Quotes

I've designed films I've never seen.

If it is a Paramount film, I probably designed it.

What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen he's become a different person.

I have yet to see one completely unspoiled star, except for Lassie.

You can lead a horse to water and you can even make it drink, but you can't make actresses wear what they don't want to wear.

[1977 comment on Jacqueline Bisset] One of the greatest bodies I've ever worked with. But besides that she is rather the opposite, because she is so damned intelligent. It's a strange combination, almost a double personality.

[on Grace Kelly] I've dressed thousands of actors, actresses and animals, but whenever I am asked which star is my personal favorite, I answer, "Grace Kelly." She is a charming lady, a most gifted actress and, to me, a valued friend.

[on Kim Novak] I don't usually get into battles, but dressing Kim Novak for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) put to the test all my training in psychology.

[on viewing what many tanned actresses wore to the 1966 Academy Awards] I looked at all those white dresses and I thought we were doing a reprise of White Christmas (1954).

I never thought I did good work for [Cecil B. DeMille]. I always had to do what that conceited old goat wanted, whether it was correct or not.

[on winning her fifth Oscar, 1954] I'm going to take it home and design a dress for it.

[Her reaction to losing the 1956 Color Costume Award to Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955)] Charles Le Maire is a good friend of mind and I would tell him to his face that his designs were blah compared to my gowns. All the costumes Jennifer Jones wore were chong sams, the traditional Chinese dress, which could have been purchased in Chinatown. That loss was the single greatest disappointment of my costume-design career.

[on Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)] I guess I've come full circle when I design the exact dress for Steve Martin that I did for Barbara Stanwyck.

In the 1930s, costumes didn't have anything to do with real life. The poor working girl was smothered in furs, and [in She Done Him Wrong (1933)] Mae West wore a simple black velvet festooned with rhinestones and ruffles when she met Cary Grant in the park.

[on the Hollywood rumor that Mae West was really a man] I've seen Mae West without a stitch and she's all woman. No hermaphrodite could have bosoms...well, like two large melons.

You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.