Quotes from Simon Doonan

Dressing down is a crime against humanity.

Knowing who you really are and dressing the part -- with an air of amused recklessness -- is life affirming for you and life enhancing for other people.

Knowing who you really are and dressing the part -- with an air of amused recklessness -- is life affirming for you and life enhancing for other people.

Red is wild. She is unsettling. She intrigues. Wear red and other women will assume that you are a predatory vixen who is out to steal their husbands and suck the blood of their children.

All over America, people are making kamikaze choices about what to wear. They are misrepresenting the goods. They are letting their clothes write checks that their personalities cannot cash.

If there is such a person on the planet, then he or she—this self-appointed arbiter of "appropriateness"—deserves to be confronted with as many "inappropriate" transgressions as possible.

Apply extreme caution when wearing red in the workplace. Even a simple demure red outfit -- a cashmere twinset -- can turn you into the office lightning rod. If you are crafty, you can use this to your advantage. To gain the upper hand in an upcoming negotiation, try wearing a flaming red silk blouse and painting your nails red.

An exaggerated sense of occasion, or any sense of occasion, for that matter, will automatically impede your ability to have fun. Conversely, a well-cultivated obliviousness to the conventions of any occasion is guaranteed to up the fun quotient. When people ask me, "What are you wearing to [such and such event]? I'm not sure what to wear...," I experience a strong desire to kill them. These whiny people, with their obsolete sense of appropriateness, are the Antichrist.

Why be formal when you can be fabulously feral? Why be conventional when you can be happy?

Why the hell wouldn't you want to be one of the fabulous people, the life enhancers, the people who look interesting and smell luscious and who dare to be gorgeously more fascinating than their neighbors?

Gay men are French women...with penises.

Power and shekels are no guarantee of personal satisfaction. As you attempt to claw your way to the top, do not lose sight of your psychological needs. Make choices that bring you satisfaction and joy. (…) If being top dog makes you happy, then have at it. Live your truth. For everyone else I say this: be wary of jeopardizing your peace of mind in the pursuit of status, money, or power. Needlepoint that!

Selfing is a very necessary precursor to unselfing. So now that you have successfully selfed and unselfed, what's next? "Collective effervescence!

Nobody was twee or naff. Nobody complained. Everyone was bold.

She had always enjoyed the carte blanche accorded to mobsters, aristocrats, circus clowns, and lunatics

The moral of the story: Every day is a special day. A tear in your chiffon? So what! A food stain on that satin ruffle? Big deal! A little paint spatter on that velvet blazer merely adds to your overall patina. When women ask me for fashion advice, I always say the same thing: "Go home and throw out all your 'work' clothes!" If you always dress as if you are going to a party or a Bowie concert—or a Black Eyed Peas concert—you will always have more fun.

If you put all your jeans in a bag and drop them off at Goodwill, you will force yourself to seek out alternatives. You will automatically gain in individuality. You will find yourself wearing a sequined Mexican dirndl (Gypsy) or black gabardine gauchos (Existentialist), and you will automatically have more fun. I'm talking good clean wholesome fun sans stimulants.

Why the hell wouldn't you want to be one of the fabulous people, the life enhancers, who look interesting and smell luscious and who dare to be gorgeously more fascinating than their neighbors?

The important thing is not to be masochistic. Women are so hard on themselves. Don't do that. No one is keeping score.