The truly fashionable are beyond fashion. – Cecil Beaton
Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means… airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash. – Cecil Beaton
Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly. – Cecil Beaton
The first purpose of clothes… was not warmth or decency, but ornament…. Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. – Thomas Carlyle