A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture, designed to enhance the proportions of the female body.

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

Every woman is a rebel.

She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.

Most women would like to dress imaginatively, but they glare at any woman who does.

The ladies of Italy, seemingly carefree, wore constructions of iron beneath their silks. It took infinite patience, not just in negotiation, to get them out of their clothes.

In most women's lives, everything, even the greatest sorrow, comes down to a question of 'I haven't got a thing to wear'.

They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose.

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.

The other day I was watching women in a department store looking at clothes, and I noticed women don't try on the clothes, they get behind the clothes. They take a dress off the rack and hold it up against themselves. [...] They stick one leg way out and kind of lean back. I guess they need to know, "If someday I'm one-legged at a forty-five-degree angle, what am I going to wear?"

It never grows old, putting on a beautiful dress. For me, it's a great distraction. It's always ridiculous, and it always feels like it should be happening to somebody else.

The modern woman today is whomever she wants to be. And she can wear whatever she chooses to. Her fashion choices are not determined or restricted to a time frame or by trends. She can decide to look one way today and look another tomorrow. She is self-aware, she is empowered, and confident. Mostly, she is free.

Women: you never know which side they want to dance on.

It is commonplace observation that women are forever trying to straighten their hair if it is curly and curl it if it is straight, bind their breasts if they are large and pad them if they are small, darken their hair if it is light and lighten it if it is dark. Not all these measures are dictated by the fantom of fashion. They all reflect dissatisfaction with the body as it is, and an insistent desire that it be otherwise, not natural but controlled, fabricated. Many of the devices adopted by women are not cosmetic or ornamental, but disguise of the actual, arising from fear and distaste.