Diana Vreeland (1906–1989)

This autobiography is one of those books that grows on you. It is very entertaining and charmingly told. Diana Vreeland, fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar and editor in chief at Vogue, lived a charmed life in many ways. She hobnobbed with celebs, designers, royalty, etc her whole life. She knew how to get in the door just about anywhere. Of course, she is known to have used hyberbole regularly and to tell stories that were questionable in their veracity. You can take a cynical view of that character or you can relax and enjoy the tales she tells. There isn't much substance in this memoir, but its good waiting room reading, if you know what I mean.
Diana is a captivating character..almost fictional. Yet her stories are of encounters with real people, commentary that you might not otherwise hear. Born in Paris to wealthy socialite family, she was exposed to a wide variety of people in the fashion, literary and and performance art scene at the turn of the centruy.
"Naturally, I've always been mad about clothes. You don't get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute.And what clothes I saw in the Bois! I realize now I saw the whole beginning of our centruy there. Everythig was new."

My favorite chapter is her discussion of color. Looking for a green background she once described her imagined color as billiard-table green. When she was unsatisfied with all the attempts to produce the "right" color, including an actual table felt, she reportedly said "Not a billiard table, the idea of a billiard table." Those of us who work with color daily totally get this statement. The idea of a color is what we try to communicate when writing copy for our fabrics. To me color is a very living concept, not a flat chip on a piece of paper. I had a virtual "moment" with Diana when I read this part of the book.
I also loved her descriptions of her trips to Chanel, her commentary on fashion in the 30's and her remembrances of other fashion icons, especially Balenciaga.

Being recognized in the street for my involvement in fashion is truly fantastic. It amazes me every time. I mean, I've been recognized by cab drivers. I just can't get over it. I've given this a lot of thought, and I think that it's because fashion must be even stranger than the lure of the stage. i really have come to that conclusion. Fashion must be the most intoxicating release form the banality of the world."… (more)

I really adored this book. It's not written. Instead, it's rather obvious that the editors, George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill, just sat down with Mrs. Vreeland and let her talk, and then pretty much transcribed the conversation as it had happened. And, boy, can she talk! A mile a minute is a conservative estimate. You zip through this book because you find yourself reading it as quickly as it was said. And it's full of italics! Vreeland's excitement and enthusiasm for whatever it is she's talking about are evident on the page.

What a life she led. Raised in a rawther social family, in London and Paris and New York, she married banker Reed Vreeland at the age of nineteen, and he was clearly the love of her life. She knew everyone, from Josephine Baker to Jacqueline Onassis with the Windsors in between, practically invented red, was fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar for twenty-six years and editor-in-chief at Vogue for eight, and ended her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

Remarks like "Unshined shoes are the end of civilization" and the famous "Pink is the navy blue of India" make Vreeland seem superficial. And, indeed, she herself said that she adored artifice. But she was also a very insightful, practical, intelligent and hard-working woman. She rightly says that the books one has read are the way you find out about a person. And although she says, "I stopped reading -- seriously reading -- years ago", she can talk about Tolstoy and kept The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon next to her bed. (More on Vreeland's books.)

If Chanel brought fashion kicking and screaming into the 20th-century, it was Vreeland (who adored and patronized Chanel) who made it part of the life of the woman-on-the-street.… (more)

Diana Vreeland's memos to the editors, bookers, and assistants on her staff at "Vogue" record her obsessions and her passionate prodding. The memos were dictated to one of her often replaced secretaries, usually from home in the morning or, after twelve, at her office in the Graybar Building on Lexington Avenue, with its faux leopard-skin carpet and red walls covered with photographs and clippings neatly lined up and attached with pushpins. "Visionaire", the art and fashion quarterly, invites readers to take an intimate look into her creative reign at "Vogue" by publishing these fabled inter-office memos in an appropriately exclusive edition portfolio. Loosely bound and wrapped in red ribbon, "Visionaire 37" reproduces a select 150 of the 400 surviving memos that detail Vreeland's absolutely definitive thoughts about fashion, photographers, models, and the inner workings of the world's most powerful fashion magazine.

http://wonderclub.com/magazines/visionaire/visionaire_magazine_2002.htm… (more)