The Designer Quotes

“We’re each on our own tightrope. All we can do is pick one another up after we fall.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Kindness is the currency of humanity”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“In my experience, the unmarried women are the smartest.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“She wondered whether Pearl wasn’t right in her dire warnings that this relationship with Suzy would change her forever. It probably would. But perhaps she wanted to change. What else was life all about?”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Men always imagined they were undemanding and easy-going; but it soon turned out that the going was only easy if it went their way.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“that in the larger sense of life’s struggle, most of us are wounded in combat.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“And what defines true elegance?’ she asked wryly as they crossed the wide, empty, cobbled streets. ‘Dressing with care.’ ‘Is that all?’ ‘Far from it. But that is the essence.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“A bottle of perfume brought in more foreign revenue than a barrel of petroleum. A Paris frock was worth more than ten tons of coal. These very equations were evidence, in the eyes of some people, of the indefensible extravagance of haute couture.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“There’s been so much destruction and unhappiness around me – and my life has been a fairy tale.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“This will be the age of Dior, ma petite.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“This was something few followers of fashion ever saw – the long hours of hard, highly skilled labour that went into the production of each item of haute couture. Beauty came at the cost of tired eyes, aching shoulders and worn fingers.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“We must show the world that, despite the war, Paris is still the capital of haute couture,”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“The opening of Le Théâtre de la Mode took place on 28 March 1945. The exhibition subsequently travelled to several countries, ending up in San Francisco, where the dolls, in poor condition, were abandoned. They and the original costumes have been restored, and are now exhibited at the Maryhill Museum of Art in Washington State.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Dior alone accounted for three-quarters of all fashion exports in 1947. He was a phenomenon. He might not have won the Croix de guerre or the Légion d’honneur, but he was a saviour of France nonetheless. More – he was a saviour of fashion itself, because he had single-handedly made being fashionable fashionable again.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“The flowery scent of the new perfume Tian had designed – to be called ‘Miss Dior’ after Catherine”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“But in the same way that she wanted a marriage and a profession, she was determined that motherhood would not be the end of her career.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Life was not perfect, but everyone deserved a shot at happiness. You had to take your chances. Sometimes you had to accept a compromise. And just because you’d made one mistake didn’t mean you were doomed to repeat that mistake, or live with its consequences forever.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Kindness is the currency of humanity. Even in the camps one found it. Debased and broken, but one found it.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“She’d found that she needed closeness and trust more than sex. Desire grew out of trust, not the other way round.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“You don’t know nothing about me. Or the life I’ve had. You’re so quick to judge, like all the other women. Women are the worst, you know. Worse than men. I think it’s because, secretly, they all know in their hearts they could be me.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Whereas Lelong’s authority came from the status of ownership, Dior’s came from an artist’s inner certainty that his work was good.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“New ideas are so important. The art of pleasing is to know what people want even before they want it.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“But I think I’d rather be alone than be hurt all the time.’ ‘Loneliness hurts, too,’ he said quietly.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Nobody can take another’s place. Love doesn’t work like that. One can love more than once, but each love is glorious in its own way.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“Kindness is the currency of humanity.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“I have never been beautiful, not even when I was young, when most people have some brief flowering. I never had such a flowering. I was always dull and plain. I remain dull and plain.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“The art of pleasing is to know what people want even before they want it.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“She didn’t ‘nag, pester or complain’. She certainly didn’t ‘constantly demand new dresses’, yet she successfully avoided ‘looking slovenly and unkempt’. As for not dishing up ‘unappetising meals, served on unclean crockery and stained linen’, she did her best, given the constraints of wartime Paris.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“It’s perfectly possible to love Paris while detesting the French,”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer

“The next day, Paris woke up to find its streets plastered with posters calling for a general strike.”
― Marius Gabriel, The Designer