Along with being a noted French fashion designer, Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel was also quite the fount of knowledge. Throughout her high-profile career in fashion, Chanel offered pearls of wisdom on life, femininity, success and, of course, style.
A pioneer in fashion, Chanel believed “success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” Essentially, Chanel found the people who are considered successful don’t think much of their failures. Instead, they continue to push forward towards the goal they want to achieve.
Among her most famous quotes, however, Chanel had a way with synthesizing the true essence of fashion and style. “Fashion changes, but style endures,” which artfully articulates the ebb and flow of trends in the fashion industry, while also acknowledging that true style and presence of self never fades away.
One of the most enduring Coco Chanel quotes is arguably her advice to women: “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” What Chanel is alluding to isn’t fitting one particular mold of “classy” or “fabulous,” but instead asking women to identify their own level of classy and search for pieces and elements of their life and personality that make them feel fabulous — not for anyone else, but themselves.
Ahead, read some of Coco Chanel’s most famous quotes on everything from fashion to femininity and so much more.
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “A woman can be overdressed but never over elegant.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images “If you’re sad, add more lipstick and attack.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images “Dress like you are going to meet your worst enemy today.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “A woman with good shoes is never ugly.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “The best colour in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “I only drink Champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I am not.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Photo12/Universal Images Group v “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images “Elegance is refusal.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Agence France Presse/Archive Photos/Getty Images “Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: AFP via Getty Images “I imposed black; it’s still going strong today, for black wipes out everything else around.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “You live but once; you might as well be amusing.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Courtesy of SMU “Fashion changes, but style endures.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well-dressed.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Roger Schall/Condé Nast/Shutterstock “I don’t do fashion. I am fashion.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t think of you at all.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Courtesy Douglas Kirkland “Fashion has two purposes: comfort and love. Beauty comes when fashion succeeds.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Bottistills Gamma/Courtesy of Chanel “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “There are people who have money and people who are rich.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Getty Images “Adornment, what a science! Beauty, what a weapon! Modesty, what elegance!”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Michael Ochs Archives “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Penske Media via Getty Images “I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little — if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Conde Nast via Getty Images “You were born an original, don’t become a copy.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Dominique Maitre/WWD “Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Penske Media via Getty Images “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: WWD “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images “As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
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Coco Chanel Quotes
Image Credit: Cecil Beaton/Condé Nast via Getty Images “My life didn’t please me, so I created my life.”
