Stephen Bayley Quotes

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

I'm an American searching for some sort of parameters, a way of life - I'm looking for a slight formality, for a place where you can never be overdressed.

You can't legislate good taste.

Culture is but the fine flowering of real education, and it is the training of the feeling, the tastes, and the manners that makes it so.

I'm big on what's in good taste.

Luxury is not about the things that you own. It is about something that reflects your personal values, something that shows the choices that you have made in your life.

Good taste consists first upon fitness.

It is in bad taste," is the most formidable word an Englishman can pronounce.

A gentleman never talks about his tailor.

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

There's definitely a thin line between being tasteful and tacky.

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

Elegance isn't solely defined by what you wear. It's how you carry yourself, how you speak, what you read.

I like things that are civilized.

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

There's definitely a fine line between tasteful and tasteless, and as a stylist, it's a line you want to ride very carefully.

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

The people of Northern Italy are the most civilized people I have ever met.

The pocket square, properly contrived, finishes a man's look. With good tailoring and well chosen neckwear, the look connotes power, taste, refinement, manners. The naked pocket connotes the opposite: working class, tasteless, base, crude, ignorant.

You can't buy class.

A classic man is a distinguished man. He cares about taste and his craft. He's all about the simple model that I live by - eat, drink, be swanky, and have fun getting the job done. He makes sure that he's excellent in all things and that he cares about his neighborhood immensely.

When I worked with Keira Knightley in 'Never Let Me Go,' I learned how to be classy and sophisticated.

In the contemporary world, we think of politeness as surface behavior, like frosting - it's sweet and attractive and finishes off the cake. But 19th century nobility and the enlightened thinkers and stoics before them viewed manners in a very different way. To them, manners are an outward expression of an inward struggle.

A fine lady; by which term I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and manner, down to every gesture, which heaven forbid that I, professing to be a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful, and therefore I welcome it in the name of the author of all beauty. I value it so highly that I would fain see it extend not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the laborer's hovel and the needlewoman's garret.

Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing. Turn out your toes as you walk. And remember who you are!