Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel (1883-08-19 – 1971-01-10) was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired fashions and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her arguably the most important figure in the history of 20th-century fashion.

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• A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion.

• A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

• A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.

• A woman has the age she deserves.

• A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.

• As long as you know men are like children, you know everything.

• Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

• Dress sharply and they'll remember the outfit; dress impeccably and they'll remember the woman.

• Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

• Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

• Elegance is refusal.

• Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.

• Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

• Fashion is not simply a matter of clothes. Fashion is in the air, born upon the wind. One intuits it. It is in the sky and on the road.

• Fashion passes, style remains.

• Great loves too must be endured.

• Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

• How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

• I don't know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

• I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.

• I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

• I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.

• I love myself.

• I was the one who changed, it wasn't fashion. I was the one who was in fashion.

• If a man talks bad about all women, it usually means he was burned by one woman.

• In fashion, you know you have succeeded when there is an element of upset.

• In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

• Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.

• It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure.

• I've never done anything by halves.

• Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

• Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.

• Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

• Material things aside, we need no advice but approval.

• May my legend prosper and thrive. I wish it a long and happy life.

• My friends, there are no friends.

• My reason for choosing diamonds is that, dense as they are, they represent the greatest worth in the smallest volume.

• Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

• Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is difficult.

• Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

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

• Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

• The best color in the whole world, is the one that looks good, on you.

• The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

• There are a lot of duchesses, but only one Coco Chanel.
  • On commenting as to why she did not marry the Duke of Westminster

• There are people who have money and people who are rich.

• There goes a woman who knows all the things that can be taught and none of the things that cannot be taught.

• There is time for work, and time for love. That leaves no other time.

• Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

• To achieve great things, we must first dream.

• When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on.

• When I can no longer create anything, I'll be done for.

• When you give women back their mystery, you give them back their youth.

• Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touches me and I say: 'One must not hide that!' Then someone tells you: 'The shoulder is on the back'. I have never seen women with shoulders on their backs.

• Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

• 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.