter with his minde;
And like a dolphins skinne, his clothes combin'd
With his desires!
~George Herbert


Every time a woman leaves off something she looks better, but every time a man leaves off something he looks worse. ~Will Rogers


Remember that always dressing in understated good taste is the same as playing dead. ~Susan Catherine


Funny that a pair of really nice shoes make us feel good in our heads - at the extreme opposite end of our bodies. ~Levende Waters


The only man who really needs a tail coat is a man with a hole in his trousers. ~John Taylor


Do men who have got all their marbles go swimming in lakes with their clothes on? ~P.G. Wodehouse


I simply can't understand
Why swimsuits are in such demand
They're soggy and damp,
Bind like a clamp,
And hold about three pounds of sand!
~D.R. Benson


Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear! ~Herman Melville


What do nudists wear on casual Fridays? ~Author Unknown


Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul. ~Quentin Bell


Stretch pants - the garment that made skiing a spectator sport. ~Author Unknown


Why is it considered seductive for women to wear beautiful clothes? Wouldn't it make more sense to wear something so ugly that a guy couldn't wait to take it off you? ~Flash Rosenberg


As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. ~John Ruskin


I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims


Where's the man could ease a heart
Like a satin gown?
~Dorothy Parker, "The Satin Dress"


Almost every man looks more so in a belted trench coat. ~Sydney J. Harris


The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. ~Thomas Carlyle


The dress must not hang on the body but follow its lines. It must accompany its wearer and when a woman smiles the dress must smile with her. ~Madeleine Vionnet


You have to have the kind of body that doesn't need a girdle in order to get to pose in one. ~Carolyn Kenmore


Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. ~Jane Austen



All dress is fancy dress, is it not, except our natural skins? ~George Bernard Shaw


Every uniform corrupts one's character. ~Max Frisch


After all there is something about a wedding-gown prettier than in any other gown in the world. ~Douglas William Jerrold


Fashion is like the id. It makes you desire things you shouldn't. ~Bob Morris


It's always the badly dressed people who are the most interesting. ~Jean Paul Gaultier


Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible. ~James Laver, Style in Costume


She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak. ~Woody Allen, Getting Even, 1973


On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do. ~Elizabeth Bowen


For your own sake you should give her a new gown; for variety of dresses rouses desire, and makes an old mistress seem every day a new one. ~William Wycherley


Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly. ~Epictetus


High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead. ~Christopher Morley


I don't know who invented the high heel, but all men owe him a lot. ~Marilyn Monroe


Dresses for breakfasts, and dinners, and balls;
Dresses to sit in, and stand in, and walk in;
Dresses to dance in, and flirt in, and talk in;
Dresses in which to do nothing at all;
Dresses for Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.
~William Allen Butler, "Nothing to Wear"


One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. ~Oscar Wilde


Clothes can suggest, persuade, connote, insinuate, or indeed lie, and apply subtle pressure while their wearer is speaking frankly and straightforwardly of other matters. ~Anne Hollander


When I free my body from its clothes, from all their buttons, belts, and laces, it seems to me that my soul takes a deeper, freer breath. ~August Strindberg


Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions. ~CoCo Chanel


It's not what you wear - it's how you take it off. ~Author Unknown


Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. ~Janet Lane


Fashion Law: If the shoe fits, it's ugly. ~Author Unknown


Like every good man, I strive for perfection, and, like every ordinary man, I have found that perfection is out of reach - but not the perfect suit. ~Edward Tivnan


Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce


Adornment is never anything except a reflection of the heart. ~Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel


Judging from the ugly and repugnant things that are sometimes in vogue, it would seem as though fashion were desirous of exhibiting its power by getting us to adopt the most atrocious things for its sake alone. ~Georg Simmel


Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are. ~Quentin Crisp


To be a fashionable woman is to know yourself, know what you represent, and know what works for you. To be "in fashion" could be a disaster on 90 percent of women. You are not a page out of Vogue. ~Author Unknown


The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.
~Robert Harling, Steel Magnolias


If I were a cat, what would make me purr? A pair of really comfortable blue jeans, and massages. ~Cinnamon Stomberger


I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet. ~Ancient Persian Saying


Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding. ~Philip Dormer Stanhope


His clothes fit him so ill, and constrain him so much, that he seems rather their prisoner than their proprietor. ~Philip Dormer Stanhope


If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular? ~Source Unknown


She had the loaded handbag of someone who camps out and seldom goes home, or who imagines life must be full of emergencies. ~Mavis Gallant


Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women. ~Elsa Schiaparelli


No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit. ~Frederick G. Banting


There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress. ~Joseph Addison


Your Business clothes are naturally attracted to staining liquids. This attraction is strongest just before an important meeting. ~Scott Adams


But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare,
When at the same moment she had on a dress
Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less,
And jewelry worth tem times more, I should guess,
That he had not a thing in the wide world to wear!
~William Allen Butler, "Nothing to Wear"


If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater. ~Pam Brown


Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress. ~William Hazlitt, On the Clerical Character, 1819


If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare. ~William Arnot


I love America, and I love American women. But there is one thing that deeply shocks me - American closets. I cannot believe one can dress well when you have so much. ~Andrée Putman


Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul. ~Mark Twain


A part of this strangeness of dress is that it links the biological body to the social being, and public to private. ~Elizabeth Wilson


Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess. ~Edna Woolman Chase


The best-dressed woman is one whose clothes wouldn't look too strange in the country. ~Hardy Amies


A skirt is no obstacle to extemporaneous sex, but it is physically impossible to make love to a girl while she is wearing trousers. ~Helen Lawrenson


Did you hear about the Scottish drag queen? He wore pants. ~Lynn Lavner


Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~Dorothy Parker


Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse? ~Roland Barthes


Carelessness in dressing is moral suicide. ~Honoré de Balzac


All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress. ~Lin Yutang


I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes. ~Yves Saint Laurent


I want to die with my blue jeans on. ~Andy Warhol


You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word. ~Elizabeth Bibesco


Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. ~Mason Cooley


What a man most enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them. ~Brendan Francis


Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something. ~James Laver


Those hot pants of hers were so damned tight, I could hardly breathe. ~Benny Hill


If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater... suggest that he wear a tail. ~Fran Lebowitz


Although a life-long fashion dropout, I have absorbed enough by reading Harper's Bazaar while waiting at the dentist's to have grasped that the purpose of fashion is to make A Statement. My own modest Statement, discerned by true cognoscenti, is, "Woman Who Wears Clothes So She Won't Be Naked." ~Molly Ivins


The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. ~Cecil Beaton


Never wear anything that panics the cat. ~P.J. O'Rourke


No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink. ~Murray Banks