Quotations relevant to Style

[Frederic Leighton]

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.

Flick and Aldo Leopold (c.1944).

[davidhuh]

"Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress."
William Hazlitt

[hectorm]

Paraphrasing Barbey d’Aurevilly
"If there were rules regarding true Style, anybody could have it".

[mrleiter]

"Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress."
William Hazlitt

Hah, he was a funny chap. I am currently reading "On the pleasure of hating" and I confess that he brilliantly describes the emotion everyone can relate to.

On the spirit of monarchy:

"A court is the centre of fashion; and no less so, for being the sink of luxury and vice - The goods of fortune, the baits of power, the indulgences of vanity, may be accumulated without end, and the taste for them increases as it is gratified: the love of virtue, the pursuit of truth, grow stale and dull in the dissipation of a court."

[alden]

“A Maasai warrior is a fine sight. Those young men have, to the utmost extent, that particular form of intelligence which we call chic; daring and wildly fantastical as they seem, they are still unswervingly true to their own nature, and to an immanent ideal. Their style is not an assumed manner, nor an imitation of a foreign perfection; it has grown from the inside, and is an expression of the race and its history, and their weapons and finery are as much a part of their being as are a stag’s antlers.”

Isak Dinesen

[soren]

Oh, good old Blixen

[hectorm]

I just saw a biopic about the life of Yves Saint Laurent that paints him as an egomaniac and very vulnerable fellow. But he says something that rings true:
"Style is forgetting what one is wearing"