Top 35 Suzy Menkes Quotes

Smartphones are so fabulous in so many ways that it seems daft to be nostalgic about the days when an image did not go round the world in a nanosecond.

I am thrilled to become international ‘Vogue’ editor at Conde Nast International, which has a real commitment to journalistic excellence, and to have the opportunity to write for a wider global audience through the ‘Vogue’ websites.

Who needs to graduate from Central Saint Martins in London or New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology when a homemade outfit can go viral on YouTube with millions of hits?

We know that creative people have all sorts of demons.

My style has always been to choose the charming and quirky.

Clothes, as much as music, have an eerie echo of time and place.

With the traditional six-month lead time on the delivery of international show content, designer collections can be outpaced by the so-called fast fashion chains. H&M, Topshop and Zara, or even Target and J. Crew, would have their versions for sale before the designer looks hit the stores.

The clothes that fire up my emotions are colorful and ‘different’ pieces. My eye still picks out gilded-cloque glamour from among Burberry’s streamlined trench coats or a hand-printed coat from Dries Van Noten.

I do believe fashion should work as hard as a woman does.

I knew him, but never felt that I got really close to Saint Laurent. But who really did? Betty Catroux, maybe.

There is no doubt that online shopping has fed the craze for speed, because when you can’t touch the fabric or try on the outfit, the only emotion you experience is the excitement of the purchase and the thrill of beating everyone else to it.

In the mid-1990s, when I stopped having to run from the shows to the film developing lab and first saw digital images, I blessed technology and was convinced that my working life was changing for the better.

Change is good; it’s what fashion is all about.

As the fashion carousel spins ever faster, the concern is that, while the stream of newness never runs out, there’s going to be a good deal more crash and burn among designers in the future.

I am not a hoarder, but my wardrobe is the antithesis of fast fashion. I buy clothes – beautiful in looks and make – to last. I originally stored away things like Ossie Clark because I could not bear to part with such treasures.

Only the fat-cat corporations can really afford to put on two mega-ready-to-wear shows a year, or four if you add two haute couture shows, or six if you count men’s wear. Resort and prefall push the number up to eight. A couple of promotional shows in Asia, Brazil, Dubai or Moscow can bring the count to 10.

I think there’s too much mixing fashion and intellect. Fashion ultimately is designed to cover the human body, to give you joy, to make you feel better. I don’t think it has to have a great intellectual meaning.

There is something sad about clothes laid in a tomb of trunks.

There are some designers who flash and burn – Courreges is an example of that. But he still marked fashion history. And I don’t think that longevity is always a badge of honor. Modern brand management means that we are always celebrating birthdays, when what is exciting about fashion is innovation, not repetition.

I have a love for colorful things. I’m a fashion maximalist. I come from the school of people who look at the decoration in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom, and think ‘Why so reserved?’

With a global society hungry for luxury, distribution and supply chains are now as important for executives as a hands-on feel for products.

Just as in life you always marry the same man, so I think you always buy the same clothes over time.

I was taken to my first fashion show – Nina Ricci haute couture – in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies.

Clothes are like friends.

When I look at my clothes, I think of them as an expression of the joy and fun of fashion – with a bit of English eccentricity thrown in.

I always have separated myself from my critiques of collections. My judgment is not about whether I would wear it – but how the collection stands in the lexicon of an established designer. As I am a maximalist, not a minimalist, I don’t wear Armani or Celine – but I so appreciate what they have achieved.

I find some collections to be more vibrant than others, but the designers who last are those who are able to continue to be creative within the mold they have cast, usually right at the beginning of their careers.

The natural end of an era, as designers whose houses bear their names grow old and pass away, combined with the arrival of digital cameras and Internet exposure, has created a perfect storm.

If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion? The answer goes far beyond the collections and relates to the speed of fast fashion. There is no longer a time gap between when a small segment of fashion-conscious people pick up a trend and when it is all over the sidewalks.

Minimalism? It is something I appreciate as an art form but leave to others – unless you count a collection of warhorse-workwear Yves Saint Laurent trouser suits. Maybe my penchant for hippie-deluxe eccentricity came from an escapist dream of a different world. It was tough being a working mom in the 1970s.

The way that people dress makes them part of an army, dressed in their own uniform, determined to do something.

The clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.

I am grateful to have spent 25 years at the ‘International Herald Tribune’ – a newspaper where I had unstinting support in being able to express myself freely and honestly.

I was trained as journalist never to use the word ‘I,’ never to put my own opinion there. In fact, if you had a dollar or a euro for every time I use the word ‘I,’ you would be a poor person. But this is not true in general. I like the idea of being able to stand away and make a judgement.

Fledgling designers need investment – but how much easier it is to put them in a dead man or woman’s shoes, perhaps also backing the new designer’s namesake line, but only as what the French call a ‘danseuse,’ a plaything.