For T’s culture issue, out this Sunday, Alice Gregory wrote about “The Most Brilliant American Fashion Designer”: Elizabeth Hawes, the writer, designer and feminist who passed away in 1971. Throughout her career, Hawes offered an honest, often funny appraisal of the fashion world as it was and as she thought it should be. She was a proponent of using style to get what you want (and, essentially, to become who you want to be), and a wicked critic. While researching the piece, Gregory amassed a collection of Hawes’s wittiest one-liners from her nine books. Here, she lists her 10 favorite quips from the most important woman in fashion you’ve never heard of.
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Hawes Through the Years
The Times profiled Elizabeth Hawes several times during her lifetime. Here, a look back at our coverage.
• Paris Cold to Show American Designer (July 25, 1931)
• Women of Soviet Want Dress Styles (July 17, 1935)
• Debunking Fashion (March 27, 1938)
1. “There is a sound reason why one and a half billion dollars are spent for cosmetics in your country every year, and only half that sum for education: There are no naturally pretty girls in the United States.” – “Anything But Love”
2. “After marriage, all things change. And one of them better be you.” – “Anything But Love”
3. “There is no word in English for chic. Why should there be? Everything chic is by legend French. Perhaps everything chic is in reality French.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
4. “I consider the rise of uncomfortable men’s clothes in the Soviet Union by all odds the most pernicious result of the revolution.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
5. “It is impossible to be completely abstract about clothes because they have no life unless they are worn. They must fit onto a body or they do not exist.” – “Why Is a Dress?”
6. “If you are the type who truly longs to be a Southern Belle at all times, regardless of taking twice the space available in bus, subway or elsewhere, you had best remove yourself to a large estate replete with servants.” – “It’s Still Spinach”
7. “I would not be doing justice to the future of clothes if I did not point out that practically all psychologists who have bothered to consider the subject agree that eventually we will all become nudists.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
8. “I took a brandy at lunch to dull myself for the ordeal of afternoons on Seventh Avenue.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
9. “American women bear a lot.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
10. “No store can afford to get above the general level of its public’s tastes.” – “Fashion Is Spinach”
An earlier version of a credit misidentified the source for a photograph. "But Say It Politely" was photographed by Champ & Mabel Collectibles, not the Prelinger Library.
