James Wolcott Quotes

There are some people who have helped to advance me and other girls, but the fashion industry is always behind popular culture. They think they understand the zeitgeist. They don't know anything about the zeitgeist.

Fashion is fragile and fleeting. But it is also an indicator for the cultural and social appetites for a nation.

To me, fashion is like a mirror. It's a reflection of the times. And if it doesn't reflect the times, it's not fashion. Because people aren't gonna be wearing it.

I love contemporary culture. Even the stuff I don't like.

I'm always looking for a cover subject that reflects the magazine, an interest in fashion, in culture, in society. We're trying to bring the world into the pages of 'Vogue.' We do that by tapping into the zeitgeists with our cover subjects.

You just never know when today's cultural outcasts will become tomorrow's cultural icons.

For me, fashion succeeds when it says something about the times we live in.

Ironically, fashion trends, be it denim or polka dots, have a tendency to perpetuate the contrary.

There aren't any looks or customs I wish would come back. Today almost anything goes. Culture constantly devours the past so there's not much that's missing.

Fashion is a social agreement. the result of a consensus of a large group of people.

When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.

I've lived long enough to know things go in and out of fashion, and things not well received now can be totally reversed years later.

Asian literature is evolving with the people. It's always a reflection on what's happening to the culture at large.

When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.

Fashion is a reflection of the time.

The class barricades have been stormed by the forces of a broad culture, which is made up of clusters of individuals who have decided for themselves what they will be in society.

Class doesn't create culture anymore.

There's this zeitgeist happening, and people are more open to 'Sorry to Bother You' being a hit with 'Get Out' being out there. But that zeitgeist is also happening because of the movements going back to Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Usually, film is years behind. It just so happens that, this time, everything is lining up.

I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.

All I've ever wanted to do is move the needle on popular culture.

Culture has always been more important than politics. Sometimes culture is a mirror that reflects what is; sometimes it's a search-light pointing the way to what will be.

When politics is too slow, change has to come from culture.

Fashion is not public opinion, or the result of embodiment of public opinion. It may be that public opinion will condemn the shape of a bonnet, as it may venture to do always, and with the certainty of being right nine times in ten: but fashion will place it upon the head of every woman in America; and, were it literally a crown of thorns, she would smile contentedly beneath the imposition.

[In the 1960s]...you could take LSD but you couldn't wear a pantsuit.

I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.