Diana Vreeland quotes:

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

Blue jeans are the most beautiful things since the gondola.

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,

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

Poor, darling fellow - he died of food. He was killed by the dinner table.

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

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

Parents, you know, can be terrible.

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

Exaggeration is my only reality.

Too much good taste can be boring

I always wear my sweater back-to-front; it is so much more flattering.

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

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

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

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.

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

The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it.

The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women...Every girl in the world should have geisha training.

You don't have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive.

Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.

I think laying out a beautiful picture in a beautiful way is a bloody bore. I think you've got to blow it right across the page and down the side, crop it, cut it in half, combine it with something else... do something with it. You've got to make something out of it.

I sincerely believe that energy grows from itself and the more energy you expand the more you create within yourself. I also believe that energy is habit -- which can be created quite easily. In other words, use your energy and more energy flows and then it is very hard to stop it -- as if one would ever want to!

Within every girl is the possibility of arousing emotion. Without emotion there is no beauty.

Every girl in the world should have geisha training

All creations demand greenery of spirt.

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.

Balenciaga was incredibleI was madly infatuated with his clothes. His clothes were devastating. One fainted. One simply blew up and died.

A world without leopards, well, who would want to live in it?

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

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.

Pink is the navy blue of India.

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?

Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'

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.

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.

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

I wonder about prisoners. They're told, "You are free, you are innocent, you can go anywhere." I'm sure they usually feel nothing. They don't burst into tears or hysterics or joy or "I told you so." It's nothing. To be on the straight path isn't a bloody thing. It's just ordinary.

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

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

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.

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

The body must stay fit. Fit people like themselves much better.

The first thing to do is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.

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.

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

Without emotion there is no beauty

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

Unshined shoes are the end of civilization.

The best thing about London is Paris,

I'm terrible on facts. But I always have an idea. If you have an idea, you're well ahead

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

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

If you think all the time every day of your life, you might as well kill yourself today and be happier tomorrow.

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

The West is boring itself to death! And talking itself to death!

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

Balenciaga often said that women did not have to be perfect or beautiful to wear his clothes. When they wore his clothes, they became beautiful.

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

People who eat white bread have no dreams.

Where would fashion be without literature?

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.

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

I adore artifice. I always have.

Still, my dream in life is to come home and think of absolutely nothing. After all, you canâ??t think all the time.

Black is the hardest color in the world to get right-except for gray...

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

The only thing people are interested in is people.

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

Never worry about the facts. Just project an image to the public.

This is a great shame, but of course there have to be some things in life that not everybody can have, and great perfume is one of them.

I always say I hope to God I die in a town with a good tailor, a good shoemaker, and perhaps someone who's interested in a little quelque chose d'autre.

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

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.

I wasn't a fashion editor. I was the one and only fashion editor.

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

I think your imagination is your reality

You can see and feel everything in clothes.

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

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

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.

If it isn't a passion, it isn't burning, it isn't on fire, you haven't lived.

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

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

I think i always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. "Give'em what they never knew they wanted".

All creations demand greenery of spirt. 

Photographers aren't artists, for goodness sake.

Lighting is everything in a color.

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.

All my life I've pursued the perfect red.

Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. You can see and feel everything in clothes.

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.

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

You've got to have style, it helps you get out of bed in the morning.

I don't think anybody has been in a better place at a better time than I was when I was editor of Vogue. 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. Like all great times, the sixties were about personalities. It was the first time when mannequins became personalities. It was a time of great goals, an inventive time and these girls invented themselves. Naturally, as an editor I was there to help them along.

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

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

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

Pleasure is everything.

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.

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