“To be beautiful, woman enough to have a black sweater, black skirt and walk arm in arm with the man she loves.”

It pains me physically to see a woman victimized, rendered pathetic by fashion.

Blue Jeans? They should be worn by farm girls milking cows!

There are women who have completely transformed my view of fashion and if I hadn’t shown them I would never have arrived at this point in fashion, you see.

Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.

I don’t really like knees.

I don’t like [to] make a woman … an abstract concept of the fashion. I don’t like [to] say, “You must wear that.” … I am not a dictator.

Moda je prolazna, dok stil traje, on je večan.

I want to thank all the women who have worn my clothes, the famous and the unknown, who have been so faithful to me and given me so much joy.

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.

I like to describe my life as a black hole with a little light out there.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

Chanel is composed of only a few elements, white camellias, quilted bags and Austrian doorman’s jackets, pearls, chains, shoes with black toes. I use these elements like notes to play with.

We’re all Africans, everyone – black, white, yellow.

One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.

We all tend to be in the same circles – people like my Wu-Tang brothers, or Black Thought from The Roots.

Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.

But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.