Annie Lennox Quotes

In the '70s, if anything, it was a more interesting time in fashion. It was a time when things were changing, especially in London.

A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.

The '50s in general are written off as a boring decade following the turmoil of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath - the postwar Labour government, the cold war, the arrival of the New Look in fashion, etc. But I remember it as a very exciting time - a pioneering, rule-breaking time, especially for the young.

I was a kid at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s, so a lot of things changed. You had pop music coming up, with David Bowie, you had new television programmes and all these things. I was fascinated.

Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.

What gets called 'the sixties' left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems the most fundamental and most pervasive in all the ensuing changes is the loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of science, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism, of violence, of whiteness.

When fashion turns over it brings in little tiny creaks and cracks. This is the fascination and that is where you have to watch every step.

It's really interesting because 50 years ago, if you didn't wear a hat everyone looked at you. It just proves that everything is fashion.

The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.

When cultural movements happen, it's so beyond your control.

Cultural change always precedes political change.

I have often been criticised for doing an about-face from one season to the next - as has my wonderfully inspiring lady designer whom I love so much, Miuccia Prada - but that is what I love about fashion.

In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War.

When I was young in the 1960s, all the world watched the youth. Everywhere was the sensation of wanting to break the chains but to do something beautiful. It is my privilege to have beauty always near me.

Grunge was, to me, the last big movement. It had such an impact on pop culture. We haven't really seen anything like that since, and we may never again. Things have changed; the digital age has changed things.

England was very frustrating in the Seventies for anyone who was trying to wake up. It was visible in punk, in clothes, and in the revival of mods and rockers fighting. All kinds of things were going on that just weren't individual to myself.

I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.

All I've ever wanted to do is move the needle on popular culture.

At the end of the day, films mirror our society. It will take time for everybody to open up to this and accept it. They are not instantly going to sit up and change the way they think about it.

In many ways the film business is behind what's going on culturally. We are a world that is becoming more diverse and there's no going back.

I'd like to think we can make a nice, glowing change to British dressing.

It was a wonderful time to be young. The 1960s didn't end until about 1976. We all believed in Make Love Not War - we were idealistic innocents, darling, despite the drugs and sex. We were sweet lovely people who wanted to throw out all the staid institutions who placed money and wars above all else. When you're young you think that's how life works. None of us were famous, we were broke. We didn't think they'd be writing books about us in 30 years. We were just kids doing the right thing.

I don't know what you wanna describe as Rock 'n' Roll, but I certainly thought that 60s stuff, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, changed the world a little bit. But the effect seems to have retreated. I think it's harder than we think to change the world. These things go in cycles. It doesn't seem to have done an awful lot of good, does it? You know, all the talk of racial harmony and equality in the world... we haven't got a long way since the 60s.

Nineteen eighty is almost here, thank God. the hippies are getting old, they blew their brains on acid and now they're begging on street corners all over San Francisco. Their hair is tangled and their bare feet are thick and gray as shoes. We're sick of them.

I'll make my old clothes know who's master. I shall straightaway cashier the hunting-frock, and render my leather breeches incapable. My hair has been in training some time.