"Fashion fades, only style remains the same"
About this Quote
Chanel’s line is a neat piece of brand philosophy disguised as common sense: the promise that underneath fashion’s churn there’s a calmer, superior category called “style,” and she just happens to be its high priestess. Coming from a designer who helped strip women out of corseted ornament and into streamlined modernity, it’s also a retroactive justification for her own project. If you can define “style” as clarity, restraint, and ease, then yesterday’s excess becomes mere “fashion” and Chanel becomes inevitability.
The intent is twofold. First, it flatters the listener: you can rise above trend-chasing by cultivating taste. Second, it markets longevity, which is the real luxury. High fashion lives on novelty; luxury lives on the idea that your purchase will outlast the season and, ideally, your insecurity. “Style remains the same” is less an empirical claim than a sales strategy: buy the silhouette, the jacket, the little black dress, and you’re buying immunity from time.
The subtext carries a sharp social hierarchy. Fashion is the crowd, the cycle, the gullible many. Style is the individual, the disciplined few. Yet Chanel knew better than anyone that “timeless” style is made, not found: it’s constructed through magazines, ateliers, and the slow enforcement of what counts as elegant. The quote works because it offers control in a system built on instability, turning the anxiety of changing tastes into a moral distinction.
The intent is twofold. First, it flatters the listener: you can rise above trend-chasing by cultivating taste. Second, it markets longevity, which is the real luxury. High fashion lives on novelty; luxury lives on the idea that your purchase will outlast the season and, ideally, your insecurity. “Style remains the same” is less an empirical claim than a sales strategy: buy the silhouette, the jacket, the little black dress, and you’re buying immunity from time.
The subtext carries a sharp social hierarchy. Fashion is the crowd, the cycle, the gullible many. Style is the individual, the disciplined few. Yet Chanel knew better than anyone that “timeless” style is made, not found: it’s constructed through magazines, ateliers, and the slow enforcement of what counts as elegant. The quote works because it offers control in a system built on instability, turning the anxiety of changing tastes into a moral distinction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Coco Chanel , quote given in French as "La mode passe, le style demeure" (commonly rendered "Fashion fades, only style remains"); cited on Wikiquote (Coco Chanel). |
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