Charles James

Professions :

Designer

Born :

July 18, 1906

Died :

September 23, 1978

A great designer does not seek acceptance. He challenges popularity, and by the force of his convictions renders popular in the end what the public hates at first sight.

hate acceptance sight

Forget all you know & learn something every day.

knows forget

Fashion, after all, is magic and miracle…intended to bestow proportion and beauty where both have been lost or faded with the years.

fashion miracle years

All creative work begins by doing something with the hands. Creation is simply a problem and design is the way out.

design creative hands

There are not many original shapes or silhouettes -- only a million variations.

silhouettes variation shapes

Cut in dressmaking is like grammar in language. A good design should be like a well made sentence and it should only express one idea at a time.

design cutting ideas

Marriage: The most expensive way to get your laundry done.

done sex way

We who have been ahead in STYLE have usually been also ahead in our thinking.

has-beens style thinking

I spent my life making fashion an art form.

fashion form art

True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.

real heart men

All my seams have meaning - they emphasize something about the body.

body

My dresses help women discover figures they didn't know they had.

figures dresses helping

So perverse is mankind that every nationality prefers to be misgoverned by its own people than to be well ruled by another

wells mankind people

The best design reveals itself during a long fatiguing process of digging into the subconscious.

digging design long

Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.

vanity believe book

Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth.

shostakovich mediums mines

In fashion even what seems most fragile must be built on cement.

cement built fashion

He that is conscious of guilt cannot bear the innocence of others:So they will try to reduce all others to their own level.

levels guilt trying

You should know that my most important contribution was always in tailoring; coats, jackets, wool dresses… so few of which went into the magazines.

wool important dresses

The best way to quiet a country is a good thrashing, followed by great kindness afterwards. Even the wildest chaps are thus tamed.

kindness country way

Bruce Mau

Brian Reynolds

Bran Ferren

Amy Butler Greenfield

Alex Bogusky

Alec Issigonis

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