48 Quotes by Carmen Dell'Orefice

Fashion is more about taste than money – you have to understand your body and tailor clothes to your needs; it’s all about the fit. I do the alterations myself – I’m quite a seamstress – it’s the influence of my Hungarian mother.

If your ceiling is falling down, don’t you call someone in? I apply the same principle to myself.

I have had more magazine covers in the last 25 years than I have had in my whole elongated career. Today I am in a territory that business considers unmarketable: age and white hair. Slowly, however, I started to own that territory little by little because I stood up for age.

My life has been amazing. How many other ladies of 76 can say that the snapshot on their senior citizen’s card was taken by Norman Parkinson?

As a model, I didn’t have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn’t full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn’t a cover-girl type.

Even with a computer, I can’t get rid of all the papers in my life.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.

You know, Italian-Hungarian – no matter how linear and cool I look on the outside, I have all that energy trying to find its way through life.

My mother was harsh and constantly told me I had jug ears and heaven knows what else. But she was devoted and a hard worker.