Charles James Quotes

• 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

  Hate, Acceptance, Sight

  62 Copy quote

• Forget all you know & learn something every day.

  Charles James

  Forget, Knows

  18 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Hands, Design, Creative

  19 Copy quote

• There are not many original shapes or silhouettes -- only a million variations.

  Charles James

  Variation, Shapes, Silhouettes

  241 Copy quote

• 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

  Fashion, Years, Miracle

  21 Copy quote

• I spent my life making fashion an art form.

  Charles James

  Fashion, Art, Form

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  Cutting, Ideas, Design

  18 Copy quote

• True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.

  Charles James

  Real, Heart, Men

  15 Copy quote

• All my seams have meaning - they emphasize something about the body.

  Charles James

  Body

  15 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Sex, Done, Way

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Guilt, Trying, Levels

  13 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Thinking, Style, Has Beens

  14 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Fashion, Cement, Built

  9 Copy quote

• My dresses help women discover figures they didn't know they had.

  Charles James

  Dresses, Helping, Figures

  12 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Gratitude, Attachment, Mind

  "Queen Victoria's Little Wars". Book by Byron Farwell, p. 27-31, 1972.

  6 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Long, Design, Digging

  13 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  People, Mankind, Wells

  13 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Believe, Book, Vanity

  39 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Shostakovich, Mediums, Mines

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Important, Dresses, Wool

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Cures, Standards

  86 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, Kindness, Way

  "Queen Victoria's Little Wars". Book by Byron Farwell, p. 27-31, 1972.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Perspective, Difficult, Company

  6 Copy quote

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

  Charles James

  Power Of One, Should, Mischief

  "George III" by John Brooke, Panther, (pp. 363-364), 1974.

  6 Copy quote

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