Diana Vreeland Quotes

I sincerely believe that energy grows from itself and the more energy you expand the more you create within yourself.

Too much good taste can be very boring. Independent style, on the other hand, can be very inspiring.

Truth is a hell of a big point with me. Now I exaggerate - always.

In a Balenciaga you were the only woman in the room - no other woman existed.

The way to judge a good hand is that the fingers are the same size at the tip as where they come out of the hand itself.

There was a time when it was considered vulgar and unnecessary to pursue money, but today anyone who doesn't believe in money must be out of their minds!

You can see and feel everything in clothes.

People who eat white bread have no dreams.

I think allure is something around you, like a perfume or like a scent. It's like a memory ... it pervades.

I think we live only through our dreams and our imagination.

Too much good taste can be boring

You're not supposed to give people what they want, you're supposed to give them what they don't know that they want yet.

Parents, you know, can be terrible.

Red is the great clarifier - bright and revealing. I can't imagine becoming bored with red - it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.

Naturally, I've always been mad about clothes. You don't get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute.

We all need a splash of bad taste. No taste is what I am against.

Blue jeans are the most beautiful things since the gondola.

Oh, but I think that thoughtfulness and manners are everything.

I adore that pink, it is the navy blue of India!

My life has been more influenced by books than by any other one thing.

I'm for everybody. There are no set rules. But if one's not a joiner. To hell with all of them!

The hottest thing in the world is to wear pants with stockings.

Don't look back. Just go ahead. Give ideas away. Under every idea there's a new idea waiting to be born.

What do I think about the way most people dress? Most people are not something one thinks about.

How boring to copy the past
with all the magnificence of today and tomorrow.

Pleasure is everything.

Why don't you have a room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful-a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens?

If it's not there in fashion, fantasize it,

I've always had such wonderful opportunities, but I never made the effort, haven't put on the pressure. But I never took them.

The best time to leave a party is when the party's just beginning. There's no drink that kills except the drink that you didn't want to take, as the saying goes, and there's no hour that kills except the hour you stayed after you wanted to go home.

Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.

When I arrived in America, I had these very dark red nails which some people objected to, but then some people object to absolutely everything.

The best thing about London is Paris,

I mean, a new dress doesn't get you anywhere; it's the life you're living in the dress.

Being vulgar is fine, but oh please just don't be boring.

I once heard someone say, I shall die very young. How young? I don't know. Maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.

I was always fascinated by the absurdities and luxuries and the snobbism of the world that fashion magazines showed. Of course, it's not for everyone ... But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazines business but for years before, because I was always of that world
at least in my imagination.

We are not looking for endless variety
we are looking for fashion.

I certainly didn't learn anything in school. My education was the world.

I've always remained totally myself, which is to say, without an idea ... of what to do.

I adore artifice. I always have.

You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It's a way of life. Without it, you're nobody.

If you had a bump on your nose, it made no difference so long as you had a marvelous body & good carriage. You held your head high, & you were a beauty You knew how to water-ski, & how to take a jet plane fast in the morning, arrive anywhere, & be anyone when you got off.

Lighting is everything in a color.

The personality is a work of art.

When fashion turns over it brings in little tiny creaks and cracks. This is the fascination and that is where you have to watch every step.

<"To bewitch" is to me always slightly artificial as it is always put on
whereas witchery is a form of naturalness that some people can't help, and the world judges that they don't create it ... > November 15 1967 memo to Mrs. Loew Gross re "THE ROMANTIC POINT OF VIEW

Where Chanel came from in France is anyone's guess. She said one thing one day and another thing the next. She was a peasant - and a genius. Peasants and geniuses are the only people who count and she was both.

A good photograph was never what I was looking for. I like to have a point. I had to have a point or I didn't have a picture. This is what I've always found so fascinating about paparazzi pictures. They catch something unintended, on the wing ... they get that thing. It's the revelation of personality.

The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell - unquestionably. You just couldn't take a bad picture of those two old girls

I have always felt that the only great thing about an interview is the questions that are asked.

All people are meant to be creative in a certain way. What way? Perhaps I was cut out to be a wonderful housewife, with a marvelous sense of cooking, being with my friends, running a perfect house. But I am not ambitious towards anything.

I never felt comfortable about my looks until I married Reed Vreeland. I believe in love at first sight because that's what it was. I knew the moment our eyes met that we would marry,

The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.

No one knows how hard one works.

Style; all who have it have have one thing: originality.

Vogue always did stand for people's lives. I mean, a new dress doesn't get you anywhere; it's the life you're living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later.

One thing I hold against Americans is that they have no flair for the rain. They seem unsettled by it; it's against them: they take it as an assault, an inconvenience! But rain is so wonderfully cleansing, so refreshing, so calming ...

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.

Power has got to be the most intoxicating thing in the world - and of all forms of power the most intoxicating is fame.

No one had a better sense of luxury than Coco Chanel, She really had the spirit of the 20th Century.

Don't you loathe the word "workaholic"? It has nothing to do with an important thing, that you and your secretary are at the office until 6:30. But that's life, kiddo. 24-hour work doesn't go on in America. 24-hour work is what Italy and Holland did after the war. The lights never went out!

Water is God's tranquilizer,

Of course I was always mad about the ballet russe, mad about it!

Never fear being vulgar, just boring, middle class or dull.

A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.

The future holds a golden world. It will be for beauty; it will be for intelligent productiveness.

I was always sort of a loner, I suppose. I always had to think out everything for myself ... I suppose that is what you call a loner.

I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring ...

Allure is a word very few people use nowadays, but it's something that exists. Allure holds you, doesn't it? Whether it's a gaze or a glance in the street or a face in the crowd or someone sitting opposite you at lunch ... you are held

It's only intelligent to wish to look after yourself properly.

I read everything! I would have read the phone book if you put it in front of me. I just read.

The only thing people are interested in is people.

God was fair to the Japanese. He gave them no oil, no diamonds. He gave them style.

There's only one very good life and that's the life you know you want and you make it yourself.

This world without a leopard ... I mean, who would want to be here?!

Balenciaga did the most delicious evening clothes. Clothes aren't delicious any more.

Don't look left nor right and never compete. Never. Watching the other guy is what kills all forms of energy.

Pink is the navy blue of India.

Where would fashion be without literature?

I like to indulge myself by sitting up late without having to do anything in the morning.

When I discovered dancing, I learned to dream.

A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste-it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against.

I've never met a leopard print I didn't like.

This is a weakness of the world. Someone thinks they've discovered something for the first time. They want to be authoritative about it.

Peanut butter is the greatest invention since Christianity,

Before even the technique, there is a dream. Chanel had it. The dream is everything.

Unshined shoes are the end of civilization.

No one cuts backs like he did. No one knows what a back is anymore.

For goodness sakes, beware of curls ... It is a great art to do them so that the girls not only look modern - but do not suddenly look very vulgar.

Chutney is marvelous. I'm mad about it. To me, it's very imperial.

I went to work to make money, not because I was bored. It was money that I wanted.

All creations demand greenery of spirt.