“Isn’t elegance forgetting what one is wearing?”

Chanel freed women, and I empowered them.

I love women. I love all the bright and attractive people and things of this world, the flame and also the moth, the dancer and the dance.

Decadence attracts me. It suggests a new world, and, for me, society’s struggle between life and death is absolutely beautiful.

I was born with a nervous breakdown.

Finding your own style is not easy, but once found it brings complete happiness. It gives you self-confidence, always.

Fashions come and go, but style is forever.

Fashion is defined by what later becomes out of fashion.

Without elegance of the heart, there is no elegance.

Haute couture consists of secrets whispered from generation to generation,

I’d really like to be in closer contact with life. I’m a little too distant, I guess. I like to place myself outside.

I find men’s clothing fascinating because sometime between, say, 1930 and 1936 a handful of basic shapes were created and still prevail as a sort of scale of expression, with which every man can project his own personality and his own dignity.

I couldn’t love a woman who inspired me to be totally disinterested. If I fell in love with a woman for an artistic reason, or from the point of view of my work, I think it would rob her of something.

Elegance and beauty have been banished.

I love bows, … And I feel some couture pots coming on.

I created for my era and I tried to foresee what tomorrow would be.

Fashion comes and goes, but style is eternal.

Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.

Comedy has been so good to me.

Why would I make one woman so miserable when I can make so many women very happy?

Even if the Israel-Palestine question were solved – and I think and hope that one day soon it will be – this wouldn’t stop one person from becoming a terrorist.

[Maurizio Arrivabene is quite a character] but only for himself and not for Formula One.

I am sure it will grow back.’ The doctor said, ‘You’re too young to know.’ …But in a year’s time that fluid came back, and that eye is just as good as the other one today.

One can repent even of having repented.

We have all the time in the world to make up our minds as to what is the wise thing to do and then we do the foolish one.