You can be too rich and too thin, but you can never be too well read or too curious about the world.

Few activities are as delightful as learning new vocabulary.

When I took over as chair of the fashion program, I was horrified that only the faculty member was allowed to speak in a critique. I'm talking about perfectly nurturing teachers. But the rule was there would be no call of hands for students to contribute their feedback. It was embedded in the department's culture. That was alarming to me. When I was teaching, I was the least important person in the room as far as I was concerned--my students' points of view mattered most. I wanted to learn who they were and teach them to respect one another's perspectives.I would start off by saying something like, "I am having trouble understanding how this work solves the problem at hand. Here are some things about the work that I appreciate: X, Y, Z. But I see these virtues independent of the problem we're solving.

One of the hardest things for a teacher is to know when to keep quiet and when to let go. It is a terrible thing to hold someone back from success, or to insist on sharing credit, or to tie someone to your apron strings. We need to have faith that we have done all we can, and then we need to kick our birds out of the nest.

Until the sixteenth century, men—priests, academics, judges, merchants, princes, and many others—wore skirts, or robes. For men, the skirt was a 'sign of leisure and a symbol of dignity,' writes Quentin Bell. This is still true for men in high positions. After all, can you imagine the Pope, or Professor Dumbledore, wearing trousers? Have you ever seen a depiction of God wearing pants?

I believe that treating other people well is a lost art.

Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you'll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you'll run into every ex you have.

I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic.

The message sent by this policy is that if women are to be accepted into the exclusive ranks of men, then they have to look like men: buttoned up, stuffy, and no-nonsense. As if to show a little cleavage, to highlight a curvaceous figure, or to in any way appear feminine would discount, discredit, and disqualify them.I strongly disagree with this idea. I feel that women should wear clothes that suit their bodies rather than forcing themselves into unflattering men's suits and that it is feminist to make a wide range of women's clothes acceptable business attire.

Speaking of high-end shoe designers, in 2011 it was fascinating to see the design company of Christian Louboutin try to stop the company Yves Saint Laurent from producing high heels with red soles, claiming that Louboutin was the originator of the red sole. Louboutin lost, and I was glad. He was not the first person to paint a sole, and I am wary of patenting a color, like Tiffany blue. Why should we grant that entire history to Louboutin and say there are no predecessors and should be no successors?

I love the word 'fashion.' That's why I'm using it in the title of this book. Fashion is about change and about creating clothes within a historical context. To me, dismissing fashion as silly or unimportant seems like a denial of history and frequently a show of sexism—as if something that's traditionally a concern of women isn't valid as a field of academic inquiry. When the Parsons fashion department was founded in 1906, it was called 'costume design,' because fashion was then a verb: to fashion. But the word 'fashion' has evolved to mean something much more profound, and those who resist it seem to me to be on the wrong side of history.

Whether they come from Brooks Brothers or a thrift store, the sweaters we wear have a magnificent ancestry. Their history spans the worlds of Irish fishermen, French knights, World War I soldiers, busty Hollywood 'sweater girls,' and the television saint Mr. Rogers. That history lives in each garment. By being aware of it, we can better appreciate what we have.

A T-shirt is a T-shirt. Spending hundreds of dollars on it doesn't elevate it. He was under-dressed, even if his casual outfit did cost more than my suit and tie.I once had another fashion victim tell me, 'This T-shirt cost twelve thousand dollars!'What difference does that make? If that's the message you want to send about yourself and your fashion sense, you should wear the price tag, or that should be the message on your T-shirt: 'Hi. This T-shirt costs more than a semester of college.' Or: 'Hi. I have money to burn. Please help me get rid of all this wealth.' And my shirt, in turn, would say, 'Great. Please write a $12,000 check to charity.

In 1916, Infants' and Children's Wear Review insisted upon pink for boys and blue for girls. In 1939, Parents magazine claimed that pink was a good color for boys because it was a pale version of red, which was the color of Mars, the war god. Blue was good for girls because it was the color of Venus, and of the Virgin Mary. So, pink for girls is a relatively recent trend, and utterly random.

In my typical way, I declined to respond, saying that I didn't want anyone to run to a store just because I endorsed a trend. Besides, a trend is good only if it works for you, your wardrobe, and your lifestyle.

The work is at such a high level and is so well executed, it really is a matter of taste... [Source: Project Runway — but consider, applied to the theme of book reviews, it seems apropos!]