Over 20 Lessons Coco Chanel Teaches Us About a Stylish Life

Say the name Coco Chanel and what comes to mind? Whether you know all about her or only know her as the creator of the eponymous fashion house, one thing is for certain, you know Chanel means style. Coco wanted to be bigger than fashion, often acknowledging the constant and transitory nature of fashion. Coco wanted to be style. Fashion changes daily, but being stylish never changes. Fashion is based on trends while style is based on knowing yourself, loving yourself, and presenting your best self to the world. 

Coco understood that style was more than what you put on, but how you live.

Those are the elements Coco Chanel brought to the world of fashion. And the fashion world has not been the same since. 

Today is Coco Chanel's birthday, a day revered in the style world. I've curated over 20 quotes Coco used to celebrate. Note; these aren't just quotes about clothes, or bags or even fashion. A lot of these are about what Coco loved most, not a stylish closet, but a stylish life.

-Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

-The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

-In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different

-You live but once; you might as well be amusing.

-Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.

-Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

-Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.

-Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.

-How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

-There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!

-A women who doesn't wear perfume has no future.

-Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

-Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

-There are people who have money and people who are rich

-Great loves too must be endured.

-Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.

-Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.

(All quote photos via Pinterest.com)