Quotes from Elsa Schiaparelli

Pearls, including cheap ones, are always in good taste.

Some women succeed at being strong and also tender, but most of those who have intended to walk alone, making their own way, have lost their happiness.

A successful designer must be a gambler.

You cannot choose beforehand what you want to use for a suit. You may want to change your mind a dozen times before you are through.

Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.

One [has] to sense the trend of history and precede it.

In the building of a basic wardrobe, we cannot go wrong if we strive for simplicity and perfect fitting.

There are times to be casual and times to be correct. It's all right to wear a sweater and slacks on a picnic, but they don't belong in the theater or the drawing room.

What Hollywood designs today, you will be wearing tomorrow.

Mehr als das Leben lieb' ich meine Freiheit. More than life, I cherish freedom.

I stay out of the sun; it's terrible for the skin of any woman over 35. If you must have a suntan, at least keep moving while you're in the sun.

Fortunately, or unforunately for me, I am always at my best when I am unhampered: when I can let myself go and have a little fun.

Man was created to frame the woman.

Give a man a chance, and he'll be so casual that he won't bathe, shave, or comb his hair. He'll just depend on his animal magnetism to get him by.

Russian women are now interested in clothes. But they will never attach supreme importance to fashions as do Europeans and American women, because they are too vitally interested in all the various projects going on in their country.

Women can learn from men and improve their 'chic.' A man wouldn't think of wearing a tight shoe or one that didn't harmonize with his suit.

Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.

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

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.

Remember—twenty per cent of women have inferiority complexes. Seventy per cent have illusions…. Ninety per cent are afraid of being conspicuous and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.

Men have to be freed from the tortures of heavy clothing that covers everything but the face and hands.

The woman over 50 must be very frank with herself.

In difficult times fashion is always outrageous.