Married to Alexander Vreeland, the grandson of Diana Vreeland, the author-director felt the fashion editor's life story was one that had to be told. The Vreelands apartment at 400 Park Avenue and their country house in Brewster, both decorated with the help of the fashionable George Stacey, became Euro-American havens for a confraternity of worldly souls. Its exactly as if Id said, I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple. Together, they shot supermodels such as Dovima in locations as outlandish as an air-force missile-testing center and convinced Vreeland's society friends, including Marella Agnelli, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Jacqueline de Ribes, to sit for rare portraits. But I understood what she was sayingthat tailoring was the important thing in the couture collections, and thats what we photographed. The most quixotic edict Vreeland issued to Penn was to find me the Gypsy queen who bathes in milk and has the most beautiful skin in the world! Penn took off for Spain, searched everywhere, but of course I did not her. There have been many influential fashion figures throughout time, but few have been as consistent as Diana Vreeland in vision, passion, and point of view. One reason Vreeland has passed so easily into abstraction is that she always trafficked in the elusive and insubstantial. She believes that the only "two great. Carolyn Schnurer raves, As an editor she was always so color-right, fashion-right, silhouette-right. Afterwards, she rushed over to Mitzi, practically threw herself at her, and showered her with compliments. Cond Nast hired Vreeland in 1962, first as an associate editor and then to fill the prim pumps of Jessica Daves as editor in chief when the Georgia ministers daughter retired less than a year later. She worked for a living practically until the day she died., Temperamentally, the two sacred monsters checked and balanced each other. Vreeland also famously cast Lauren Bacall as an American Red Cross girl for Bazaar's iconic March 1943 cover, shot by her frequent collaborator Louise Dahl-Wolfe. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. What happened between Malcolm McDowell and the horse? For half a century, driven by fear of obscurity, financial need, and a wanton passion for beauty, Vreeland had seen to her own social transformation from a society career girl into a feared and adored icon. Login While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. She and Anna Wintour have both served as Editors-in-Chief of Vogue Magazine. She opened a lingerie boutique where Wallis Simpson, soon to be the Duchess of Windsor, was a client. Shes gone to Church, Madam. CHURCH? The secret of her success as an editor was timing, says photographer David Bailey, part of the British waveincluding the Beatles and Twiggythat crashed upon the pages of Vogue. Diana was a vivacious child who enjoyed fantasy and dancing, and also possessed a flair for dressing up. She hated Seventh Avenueshe used the Americans to make up fantasy clothes. Memos: The Vogue Years. Somehow, through an intoxicating combination of prodigious chic and ferocious willfulness, this human hyperbole bewitched the most handsome, elegant man around, Thomas Reed Vreeland, a banking trainee in Albany. More than just an eye, a fashion editor in those days had to be a resourceful combination of movie director, prop-man, seamstress, and beautician. For American Women of Style, Harold Koda reports, although we had Millicent Rogers authentic Mainbocher blouses, Mrs. Vreeland wanted replicas made. She felt that to be true to the original spirit Millicents blouses had to be crisp and fresh. As for the cement wig he made for The Eighteenth-Century Woman, Koda ultimately took his own cues from a period caricature, and would up with something so heavy and high it had to be balanced with buckshot and anchored to the ceiling. Although she died in 1989, she can claim more acolytes today than ever before, who reverently pore over old magazines, study old photographs and quote from her books Allure (1980) and D.V. Weekends were spent in Brewster, New York, where the guests they entertained in their double-height shocking-pink living room with a mantelpiece made of shells included designers like Mainbocher, Elsa Schiaparelli, Fulco de Verdura, Jean Schlumberger, and Cartier's Jeanne Toussaint, along with actors and writers. Having found it, her younger son states, hard to have that dynamic, powerful a dame as a mother, Frecky had spent most of his adult life in Europe as a diplomat, while Timmy had established himself a continent away as an architect in California. years later. Sign up for our essential daily brief and never miss a story. Despite her bizarre makeup and scarlet front door, Diana wrote that in Albany she was still very, very domestica Japanese wife. Just before the 1929 crash, Reed took a position with the Guaranty Trust, and the family moved to London. Warhol-estate executor Fred Hughes, one of Dianas intimates in the 70s and 80s, once pulled a scrapbook out of a banquette drawer and saw a clipping of Diana, at age 10 or 11, dressed as Martha Washington. A woman of striking individuality, Vreeland remained the doyenne of American high fashion, receiving numerous honours and awards. Some say that after a while Vreeland relegated nonfamily visitors to a hallway outside her bedroom, or behind a screen, where they sat and read to their invisible hostess. "But Mrs. At 16 she started with the over-the-top make up, Hughes says. Born as Diana Dalziel, Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite Emily Key Hoffman and British father Frederick Young Dalziel. The elevation of her niece Nancy White as her successor was in effect a nepotistic checkmate against Vreeland. . "I never felt comfortable about my looks until I married Reed Vreeland. She loved to ask her companions rhetorically, Is it Kabuki enough? (Bill Blass recalls that on a flight to Boston a stewardess bent over the fashion diva, saying, Here, honey, let me rub in your rouge for you. Unperturbed, Vreeland turned to Blass and remarked, Isnt that sweet? The most insignificant thingsthe back of some Hollywood actors head, or Fred Astaires shoesbecame holy objects for her. Harold Koda reflects, She was an idealistchasing after fantasies, going beyond material boundaries, visited by visions of white churches and white horses and poppies on the verge of dying. One was editor of all clothes. She taught us to look at things in a different manner and allowed fantasy to play a dominant role. Vreeland worshiped the two men equally, and probably out of proportion with their merits. She roused her audience to new heights: "If it's not there in fashion, fantasize it," she said. Search Diana Vreeland online in the United States. ", Theirs was a partnership that created monumental, iconic images. They had two children: Tim and Frecky. So mea cupla. Cond Nast instead exercised the other alternative and fired her. The manufacturers were for once forced to allow designers leeway, to give them independence from Paris. Her colleagues and competitors intuitively recognized that at the center of this outrageous whirlwind lay a rigorous, controlling eye. And as Vreeland said, "The best thing about London is Paris," where she traveled regularly for fittings with Coco Chanel herself. It was a kind of magic she used to get things done., David Bailey says, I once called her a blind old bat and got away with it. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Diana-Vreeland. And both were addicted to rich tones. Vreeland was one of the most exceptional people I have met in all my life. Last Name Vreeland #2. And imagination trumped it all. They found in a compelling, camp combination of sibyl and dinosaur. to add information, pictures and relationships, join in discussions and get credit for your contributions. It will never work, Hoving says. [Iva] Patcvitch and [Perry] Ruston [president and vice president of Cond Nast] had wanted me to be editor, but I told them, Im a man. The original, awed, hysterical response which is always a component of fashion. An enchanted Snow offered her a job the next day. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, being the editor-in-chief of the latter, and as a special consultant at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She discovered that outr makeup and smart clothes diverted attention from her imperfect features. Vreeland replied, "That I do. My husband kept that connection going, but I wasnt big enough to call her. Hoving says that on their first morning in Moscow she was scheduled to meet the minister of culture at 11 a.m. I did come back with an important essay on Gypsies. When he went back to Vreeland to explain that the Gypsy queen had eluded him, she with fake surprise asked me, What are you talking about? I had taken hook, line, and sinker. In Vreelands capricious mind, only the most gossamer and elastic filaments separated truth from illusion. She was a tremendous inspiration to American sportswear, says a Bazaar colleague. And during her 26 years as the fashion editor of BAZAAR, from 1936 to 1962, she constantly proselytized her personal mantra: "Style: All who have it share one thing originality.". It's a way of life. Creative fashion was not her strength. I remade Dietrichs fox-trimmed coat from The Garden of Allah, Bill Blass says. Vreelands personal style, as fixed and universally observed as a lodestar, was already becoming part of fashion lore. The dynamic equilibrium at Bazaar was upset when Carmel Snow retired in 1957. Diana had always felt more comfortable abroadnot only was she closer to her beloved couture salons (Chanels was her favorite) and her fathers roots but also she knew her jolie laide persona was a phenomenon better understood on the Continent. Unexpectedly, she sailed into the conference room on the dot of the hour, all lacquered and Vaselined, a vision of black, white, and red. She faced the event with the same impenetrable stoicism with which she had braved the other great blow of her seventh decade, the death of Reed in 1966. However, little is mentioned of her husband, Thomas Reed Vreeland (Reed), who supported her, inspired her, and loved her constantly throughout their 42-year marriage. It was there, if one believes D.V., that Wallis Simpson ordered the nightgowns that she wore on her first weekend assignation with the Prince of Wales. I think they got ideas from her. And when the war blocked off fashion news from Paris, American designers, like heliotropes bowing to a nearer sun, fed on her imagination instead. Newhouse], says an ex-editor. she suggested, or "Why don't youwash your blond child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?" When Katie Griggs died in August, kundalini adherents were berefttheyd lost their last apostle. She had a jet-black Veronica Lake hairdo and was as mannered and outrageous as Diana. Immordino Vreeland spoke to CNN about the renowned tastemaker,. And I find your country marvelous, huge, and beautiful, and the skin of your women magnificent. From then on it was duck soup, Hoving says. The Diana Vreeland Estate was built to continue her legacy in the fashion industry. The real ones looked old. He used to send long-stemmed white roses to the women he was seeingusually someone she knew.. Warned by Cond Nast management to reduce spending, Vreeland, Bailey recalls, would cable me in England to tell me to watch the moneyand afterwards speak to me on the phone for two hours to see if I got her cable. I dont think its a coincidence that her grand son Nicky [Alexanders brother] became a Tibetan-Buddhist monk. She sought her revelations in surfaces, but that did not make her pursuit of beauty and her need to be ravished by it any less deeply feltthough it did sometimes make her appear ridiculous. In 1924, she married Thomas Reed Vreeland, a well-to-do banker. She became a naturalized citizen in 1925. Alexander Liberman, the editorial director of Cond Nast, confirms the story: Carmel Snowwhom, incidentally, Cond Nast had always intended to make editor in chief of Vogueunderstood that you needed an older, experienced editor to control Diana. But by 1960 there was no one more experienced than Vreeland. It was the best America ever did. Help us build our profile of Diana Vreeland! For 1976s The Glory of Russian Costume she visited Russia (which she sometimes grandly pronounced like rush hour, with a trilled r), accompanied by Hoving and Fred Hughes. World events concerned her only as they affected style. Vreeland remembered her grandmother as an impossible, extraordinary woman. She was so big in her way of doing it. Nonetheless, the new appointment had the desired effect on Vogue. or, most extravagantly, "Why don't youown, as does one extremely smart woman, 12 diamond roses of all sizes?" This simple sentence reveals how Vreeland thought and how she perceived the world. View personal details like address, phone & more. As Stephen Jamail, who started a sheet-and-fabric-licensing business with her in the 80s says, Economic necessity was the driving force of her life. Her family's stories were peppered with hilarious accounts of their life with her and her illustrious career. After she moved to New York in the mid-1930s and, needing money, took a job as a columnist at Harper's Bazaar . Select by age, location, birthday, income & more to find Diana. Hoving says, We had to keep the shows for nine months, there was such heavy trafficclose to a million for Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design. We drew a completely different, young, trendy in-crowd who have since stuck around to become patrons. When I married Vreeland's grandson Alexander Vreeland in 2000, I entered her most intimate circle: her family. Later that year she was named special consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (founded in 1937 by Irene Lewisohn). She had two sons with him, and after living for a while in New York they went to live in London. She never made it to the Costume Institutes December 1985 gala opening of Costumes of Royal India. The Saint Laurent dress she had hoped to wear, Talley says, she left laid out in Reeds bedroom, just like Miss Havisham. As Leo Lerman says, Every great fantasist has to be a realist at bottom. One look at her pen-stroke physique (which Cecil Beaton said conformed to furniture as supplely as cooked asparagus), her strictly ordered desk, her regimented routines (every day a peanut butter sandwich and a shot of scotch for lunch), or her reductive office uniform of dark cashmere separates (Elegance is refusal, she intoned) betrayed the sober face behind the party mask. Ad Choices, Long before her death in 1989, Diana Vreeland had passed into the realm of cultural icons. Under her strong guidance, Vogue soon began to reflect her own taste for the novel, the bizarre, and the outrageous. She stuck the pin not only into the dress but into the girl, who let out a little scream," Avedon remembered in his 1989 eulogy for her. She invented the fashion editor. Every product on this page was chosen by a Harper's BAZAAR editor. But Vreeland was uncontrollable.. Bill Blass says, Nicky de Gunzburg was the editor at Bazaar and Vogue who believed in American fashion. He was head of the Whiffenpoofs. By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. column on the pages of BAZAAR. She was a New York society girl on the Upper East Side of Manhattan after her family emigrated . 1906 Diana Vreeland was born on July 29, 1906 in Paris, France as Diana Dalziel. Lisa Immordino Vreeland's book, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, will be published October 1. Once they were there, however, one of the models for the portfolio fell ill, so Vreeland herself took her place, which, given the extent of the control she enjoyed exerting, may have been an outcome she particularly relished. Sometime before World War I, the Dalziel family moved to New York, where the sister enrolled at the Brearley School. Aunt Diana was considered plain, ugly. And extracting a single autobiographical fact from her was like shooting game in a hall of mirrors. Jessica had been a manager. For one shoot, she and Dahl-Wolfe made the pilgrimage to Arizona to shoot a resort fashion story at architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Shiprock. In the 70s, Vreeland drew into her orbit a number of new, young friend, culled mostly from the Halton and Warhol crowds. A former Vogue fashion editor, she was responsible for hiring the great art director Alexey Brodovitch and for promoting or launching the careers of such artistic and literary luminaries as Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Marcel Verts, and Truman Capote. I COME BEFORE GOD!. The 30s were the turban period. She was married to Vreeland, Thomas Reed. she explained to George Plimpton, who conducted the interviews for D.V. At the age of 13 he took a job shoveling coal into locomotive boilers. Corrections? Technically, she had lost her vision, but, strangely, she seemed to see everything. Eleanor Lambert, however, whose six-decade-long career has been devoted to promoting American fashion, feels that an obstinate, condescending Eurocentricism prevented Vreeland from championing American designers to the extent they deserved. "I could never have lived except with Reed. Mummy was a very, pretty conventional child, with a petite nose, says Astor. Diana Vreeland (September 29, 1903 August 22, 1989) was a French-American columnist and editor in the field of fashion. Shes an adjective as in This paper-white narcissus is very Diana Vreeland. Ive never taken any side in anything that went on in Paris during the warbecause I was not there, Vreeland told the writer Lally Weymouth. ("What do I want with a bloody old handbag that one leaves in taxis?" She died at the age of eighty-five. Some of Vreelands eyebrow-raising moves, from a museological point of view, included asking members of the Council of Fashion Designers of America to re-create the Hollywood costumes she couldnt locate. Both were also kindly, good-looking, tall, and patricianinstinctive gallants but lackluster businessmen. Diana Vreeland, ne Diana Dalziel, (born July 29, 1903, Paris, Francedied August 22, 1989, New York, New York, U.S.), American editor and fashion expert whose dramatic personality and distinctive tastes marked her successful leadership of major American fashion magazines during the mid-20th century. This is CALIGULA! Libra Named Diana #6. She published a book on fashion, Allure, in 1980, and her autobiography, D.V., in 1984. Reed made me feel beautiful.. So said legendaryBAZAAR. In town, it was everyone from Cecil Beaton to C.Z. Frecky recalls the wartime summers he passed in Brewster while on holiday from Groton. Guest. Dalziel (a Scottish name pronounced Dee-el) was a stockbroker who never managed to make much money but who somehow always lived rather wella skill he passed on to his daughter along with his prominent nose. The nose looked wonderful on him, Astor says. The story read, ""Such motors as these accelerate the social whirl. What do you think of the Soviet Union? the interpreter politely inquired. The once strong, elegant gentlemans health began to fail rapidly, and despite being remarkably busy as the editor of Vogue, Diana spent as much time as possible helping to care for him. Vreeland was removed as editor in chief of Vogue in 1971, when the heady fashion excesses of the 1960s had passed. had been shot, she retorted, Well, we cant use Lady Bird in the magazine. Kenneth Jay Lane says, I remember her son Tim once told me, Mom had no sense of right or wrongto her things were either interesting or uninteresting., Around 1937, the Vreelands moved back to New York. One of my earliest memories was of mom taking rumba lessons in the living room. The Vreelands lived more luxuriously than they could ever afford again. /// photography by george platt lyons via, /// photography by george platt lynes, via. Only the headgear. In 1924 she married Thomas R. Vreeland, with whom she lived in Albany, New York, until 1928, in London until 1936, and thereafter in New York City. I couldnt look at herit just wasnt Mrs. Vreeland anymore. Next month, the Metropolitan Museums Costume Institute, her final stage, will be displaying a selection of relicsclothing, pictures, objectspertaining to the Cult of Diana. Diana Vreeland was previously married to Thomas Reed Vreeland (1924 - 1966). Current: 1325 w 5th st halsey, OR 97348. It helps you get down the stairs. Consumed by their own raging heat, the youthquake (one of her favorite neologisms) and go-go economy of the 60s were yielding to the recession austerity and earnest feminism of the 70s. Look at the lips, she said. I never felt comfortable about my looks until I met Reed Vreeland . What I did see were beautiful, tiny white feetimmaculately pedicured, with scarlet toenails., Though Diana Dalziel was always proud to have been born with what illustrator Joe Eula calls little Chinese-princess feet, and in Paris (1903 is the most likely date), there wasnt much else she felt innately blessed about. The door to their house was painted in Vreeland's preferred red, all the better to shock the neighbors with. Vreeland was like the most marvelous comet, Cond Nast editorial advisor Leo Lerman says, and Mrs. She became a naturalized citizen in 1925. She was my most difficult editor. If her tastes in models, editorial spreads, and fashion ran to extremes, it never stopped less courageous rivals from falling into lockstep behind her. He was flagrantly unfaithful to her, says a former Harpers Bazaar colleague. She could always feel the change before the designers. Unleashed at last, Vreelands fevered imagination was in perfect harmony with the wild hedonism of the era. But the costume department always retained the much less public Stella Blum as curator. It was absolutely not the truth she was after.. Frecky Vreeland says, My fathers father was the 13th son of a poor Dutch Reformed minister. There Dalziel attended the Brearley School, studied ballet, and lived the life of a debutante. Around 1933, Reeds health weakened, and the Vreelands spent a year in Germany and Switzerland. diana l vreeland, 77 - Married halsey, AKA: diana l vreelandwest, diana l vreeland, diana l perry. Her force of character, her glamour, her intelligence, her innate sense of elegance and her exuberance energized all those who met her., Above & below, Diane at work in her Harpers Bazaar office, Lillian Bassman, Painter & Photographer, Diana lived for imagination ruled by discipline, and created a totally new profession. Diana was no beauty, as her. "We saw every corset, every belt buckle, every piece of new cloth," she said. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. One day Mr. Vanderbilt was making a tour of his line with an inspector. As if her whole life had been one long prologue building up to this final climax, everything that Vreeland had ever worshipped converged in her position as special consultanthistory, fashion, ritual, pageantry, society, travel. In 1924, Diana got married to banker Thomas Reed Vreeland with whom she had two children. At an embassy party she sidled up to Jonathan Miller, the British director, and inquired, Tell me, Dr. Miller, what is your Holy Grail? To a dinner companion who had been complaining that her issues of Vogue had grown to outr for his wife, Vreeland finally said, exasperated, Dont you know? Singer, actor, and model Caroline Vreelandthe granddaughter of the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreelandmet Nicolas Rico, the co-founder of Mural Festival and LNDMRK Agency, last year . "I was always her ugly little monster," said Vreeland. I saw enormous amounts of trouble.Diana shocked me at the time by something she said to me: Alex, after all, this is only entertainment. Right then I knew something was deeply, deeply wrong. Under Grace, Vogue had an enormous renaissance, Liberman says. Tim and Freaky were their two children. It gave Aunt Diana a terrific complex. Ironically, Diana took after her mother temperamentally. Theres no languor in the lips! She did have a way of spotting things immediately. If I thought of myself, I wanted to kill myself. Vreelands niece Emi-Lu Astor says that in fact Diana resembled her extremely handsome, tall British father, Frederick Young Dalziel. "We felt the rhythm, the music, the whole tango. The youthful and the eccentric were featured, and the photography and design were calculated to reflect the age of youth culture, rock music, and the overthrow of traditional standards. Although both S.J. "[My first memories are of] Mom floating through the room, dancing the rhumba with her teacher," Tim told me. In 1924 she married Thomas R. Vreeland, with whom she lived in Albany, New York, until 1928, in London until 1936, and thereafter in New York City. Editorial matter in the magazine often followed her own idiosyncratic style, evident in such statements as Pink is the navy blue of India. In particular she created the notion of the Beautiful People, a subclass of youthful, wealthy, and footloose members of the less-exclusive international set who were supposed to set the tone of fashion, art, and society. If she ever once issued a precise directive to a subordinate, no one can recall it. No ideas were too outlandish, no expenditures too lavish, no fantasies too bizarre for the intrepid editor and her magazine. The Vreelands established their first home in Albany, where Reed continued his banking apprenticeship and their elder son, Thomas (Timmy), was born. In 1989, she died of a heart attack at the age of 85 in New York's Lenox Hill Hospital. She calls me Aberdeen,' and Carmel Snow said to me, 'You are going to work with her,' and I did, to my enormous benefit, for almost 40 years. In addition to Dahl-Wolfe and Derujinsky, there was George Hoyningen-Huene, Martin Munkacsi, Toni Frissell, Melvin Sokolsky, Lillian Bassman, and, of course, Richard Avedon. She wanted the mannered exaggeration of fashionthe thrill of the new. A garden in hell., All my life Ive pursued the perfect red. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Before her, it was society ladies who put hats on other society ladies." Carmel told the Hearsts when she retired, Dont allow her to be editor in chief, a veteran of Bazaar says. Gesture and attitude were important to her, as was strength of character, not only in the face but in the mind as well. In 1962 Vreeland left Harpers Bazaar and joined the staff of Vogue, of which she became editor in chief in 1963. Not long after the Vreelands return to New York, Snow spotted Diana dancing at the St. Regis Roof. (1984), the Vreeland Holy Writs. She made sure these events were reflected on the pages of Bazaar in ways that were considered shocking at times but were always innovative, vibrant, and unforgettable. Vreeland invented the fashion editor., Diana & Reed continued to live their hopelessly glamorous lifestyle in New York, and in 1955, moved into the now infamous apartment on Park Avenue, with its now iconic Billy Baldwin-decorated red living room, of which Diana stated, I wanted it to look like a garden. His clumsy attempt to clear his name, in a no-holds-barred interview with BBC, What Ghislaine Maxwells Trial Is Revealing About the Workaday Cruelty of Life Under Epstein.
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