Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

The way that people dress makes them part of an army, dressed in their own uniform, determined to do something.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

We know that creative people have all sorts of demons.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

There is no doubt that online shopping has fed the craze for speed, because when you can't touch the fabric or try on the outfit, the only emotion you experience is the excitement of the purchase and the thrill of beating everyone else to it.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Clothes, as much as music, have an eerie echo of time and place.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I was taken to my first fashion show - Nina Ricci haute couture - in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion? The answer goes far beyond the collections and relates to the speed of fast fashion. There is no longer a time gap between when a small segment of fashion-conscious people pick up a trend and when it is all over the sidewalks.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I am not really sure that Diana Vreeland did Yves Saint Laurent a favor, as opposed to the world, by putting that exhibition at the Met in 1983. Because I'm sure that Saint Laurent started looking back at his own work. You see that with artists, don't you? Once they get their first retrospective, it's really hard for them to push ahead.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I am grateful to have spent 25 years at the 'International Herald Tribune' - a newspaper where I had unstinting support in being able to express myself freely and honestly.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Only the fat-cat corporations can really afford to put on two mega-ready-to-wear shows a year, or four if you add two haute couture shows, or six if you count men's wear. Resort and prefall push the number up to eight. A couple of promotional shows in Asia, Brazil, Dubai or Moscow can bring the count to 10.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Smartphones are so fabulous in so many ways that it seems daft to be nostalgic about the days when an image did not go round the world in a nanosecond.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

The clothes most worn by people are the clothes least commented on by the press.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

One thing I learned is how much easier it is to write about clothes than it is to make them.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Minimalism? It is something I appreciate as an art form but leave to others - unless you count a collection of warhorse-workwear Yves Saint Laurent trouser suits. Maybe my penchant for hippie-deluxe eccentricity came from an escapist dream of a different world. It was tough being a working mom in the 1970s.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I don't really believe in elegance. Ever since I first came to France many years ago to do the Chambre Syndicale course, I always felt I was somehow lacking, first of all being British - obviously a disaster! But I was also puzzled with this idea that you have to tie your Hermes scarf just right, or you can only wear black.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I do believe fashion should work as hard as a woman does.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Shoes? I have loved them all: '60s pumps; white Courreges ankle boots; platform soles from the first time around, in the '70s; more boots - ankle, calf, and knee-high; 1980s sneakers; pin heels and wedges; Mary Janes and stilettos.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

My clothes are fabulous - colourful, fun and by some very special designers. They deserve a better life than being sleeping beauties in a bed of tissue inside a trunk.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

Nan Kempner wore one of the first Saint Laurent trouser suits to one of those fancy Madison Avenue restaurants and was denied access. She famously took off her pants and walked in wearing only the jacket. And it was that kind of revolution that was echoed in fashion and in life.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I think there's a sort of agony with all intelligent and very creative designers that it's only fashion, that in the end it's only the decorative arts. I had a feeling towards the end that Saint Laurent and Berge were very keen to attain that immortality that a lot of designers long for. You know, those endless exhibitions.

Suzy Menkes
Suzy Menkes

I am not a hoarder, but my wardrobe is the antithesis of fast fashion. I buy clothes - beautiful in looks and make - to last. I originally stored away things like Ossie Clark because I could not bear to part with such treasures.