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.

Forget all you know & learn something every day.

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

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

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

I spent my life making fashion an art form.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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