Daily Inspiration Quote by Christian Siriano

Siriano is pushing back on a word that sounds harmless but lands like a downgrade. "Costume" implies disguise, playacting, something worn for a night and then retired to a closet. For a designer whose brand has long flirted with spectacle, the label threatens to file his work under novelty: fun, flamboyant, and ultimately unserious. His repetition reads like a strategic insistence, not just defensiveness: couture, couture, couture. He wants the audience to hear craft, lineage, and institutional legitimacy every time the silhouettes get strange.

The subtext is about who gets to be taken seriously in fashion’s hierarchy. When editors or viewers call an extravagant look a costume, they’re often policing taste under the guise of practicality: Is it wearable? Is it "real" fashion? Siriano concedes the obvious ("not particularly wearable") while refusing the verdict. That move is smart. He separates wearability from value, arguing that fashion can be art without needing to pass as everyday clothing. It’s also a quiet demand to judge his work by the standards applied to legacy houses, where impracticality is often celebrated as daring rather than dismissed as gimmick.

Context matters: Siriano emerged from a reality-TV pipeline and built a reputation for red-carpet drama and inclusivity. That path makes him legible to mass culture, which can be its own stigma in elite fashion spaces. Rejecting "costume" is him drawing a boundary: spectacle can still be serious, and theatricality can still be couture.