Quotes from James Laver

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something.

Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible.

It is true that the reign of his father, Henry VII, had already seen many modifications in medieval costume. The line, instead of being vertical, was now horizontal; the shoes, instead of being excessively pointed, became broad-toed, as if to echo the new style of architecture with its flattened arch. Ladies' headdresses ceased to be replicas of Gothic pinnacles and began to resemble Tudor windows.

Ten years before its time, a fashion is indecent; ten years after, it is hideous; but a century after, it is romantic.

Avisitor from Mars contemplating a man in a frock coat and top hat and a woman in a crinoline might well have supposed that they belonged to different species.

Nothing is more revealing of an age than its hypocrisies.

The erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever catching it up.