Carine Roitfeld Quotes

#1. I try to go home to Missouri every couple of months. I do that because I like my family, of course, but my mom doesn't know who Carine Roitfeld is. And as much as that horrifies me, it's a good way to keep your feet on the ground.

Derek Blasberg

#2. I'm always independent. No boss.

Carine Roitfeld

#3. I could live very quietly, do advertising to earn money.

Carine Roitfeld

#4. I keep my old friends, and get older with them, but push young. It's good to be surrounded by kids, because they keep you young.

Carine Roitfeld

#5. Coco Chanel was always doing things with ballet, so it is a tradition clashing fashion and ballet.

Carine Roitfeld

#6. My father was very chic. My mum was always encouraging me. Some parents would say, 'Why don't you be a lawyer, a doctor, or something more important?' They never said that.

Carine Roitfeld

#7. I have good legs, so I prefer my skirt lengths and my high heels. It's like my uniform.

Carine Roitfeld

#8. 'Vogue' is a very specific world. You are 'Vogue,' or not 'Vogue.'

Carine Roitfeld

#9. Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in the global fashion industry, the first lady of fashion. She's a politician; I'm a stylist. They are two very different jobs.

Carine Roitfeld

#10. Makeup can help you capture a moment.

Carine Roitfeld

#11. I'm not a Facebook girl. Even though there is a fake Facebook with my name, it's not me. I'm not on Twitter; it's not me.

Carine Roitfeld

#12. You don't choose your public; your public chooses you.

Carine Roitfeld

#13. I started as a writer for magazines, and soon they asked me to illustrate my stories. I started from the bottom of the bottom. And I climbed the stairs, one by one.

Carine Roitfeld

#14. I think that each woman, whatever age, needs to recognize something good in her body. Someone has beautiful legs, someone has beautiful hair, someone else has beautiful decolletage or a beautiful waist or beautiful hands. Everyone has something great.

Carine Roitfeld

#15. You discover yourself through the research of your work.

Carine Roitfeld

#16. Fashion is a hard business.

Carine Roitfeld

#17. When I was a little girl, my mother tried to make me dance, but I did not like it then.

Carine Roitfeld

#18. It's true I always like to mix femininity and something a bit masculine. It's the reason I love skirts with high heels and tights, and no handbag because I love having my hands in my pockets.

Carine Roitfeld

#19. I love curvy women. Maybe because I'm not. I would love to be a Marilyn Monroe, but I'm very far away from that ... So I love very curvy girls.

Carine Roitfeld

#20. I started wearing high heels when I first worked with Mario Testino. He is tall; I had to be at his height. And I have never stopped since then.

Carine Roitfeld

#21. When in doubt, wear a suit.

Carine Roitfeld

#22. I believe in the Yves Saint Laurent woman who either has her hands in the pockets of her pantsuit or is holding her lover's hand. She doesn't need a bag.

Carine Roitfeld

#23. You can be beautiful with big breasts; you can be beautiful in your 40s. If you don't have perfect ankles, still you can move your legs in a certain way and look very sexy.

Carine Roitfeld

#24. For me, fashion is not about reality.

Carine Roitfeld

#25. I miss my parents. But still, my granddaughter, my daughter, my grandma, you know, so it's very important for me. You lost your parents, but a new baby comes. It's like the cycle of fashion.

Carine Roitfeld

#26. There are so many magazines and so many editors out there that you have to be different.

Carine Roitfeld

#27. When you give a lot of confidence in people and you don't get it back, you are a bit disappointed, but it's life.

Carine Roitfeld

#28. It is good to be in front of the lens to appreciate more being behind the lens.

Carine Roitfeld

#29. Fashion's about extravagance, and everyone needs a bit of that.

Carine Roitfeld

#30. The first Chanel jacket that I saw - that I knew was Chanel - was on TV. It was on Mrs. Kennedy - the pink one.

Carine Roitfeld

#31. Monsieur Saint Laurent was pathologically shy, and he made the Saint Laurent woman in his own image. Like her, I am shy. And to protect myself, I adopted something of an androgynous look, just as his women did.

Carine Roitfeld

#32. I always try to be nice to the paparazzi because finally, maybe one day, they won't ask for me, and I will regret it.

Carine Roitfeld

#33. I am not mean at all; I am not tough at all.

Carine Roitfeld

#34. I actually love the 'rappers look,' with the saggy pants and oversized clothes. It's very deliberate.

Carine Roitfeld

#35. I think that ballet is very good for the body. It's very similar to yoga, because you have to hold a position.

Carine Roitfeld

#36. To me, makeup is fashion and vice versa. What I dress and what I wear always needs to work with my makeup, which is usually the same anyway.

Carine Roitfeld

#37. I am not a celebrity. I work with celebrities, and it is very difficult. When a celebrity wears a dress, it's good for business, so brands fight for the red carpet. Me? I don't like it, because fashion becomes a job about dressing celebrities. And it's a bit boring.

Carine Roitfeld

#38. I love the noise of my wooden clogs on my wooden floor. Dancers wear clogs. They're good for you.

Carine Roitfeld

#39. Fashion is one big family.

Carine Roitfeld

#40. When you're editor-in-chief of a big magazine, you cannot be a cover girl for MAC; you cannot be the face of Givenchy - of course you can't; it's doesn't go with the job.

Carine Roitfeld

#41. When you go to a show, Americans in New York are very proper, much more so than the French. Everything is perfect. Their hair, the nails, everything. The look. Everything is perfection.

Carine Roitfeld

#42. In Japan, you can learn how to make a bunch of flowers. This is an art. Tea ceremony, it's an art.

Carine Roitfeld

#43. I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'

Carine Roitfeld

#44. I see girls who are so skinny on the catwalks, and I know so many of them destroy their lives and their family's lives.

Carine Roitfeld

#45. I'm not a business girl. I will never be a business girl, but I will say, for Anna Wintour, that I respect successful people; I like things that are success.

Carine Roitfeld

#46. I would never share my daughter's wardrobe. Every five years you have to go through your wardrobe and say, 'This is possible, this is not possible.' But you have to be happy with yourself.

Carine Roitfeld

#47. In a way, I envy the freedom artists have. Artists can push themselves beyond their limits, in pursuit of their ideas and their vision, even if they are inhabited by demons that can also play tricks on them.

Carine Roitfeld

#48. I get on well with models, and I like to treat them well.

Carine Roitfeld

#49. If people ask me to describe my look, I always say: 'Quite classic with an edge.'

Carine Roitfeld

#50. When I don't know what to wear, I wear black lace.

Carine Roitfeld

#51. Fashion is a completely international business.

Carine Roitfeld

#52. I am very surprised by someone like Alexander Wang. I am amazed how he is good with fashion, with business, with public relations himself, with an attitude in his clothes that is spoken immediately.

Carine Roitfeld

#53. You lose attitude when you feel too comfortable, so I prefer to wear clothes that have a certain edge to them.

Carine Roitfeld

#54. It's always fun when people ask you for advice.

Carine Roitfeld

#55. I don't like Botox. It makes a very strange forehead.

Carine Roitfeld

#56. I don't have a big appetite. I don't eat a lot, to be honest - never. I'm a bit like a little bird, picking all day long, but I'm not getting pasta or getting all those things, you know?

Carine Roitfeld

#57. When you love fashion, there is no weekend. Everything just blends together.

Carine Roitfeld

#58. I think that when you're taking pictures with my principles, you can try anything. Dare to do a lot of things - dare with sexuality, dare to break taboos as long as it remains photogenic. As long as I find an elegance and beauty in it, I am not afraid to tackle anything.

Carine Roitfeld

#59. To be a good model, you have to be very smart.

Carine Roitfeld

#60. I think the first picture taken is often the best one.

Carine Roitfeld

#61. I think I have character, and that is what people like in me.

Carine Roitfeld

#62. I am not a good professional of fashion. I am not an expert about how clothes are constructed or the history of fashion. I never start with fashion. I always think of the girl and her personality - because all that matters to me when you look at a page is, "Do you want to be that girl?"

Carine Roitfeld

#63. It's funny, everything is so much easier when you do it yourself.

Carine Roitfeld

#64. Each morning, you dress to become a different woman. Fashion helps.

Carine Roitfeld

#65. If you don't want to get bored with what you're doing, you have to change.

Carine Roitfeld

#66. My private life is a lot more ladylike and less sultry than the fashion photos I imagine.

Carine Roitfeld

#67. I am afraid of blood, but for some reason often I put blood in my photos ... I don't know why.

Carine Roitfeld

#68. In my 10 years, I never put a girl that was too skinny in French 'Vogue.'

Carine Roitfeld

#69. Clothing is always a tool that helps me take a picture. But it's never about the clothing.

Carine Roitfeld

#70. Working for a magazine, you have a boss; you are not free.

Carine Roitfeld

#71. Today there is too much retouching, and I don't like it, except on me.

Carine Roitfeld

#72. I'm not the girl next door.

Carine Roitfeld

#73. I saw 'The Devil Wears Prada.' I don't think it's a reality.

Carine Roitfeld

#74. I think it's less common in France that a man at the age of 50 buys a Porsche and gets a young girlfriend.

Carine Roitfeld

#75. If I could choose something besides fashion, I would love to be a ballerina.

Carine Roitfeld

#76. Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.

Carine Roitfeld

#77. I'm not a superhero - I'm a super worker!

Carine Roitfeld

#78. I was never conscious that I was becoming an icon or I'm not an icon, because my family, my kids, my husband keep me down-to-earth.

Carine Roitfeld

#79. If Kate Moss hadn't been booked when she was 14, Kate Moss might not exist.

Carine Roitfeld

#80. I never like to wear too much makeup, and sometimes the best makeup is when it's not too perfect. I like to sometimes apply my makeup with my fingers.

Carine Roitfeld

#81. When a designer creates, he looks at the world around him.

Carine Roitfeld

#82. When I was young, no one got married. Now, all the young people, they want to get married, they want security. Now that my children's friends are getting married, I go to more weddings than I ever did when I was young.

Carine Roitfeld

#83. Blogs are quite a new development - now, everyone wants to know you, everyone wants to know everything about you. And you can build a following that way. In a way, it's a good thing if you want to create a buzz around yourself.

Carine Roitfeld

#84. Fashion is a language, for sure, and it is a reflection of society.

Carine Roitfeld

#85. I am very lucky in that I can eat what I want and don't have to follow any special diet.

Carine Roitfeld

#86. To see yourself on the big screen, you're big, you hate your voice, your vocabulary. You say the same words, you speak bad.

Carine Roitfeld

#87. Sometimes, when you go to airport and look at the people, you see the worst looks - but the worst looks can give you more ideas than the best looks.

Carine Roitfeld

#88. I think that life has brought a lot to fashion, and fashion brings plenty to life. I took my children on photo shoots, at the same time, I borrowed my father's sweater for a photo shoot and, then, I am inspired by a Russian princess because of my Russian roots. Everything is all mixed in together.

Carine Roitfeld

#89. If I like a make-up artist's look, even if nobody knows about her, I use her. New people give me energy.

Carine Roitfeld

#90. I think it's good that [my granddaughter] here because I lost my parents and now it's great that there's a new generation. And she's taught me new things that I've forgotten. Like, when you're on holiday and see what it's like to see a shell or go into the water for the first time.

Carine Roitfeld

#91. Thinking differently is my strength.

Carine Roitfeld

#92. I don't have problems with my weight, I don't change weight but I think when you're gaining in age your position has to be beautiful.

Carine Roitfeld

#93. I want more women to run countries. There'd be more peace on Earth.

Carine Roitfeld

#94. Beauty can be quite boring, especially if you're talking about beauty that doesn't last. And what lasts is exactly the thing that maybe wasn't pretty at first. It comes over time to be beautiful or interesting or exciting.

Carine Roitfeld

#95. It is very wrong to sleep in your make-up, but when you wake up the next morning, I think it looks very good.

Carine Roitfeld

#96. We are very luck to be women, so even if we're wearing trousers, I always wear them with some lace underwear or a very feminine bra - I like that.

Carine Roitfeld

#97. Imitation always stinks. When I take photos, I don't go back. I don't look at the past. I'm always original.

Carine Roitfeld

#98. Do what you are not supposed to do, like wear white shoes all year round.

Carine Roitfeld

#99. I never think I have to prove something.

Carine Roitfeld

#100. In photo shoots, I rely on instinct. Which is not to say I don't bring ideas to a project or consider it beforehand.

Carine Roitfeld