Chanel vs Schiaparelli: should fashion whisper or shock?

Elegance is refusal, my dear—I freed women from the corset and dressed them in jersey a duchess could breathe in.

You freed them into beige monotony; I gave them lobster gowns and shoe-hats, so they might arrive as a work of art, not a uniform.

A woman should be remembered when she enters a room, not the dress—your Surrealist costumes wear the woman.

Better a woman remembered as a dream than forgotten in your tasteful little black shroud.