“Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.”

—  Karl Lagerfeld

Last update Feb. 20, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality." by Karl Lagerfeld?
Karl Lagerfeld photo
Karl Lagerfeld 57
German fashion designer 1933–2019

Related quotes

Desmond Tutu photo

“Language is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1537. Fine Cloth is never out of Fashion.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Georges Braque photo

“One must beware of a formula good for everything, that will serve to interpret the other arts as well as reality, and that instead of creating will only produce a style, or rather a stylization.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Stanislav Grof photo

“Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality
itself.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist
Piet Mondrian photo

“Art will not only continue but will realise itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

quote, 1937; last lines of Mondrian's publication in 'Circle'; as cited in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska; Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 117
1930's

Anna Sui photo

“It's kind of a dream come true, because to me fashion is not just the clothes, it's all the accoutrements that go with it…”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

CBS News Interview (March 8, 2009)

Hans Blix photo

“There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality, and eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

On the U.S. attitude regarding alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a justification for U.S. military action, as quoted widely in the media including the Boston Globe article "Newsview: U.S. reports no weapons in Iraq", September 18, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/09/18/us_leaks_report_of_no_weapons_in_iraq?mode=PF

Michel Henry photo

“Language has become the universal evil. And we can certainly see why. What characterizes any word is its difference from the thing – the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing explains its indifference to the thing. Since a word has nothing in itself that is identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or else attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that reality, it could just as well bring reality back to itself, identify with it, define it, in such a way that everything the word says becomes reality, and pretends to stand for it. Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Source: Michel Henry, I am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 9

Thomas Mann photo

“An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Speech at the Prussian Academy of Art in Berlin (22 January 1929); also in Essays of Three Decades (1942)

Related topics