Shoji Quotes

#1. I was a stranger and you took me in.
-Joji G. Shoji, d. 1921

Neil Gaiman

#2. Everyone thinks the fashion business is so glamorous. It's completely the opposite.

Tadashi Shoji

#3. There's almost a T-shirt feeling to wearing my evening dresses.

Tadashi Shoji

#4. So many designers only sketch and leave pattern-making to others. Pattern-making is important so you know the structure. Then if someone tells me, 'I can't make a pattern from that sketch,' I can tell them, 'I will make it' and then they are quiet. If I can't make it, I don't design it.

Tadashi Shoji

#5. Am I famous in Japan? I don't know, and I don't really think of myself in that way.

Tadashi Shoji

#6. My whole outlook on life is, never judge a book by its cover.

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

#7. When I was young, about 18 or 19, I read all the Dostoyevsky novels, which made me want to go to St. Petersburg. So I went, and I was so inspired.

Tadashi Shoji

#8. I help out at Tall Trees, which my aunt set up on the Central Coast. It's where intellectually impaired young people can paint. Their artwork's sent to hospitals all over Australia to brighten up their rooms.

Jessica McNamee

#9. As I get older, I find that wearing bright colors cheers me up.

Tadashi Shoji

#10. I design to make women feel confident and beautiful.

Tadashi Shoji

#11. Love isn't safe. And whoever you love will hurt you. It's part of the human experience. No one is perfect...People make mistakes. The secret is to focus on what they do right and decide what quirks you can live with.

Kristin Billerbeck

#12. Anyone can wear my dresses. They will look good on any figure, no matter what shape you are. I want to celebrate a woman's inner strength, to inspire real women and make them feel confident and beautiful.

Tadashi Shoji

#13. So, in the tulip, we have a flower of beauty and grace of charm, refinement and distinction. It is a powerful flower and it knows it

Tadashi Shoji

#14. Time flies so quick. I remember my second year in business when Bullocks Wilshire did a whole window of my white dresses. I was so excited, I went there at night and took pictures.

Tadashi Shoji

#15. During the Renaissance, women were not allowed to attend art school. Everyone asks, where are the great women painters of the Renaissance?

Karen DeCrow

#16. Using a forecasting company is like going to a fortune-teller. If you believe the company and the color does not sell, who do you blame? The forecasters? No, you blame yourself.

Tadashi Shoji

#17. My head felt like it was going to crack down the middle, like some demented dwarf was driving glass pins through my brain.

Lilith Saintcrow

#18. I am not really brand-conscious; I pick out clothes that appeal to me regardless of the label, but I consider my style very American.

Tadashi Shoji

#19. That's the problem with boys: They tend to help you only 'cause they fancy you, but there's no unembarrassing way to find out their real motives till it's too late.

David Mitchell

#20. Don't wear dresses that are too tight. A size number is just a number. If the fit is comfortable, it will look more elegant.

Tadashi Shoji

#21. Write without fear, read with passion

Breccan Smith

#22. My brother told me he was very proud of me, of the business I have built, and that gives me joy.

Tadashi Shoji

#23. It's a Japanese way of thinking, that I give value for my merchandise. So I don't want to sell unnecessarily expensive dresses and make just 10 or 20 and then feel satisfied. I want to design for real women who can afford my dresses.

Tadashi Shoji

#24. I do not discriminate about size. I design dresses to accentuate a woman's positives, whether you are a size 0 or a size 3X.

Tadashi Shoji

#25. What a shame to be so angered by what you don't have that you treat what you do have like it's nothing.

Caroline Kepnes

#26. I like quiet. No television cameras. I'm not the Hollywood type.

Tadashi Shoji