Charles James Quotes

#1. A great designer does not seek acceptance. He challenges popularity, and by the force of his convictions renders popular in the end what the public hates at first sight.

Charles James

#2. All my seams have meaning - they emphasize something about the body,

Charles James

#3. So perverse is mankind that every nationality prefers to be misgoverned by its own people than to be well ruled by another

Charles James

#4. All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.

Charles James

#5. Cut in dressmaking is like grammar in language. A good design should be like a well made sentence and it should only express one idea at a time,

Charles James

#6. The human mind is never better disposed to gratitude and attachment than when softened by fear.

Charles James

#7. Life has taught me that one's most precious asset is the spirit of 'independence at all costs'... the constant disposition to risk all in the interests of a connection.

Charles James

#8. The standard formulation on remedy is that it ought to cure past violations and prevent their recurrence. That's what antitrust is all about.

Charles James

#9. You should know that my most important contribution was always in tailoring; coats, jackets, wool dresses ... so few of which went into the magazines.

Charles James

#10. The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed.

Charles James

#11. My dresses help women discover figures they didn't know they had,

Charles James

#12. Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth.

Charles James

#13. It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief.

Charles James

#14. He that is conscious of guilt cannot bear the innocence of others:So they will try to reduce all others to their own level.

Charles James

#15. There are not many original shapes or silhouettes
only a million variations.

Charles James

#16. I recognize that virtually every company that comes in here has a perspective. It's often not difficult to understand why they have the perspective that they have.

Charles James

#17. The best design reveals itself during a long fatiguing process of digging into the subconscious.

Charles James

#18. Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.

Charles James

#19. Marriage: The most expensive way to get your laundry done.

Charles James

#20. In fashion even what seems most fragile must be built on cement.

Charles James

#21. Forget all you know & learn something every day.

Charles James

#22. Fashion, after all, is magic and miracle ... intended to bestow proportion and beauty where both have been lost or faded with the years.

Charles James

#23. I spent my life making fashion an art form.

Charles James

#24. We who have been ahead in STYLE have usually been also ahead in our thinking.

Charles James