Diana Vreeland Quotes

Fashion isn't interesting when it comes from an uninspired place.

You got to have style, and learn to be original.

I've never been a person who focused on trends. I'm influenced and inspired by trends, but I don't always subscribe to them.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Everything is very individual for me in the way that I work; I don't just show a rotating rack of clothes.

I never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.

Schiaparelli, for me, is about eclecticism.

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

Rather hang thyself than belong to the horde of successful imitators.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Originality is a quality that cannot be imitated. The technique of the language, on the other hand, is something that belongs to all who can understand it.

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

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.

Style means you have a real curiosity about yourself and then you express it. Having style is not copying somebody else.

Fashion you can buy, but style you possess.

Whenever I wore it there were some questions whether the outfit was just too over the top. I'm like, "Do you know who you're dealing with here, and her eccentricities, her style, her flair?" These little things were sometimes those - I love it. I love having a real-life model. But I also do flush it out with my own personal experiences and my own essence, and hopefully they mesh together.

One must not imitate what one wants to create.

Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style.

I'm constantly trying to be as original as I can.

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.

Some people think that my shows are just for shock value, but the provocation makes those classic pieces look different every six months. You don't need to see the same gray suit every season. But surrounding it with 40 really interesting ideas makes it feel new.

If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it's got to be that way in music or it isn't music.

Lift others and yourself as you rise above this mess of comparison. Thank God for those who embraced their true selves and gave us gifts that only they could give: from Steve Jobs to Michael Jackson to Ray Charles to Mark Twain. There are so many more, and the list goes on.

I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.