A Quote by Valerie Steele

Fashion has been collected and exhibited for many years. People were picking up clothing of famous individuals, like Marie Antoinette's shoe or Napoleon's hat. That part of the resistance to having fashion in museums had to do with it being associated with femininity, and with the female body. Yet, as early as the 18th century, some people were recognizing that just as you collected art, you, might think about collecting fashion for museums, because it would provide insight into the way people thought about their lives and, and the way they envisioned themselves.

Valerie Steele

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About Art Associated Because Been Being Body Century Clothing Collected Collecting Early Envisioned Famous Fashion Female Female Body Femininity Had Hat Having Individuals Insight Just Like Lives Many Marie Might Museums Napoleon Part People Picking Provide Recognizing Resistance Shoe Some Some People Themselves Think Thought Up Way Were Would Years

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Valerie Steele
American - Historian
Born: 1955

I think fashion is probably one of the most accessible and immediate forms of visual culture. In 1978, when I realized that I wanted to work on fashion, I had gone to Yale to get my Ph.D. in European cultural history. I suddenly realized fashion's part of culture, and I can do fashion history. All my professors thought this was a really bad idea, that fashion was frivolous and unimportant. And, increasingly over time, people have recognized that it provides such a mirror to the way we think, our values and attitudes.

Valerie Steele

I always loved fashion and clothes. Not because I think that's a woman's place, but because I care about aesthetics. I like art; I like going to art museums, and to me, these things are just manifestations of one's aesthetic sense.

Leila Janah

The New York world is definitely geared toward fashion. So many people work in the fashion industry, photography, all sorts of satellite businesses that have to do with it, so there's no way that it can't affect you, and it just kind of makes you think with more of a fashion edge.

Chris March

Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years.

Oscar Wilde

My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren’t they? I know they didn’t invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves.

Nick Hornby

I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable.

Louise Wilson

I guess I just developed more of an interest to actually be a part of the design, picking out the fabric and just being more involved. I never really considered myself a fashion person, but then I just realized that fashion is just another way of self expression and that's pretty much what I'm most passionate about.

Jhene Aiko

I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through.

Amy Smart

Fashion wears many faces; it has the urge to belong to a group - to charm - but also the urge to be exclusive and snobbish to carve out individuality. That is the genius of fashion! Fashion is what time looks like, and it's up to us all to shape what our own time looks like. Fashion is a collaborative art form in this way... We all paint the picture.

Isabel Toledo

I really learned a lot from collecting clothes because I got to go back into the history of fashion and fashion photography and jewelry. It changed how I felt about fashion and about what I did forever because I used to look a little bit down on myself for it.

Stephanie Seymour

I wear things that aren't in fashion. I wear colors that aren't in fashion. And as a result of that, I kind of bring it back. I feel like nothing really ever goes out of style. It's just what the media and what people tell people to wear. I think having your own sense of fashion is important.

Ryan Potter

When I first started to do fashion shows I didn't have the budget to hire top models so I would cast women who inspired me, and ask them to walk how they walked. I was doing a mise en scène, which for me was normal. I love for people to see my clothes, but it was more about the attitude of the girls. The revues of the late 19th century/early 20th century were very much a reflection of what was happening in society and politics, and for me that is also the role of the fashion designer.

Jean Paul Gaultier

As I matured, I've always had the dream of one day either having my own clothing line or owning a fashion magazine. Most of my thesis' and projects in school were fashion and advertising based.

Ashley Purdy

Fashion Week was at Bryant Park and there were a few shows like Marc Jacobs, or when Alexander McQueen came to town, that were offsite, Helmut [Lung] was offsite, but it was very intimate. It wasn't the way it is today where you have a thousand people at the show. You may have had 200 to 250 and it was really the trade and you know fashion greats.

Roopal Patel

You're taught that you need to please magazines, to please the fashion elite, and that if you do everything the right way, everyone is going to love you. But I decided not to follow some of the rules. My girls from the runway were not just models - they were soldiers. They helped me bring my ideas to life. I was talking about sexiness, about diversity, about different shapes of bodies. I was following my instincts and learning that it would not please the fashion elite. And I think this is the real luxury, to be free to express yourself. Freedom is luxury to me.

Olivier Rousteing

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?'

Suzy Menkes

A Quote by Valerie Steele

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