Historical Fashion Quotes

I enjoy how women dressed in the 1920s with the shimmering jewels and rich feathers.

In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower's day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chins were smooth, while during the Civil War, beards were as common as sepsis.

I love that period, between the '20s and the '60s. I love doing period pieces, and those eras are my favorite period in time, music wise, and the elegance and the way of being.

If I negate powdered wigs, I am still left with unpowdered wigs.

In '87, I was about 9 years old, and so at that point I was wearing, like, fluorescent green T-shirts and acid-wash jeans and leg warmers, and my hair was in a ponytail with a scrunchie and I had the teased bangs that were up in a rainbow shape. It was crazy.

I've never been happier to be born in this time than when I was wearing a corset.

It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. People who couldn't afford wigs tried to make their hair look like a wig.

I'm fascinated by historical fashion, and I like to live in the past slightly. If I could walk around all day dressed in a crinoline, I would.

Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile.

Girls have always wanted to be pretty, even in Egyptian times. Cleopatra wore all that eyeliner, you know.

In the 18th century, if women wanted to travel and they dressed as a man, people would not look twice. Your clothes said everything. Also there were masters and servants swapping clothes. You could be anything, your clothes told everything!

There are three fashion periods: the past, the present and Mae West.

And it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plagueisdoneastoperiwigs, fornobody will daretobuy any haire for fear of the infectionthat it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.

If you had pockets, you were associated with a labor force. It meant you had things to carry yourself. Otherwise, your lady's maid or your manservant would have done it for you.

Coming from the theatre I have played some fabulous characters where I get to wear gowns and I get to be a princess or someone from the 1920s, or I get to wear showgirl costumes. I'm used to wearing a wardrobe that changes how I feel.

...catching a glimpse of his rather hippyish form in a mirror, he wonders at this atavism of apparel, is it an inversion of foetal ontogeny, in which the phenotype passes through previous fashion stages? Soon there will be gaiters and gloves...I will probably die, he thinks, clad in animal skins.

The Twenties outfits are all about freedom and loose, flowing lines, whereas in 'Cinderella,' I had to wear corsets and big huge skirts.

Once upon a time, fashion was complex, and ostentatious was considered better.

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is, to meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege I think.

Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.

My tastes formed quite early. All I ever wanted to do was go to costume museums.

This all came of a conversation I had with [John] Steinbeck once when we were standing in a men's room somewhere. Steinbeck asked me why I didn't play the banjo any more and I told him that went out with the high-button shoes.

It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses.

For me, I tend to enjoy wearing any period costume. I love how fashion and clothing has changed and evolved through time.

Just wearing the corset means that you can never really relax from the moment that you put it on. So, there's a constant sort of strain and you have to hold yourself in a certain way. It's very uncomfortable. But again you instantly understand the repression that women feel and how much they were captives. It's sort of sad really.