Coco Chanel Quotations

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

Women must tell men always that they are the strong ones. They are the big, the strong, the wonderful. In truth, women are the strong ones. It is just my opinion, I am not a professor.

A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future.

Gentleness doesn't get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

There are people who have money and people who are rich.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J'aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

I don't know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

It is always better to be slightly underdressed.

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

There have been several Duchesses of Westminster but there is only one Chanel!

I have steadfastly refused to make concessions that would undermine my ideals.

Winston [ Churchill] is a dandy and a visionary. Unfortunately, in winning wars, principles are inevitably debased. That's politics.

As I now feel, I would wish to be borne off anywhere out of this world.

My heart has always leaned towards England, and with the close friendship of Winston [Churchill], the hero who brought hope to the world, I could not imagine a happier life for myself.

After a fashion, they did, mingling the sale of perfumes with anti-Nazi propaganda. In the event, my tirelessly publicised determination to wrest back control of the business neutralised most of the adverse repercussions on me from an unwilling association with their propaganda.

I trained myself. Long ago, `Boy' [Arthur] Capel introduced me to 'Bludgeon the Poor!' (Assommons les pauvres!) which, rejecting resignation, informed my moral outlook for life.

As a young girl, I was very proud at overcoming a reading handicap whilst other girls of my age read abundantly.

I simply value Arthur Capel friendship. And even so, he knows very little about me.

What every Englishman thinks about patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

If my boy had perished in a Nazi compound, I could never have gone on living. I would have killed myself.

Disregarding the fact that I am old enough to be [Walter] Schellenberg's mother, I would feel nauseated to be coupled with a man whose ideology has debased our hearts.

One should refrain from contempt for the baser specimens of humanity, for whom liberation amounts to shaving the heads of women who have slept with Germans.

A major shortcoming of the Resistance is the outnumbering, before long, of the genuine warriors by camera-carrying midgets intent on leaving a record of their purported heroism.

I wholeheartedly welcomed Charles de Gaulle eulogy of French valour, to which he attributed the liberation of Paris.

I stood up for myself as I always have done. Nobody has ever told Coco Chanel what to think.

I remember confuting one of Westminster's favourite maxims, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". In the annals of popular wisdom, this is one of the most cretinous sayings I have come across.

Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: 'One must not hide that!' Then someone tells you: 'The shoulder is on the back'. I have never seen women with shoulders on their backs.

Traveling is so complicated. There are so many people everywhere. I make my best journeys on my couch.

Some people pursue unhappiness because happiness is too mild a sensation.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.

All men are children, and if you understand that, a woman understands everything.

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

Yves Saint Laurent is a young man of excellent taste; the more he copies me the more taste he displays.

In fashion, you know you have succeeded when there is an element of upset.

I've never done anything by halves.

I was the one who changed, it wasn't fashion. I was the one who was in fashion.

Good taste ruins certain true spiritual values: such as taste itself.

Fashion is in the sky, in the street.

I am neither in the past, nor avant-garde. My style follows life,

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only

May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life.

In the act of deciding what to eliminate, you place value on what's left behind.

Fashion: a beautiful thing that becomes ugly. Art: an ugly thing that becomes beautiful.

Chanel is above all a style. Fashion passes, style remains.

I have only one curiosity left: death.

There is nothing more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing more made for love than a butterfly. We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly. Fashion is at once a captapillar and a butterfly, caterpillar by day, butterfly by night

A beautiful dress may look beautiful on a hanger, but that means nothing. It must be seen on the shoulders, with the movement of the arms, the legs, and the waist.

Ask me who I don't dress!

Sin can be forgiven, but stupid is forever.

For a woman betrayal has no sense - one cannot betray one's passions.

As extended as you know most males are like young children, you understand all the things.

The hat is not for the street: it will never be democratized. But there are certain houses that one cannot enter without a hat. And one must always wear a hat when lunching with people whom one does not know well. One appears to one's best advantage.

I set the fashion for a quater of a century. Why? Because i knew how to express my own time.

If I say that I love you but I do want personal time, or if I don't want to do PDA, it's not that I have something against you.

An elegant woman should be able to do her marketing without making housewives laugh. Those who laugh are always right.

I'm so sick of immaturity, of name-calling, of labels, of gossip, of high school. It doesn't make sense anymore, and I find myself being nice to people that I want to strangle.

A young lady ought to be two things: tasteful and breathtaking.

A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period

Passion always goes, and boredom stays.

That's what fame is: solitude.

Clothes by a man who doesn't know women, never had one, and dreams of being one!

If I cut my hair, others did. If I shortened my dresses, so did everyone else.

It's always better to be underdressed.

A woman in love is helpless.

If a woman is poorly dressed, you notice her dress. If a woman is impeccably dressed, you notice the woman.

A woman's education consists of two lessons: never leave the house without stocking, never go out without a hat.

I invented my life because I wasn't pleased with it.

Coquetry, it's a triumph of the spirit over the senses.

Nothing goes out of fashion sooner than a long dress with a very low neck.

One can get used to ugliness, but never to negligence.

Fashion becomes unfashionable. Style never.

Elegance means being beautiful both on the inside and out.

It's not houses I love, it's the life I live in them.

Where should one use perfume?" a young woman asked. "Wherever one wants to be kissed.

Fashion is everything that can pass fashionable

Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.