Toyah Willcox Quotes

I could say that making clothes is my way of communicating, because I was always so shy.

But I just loved looking at the clothes of the '70s.

There were so many individual styles thirty or forty years ago.

I don't understand leggings. They were the worst trend of the '80s.

One of my favorite things about working on 'Glory Daze' is getting to wear amazing '80s outfits coupled with fabulously over-the-top hair and makeup. My wardrobe usually consists of colorful sweaters, denim skirts, high-waisted shorts, crop tops, dangly earrings, jean jackets, and, of course, panty hose and shoulder pads.

It's always fun to put on bell bottoms and have your butt hanging out and hip huggers.

If you look back throughout history from the ancient Egyptians onwards, most cultures started making clothing from a very basic premise: a single piece of cloth.

Honestly, I was such a tomboy as a kid. People were taking from their mothers' closets - I was taking from my dad's closet. It was the '80s, so it wasn't terrible, but I was wearing my dad's dress shirts over jeans from the Gap.

I was very interested in theatre, so my first love of fashion comes from costume, and I think that's pretty clear within my work and the level of theatricality.

There's always been a relationship between the film world and fashion.

The thing that I really love about the 80s is, there was a sense of hand made-ness about the fashion then. You could have a pair of jeans and dump some bleach on them, and make them something that was really trendy for that era.

In the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.

Both costume and fashion are about telling a story, except that in a ballet the story has already been written by the composer or the librettist.

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

Fashion is not just about trends. It's about political history. You can trace it from the ancient Romans to probably until the '80s, and you can see defining moments that were due either to revolutions or changes in politics. At the end of the Roman era, there was this whole move against togas, because that was the signifier of the Roman Empire. In the same way, the '60s were a reaction against the '50s and so on. But now we've been feeding on a sort of cadaver. At the moment, we're just endlessly recycling the past.

biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

It is quite possible for a work of literature to operate as a war machine upon its epoch.

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

If you ask me to sew a button, I don't know how to do it! The idea of the whole collection and how you want to build your brand is all about working with the right people. And luck!

For me, my entry point, when I was old enough, was the skinhead/suedehead thing, sort of like '70/'71. People didn't have much money - they would save up, or whatever - but everyone always dressed up. You'd go to a dance at the football club on a Thursday night and all of us kids - all of us from maybe like 12 to 16 - were all dressed up.

In retrospect, I think a lot of '80s fashion shoots are the ones that look the most modern. The fitness-based ones that are really minimal. It's clean, healthy, t-shirt, beach hair... it's athleisure.

My life has been greatly influenced by many books which I have never read.

Monarchs not only fashion their age, but are fashioned by it, so that they can become a sort of personification of the age. If Elizabeth I, independent, strong, represents the age of Shakespeare's heroines, a woman's heyday, Victoria represents another image of womanhood, predominant in the nineteenth century: a woman who, although queen in her own right, leaned on her husband, looked up to him, and went into perpetual mourning after his death. The feminist movement filled her with shocked horror and outrage.

I love to accent movement. The eye goes to where the white is - you know, the glove. And the feet, if you're dancing, you can put an exclamation point on your movement if it has a bit of light on it. So I wore the white socks. And for the design of the jacket, I would sit with the people who made the clothes and tell them where I wanted a button or a buckle or a design.

Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit forth, unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from other writers and speakers.