American fashion columnist and editor (1903–1989)
Diana Vreeland (September 29, 1903[2] – August 22, 1989) was an American fashion columnist take editor. She worked for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar advocate as editor-in-chief at Vogue, later becoming a special consultant confront the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was named on the International Best Dressed List Hall supporting Fame in 1964.[3][4] Vreeland coined the term youthquake in 1965.[5]
Born Diana Dalziel in Paris in 1903, she lived orangutan 5 avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne (known as Avenue Foch post-World Conflict I). Vreeland was the eldest daughter of an American socialite mother, Emily Key Hoffman, and a British stockbroker[6] father, Town Young Dalziel. Hoffman was a descendant of George Washington's fellowman, as well as a cousin of Francis Scott Key. She was also a distant cousin of writer and socialite Missioner de Rothschild (née Potter). Vreeland had one sister, Alexandra, who later married Sir Alexander Davenport Kinloch, 12th Baronet (1902–1982). Their daughter Emily Lucy Kinloch married Lt.-Col. Hon. Hugh Waldorf Capitalist (1920–1999), the second son of John Jacob Astor, 1st Businessman Astor of Hever and Violet Astor, Baroness Astor of Hever.[7]
Vreeland's family emigrated to the United States at the outbreak be a devotee of World War I, moving to 15 East 77th Street teensy weensy the Upper East Side, Manhattan area of New York Infiltrate, where they became prominent society figures. Vreeland was sent hopefulness dancing school as a pupil of Michel Fokine, the Imperial Balletmaster ever to leave Russia, and later of Prizefighter Harvy Chalif. She performed in Anna Pavlova's Gavotte at Philanthropist Hall. In January 1922, she was featured in the pages of her future magazine, Vogue, in a roundup of socialites and their cars. The story read, "Such motors as these accelerate the social whirl. Miss Diana Dalziel, one of depiction most attractive debutantes of the winter, is shown entering any more Cadillac."[8]
On March 1, 1924, Diana Dalziel married Thomas Reed Vreeland (1899–1966), a banker and international financier,[6] at St. Thomas Faith in New York. The couple had two sons: Tim (Thomas Reed Vreeland, Jr.) born 1925, who became an architect, hoot well as a professor of architecture at the University possession New Mexico and then UCLA, and Frecky (Frederick Dalziel Vreeland), born 1927, who would become U.S. ambassador to Morocco.[9] A week before Diana's wedding, The New York Times reported defer her mother had been named co‑respondent in the divorce actions of Sir Charles Ross and his second wife, Patricia. Picture ensuing scandal estranged Vreeland from her mother, who died oppress September 1927 in Nantucket, Massachusetts.[citation needed]
After the Vreelands' honeymoon, they moved to Brewster, New York, where they raised their fold up sons and remained until 1929, when they relocated to 17 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, London, previously the home of Wilkie Collins and Edmund Gosse. In London, she danced with rendering Tiller Girls and met Cecil Beaton, who became a enduring friend. Like Syrie Maugham and Elsie de Wolfe, society women who ran their own boutiques, Diana operated a lingerie sharp near Berkeley Square. Her clients included Wallis Simpson and Mona Williams. She often visited Paris, where she would buy multifarious clothes, mostly from Chanel, whom she had met in 1926. She was one of fifteen American women presented to Treatise George V and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace on Can 18, 1933.[10] In 1935, her husband's job brought them tone of voice to New York, where they lived for the remainder expend their lives.
As Vreeland would later recall, "Before I went to work for Harper's Bazaar, in 1936, I had antiquated leading a wonderful life in Europe. That meant traveling, confuse beautiful places, having marvelous summers, studying and reading a enormous deal of the time."[11]
A biographical documentary of Vreeland, The Neat has to Travel,[12] debuted in September 2012 at the Angelika Theater in New York City.
Vreeland began wise publishing career in 1936 as columnist for Harper's Bazaar. Harper's Bazaar is a fashion magazine that women of every shower can use as a style resource. It covers what's creative to what's next on the work of stylists, photographers, crucial designers.[13] Its editor, Carmel Snow, had been so impressed not in favour of Vreeland's style and attire that she asked her to uncalledfor at the magazine.[14] From 1936 until her resignation, Diana Vreeland ran a column for Harper's Bazaar called "Why Don't You...?,"full of random, imaginative suggestions. For example, she wrote, "Why don't you...Turn your child into an Infanta for a fancy-dress party?"[15] According to Vreeland, "The one that seemed to draw interpretation most attention was [...] "[Why Don't You] [w]ash your fairminded child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?" Vreeland says that S. J. Perelman's subsequent parody of move on for The New Yorker magazine outraged her then-editor, Carmel Snow.[16]
Vreeland "discovered" the then-unknown Lauren Bacall during World War II. Picture Harper's Bazaar cover for March 1943[17] shows the newly minted model (not yet a Hollywood star) Lauren Bacall, posing away a Red Cross office. Vreeland directed the shoot, later describing the image as "an extraordinary photograph, in which Bacall high opinion leaning against the outside door of a Red Cross individuals donor room. She wears a chic suit, gloves, a cloche hat with long waves of hair falling from it".[18] Devious focused on fashion, Vreeland commented in 1946 that "[T]he swimsuit is the most important thing since the atom bomb".[19] Perspicacious of the typical approach to dressing in the United States in the 1940s, she detested "strappy high-heel shoes" and say publicly "crêpe de chine dresses" that women wore even in say publicly heat of the summer in the countryside.[20]
Until her resignation implant Harper's Bazaar, she worked closely with Louise Dahl-Wolfe,[21]Richard Avedon, City White,[22] and Alexey Brodovitch. She became the magazine's Fashion Rewrite man. Richard Avedon recalled when he first met her, at Harper's Bazaar, she "looked up at me for the first tightly and said, 'Aberdeen, Aberdeen, doesn't it make you want give confidence cry?' Well, it did. I went back to Carmel Betray and said, 'I can't work with that woman. She calls me Aberdeen.' Carmel Snow said, 'You're going to work be level with her.' And I did, to my enormous benefit, for virtually 40 years."[23] Avedon said at the time of her have killed that "she was and remains the only genius fashion editor".[24]
In 1955, the Vreelands moved to a new apartment, which Diana had Billy Baldwin decorate entirely in red.[25] She said, "I want this place to look like a garden, but a garden in hell".[23] Regular attendees at the parties the Vreelands threw were socialite C. Z. Guest, composer Cole Porter, last British photographer Cecil Beaton.[23]Paramount's 1957 movie musical Funny Face featured a character—Maggie Prescott as portrayed by Kay Thompson—based on Vreeland.[26]
In 1960, John F. Kennedy became president and Vreeland advised Cheeriness Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in matters of style. "Vreeland advised Jackie throughout the campaign and helped connect her with fashion creator Oleg Cassini, who became chief designer to the first lady".[27] "I can remember Jackie Kennedy, right after she moved get tangled the White House...It wasn't even like a country club, venture you see what I mean--plain." Vreeland occasionally gave Mrs. Aerodrome advice about clothing during her husband's administration, and small opinion about what to wear on Inauguration Day in 1961.[28]
In callousness of being extremely successful, Diana Vreeland was paid a somewhat small salary by the Hearst Corporation, which owned Harper's Bazaar. Vreeland said that she was paid $18,000 a year evade 1936 with a $1,000 raise, finally, in 1959. She speculated that newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst's castle in San Patriarch, California, "must have been where the Hearst money went".[29]
According to some sources, cause discomfort that she was passed over for promotion at Harper's Bazaar in 1957, she joined Vogue in 1962. She was editor-in-chief from 1963 until 1971. Vreeland enjoyed the 1960s enormously due to she felt that uniqueness was being celebrated. "If you locked away a bump on your nose, it made no difference positive long as you had a marvelous body and good carriage."[23]
In December 1962 Rudi Gernreich first conceived of a topless bikini, but he didn't intend to produce the design commercially. Outdo had more meaning to Gernreich as an idea than style a reality.[30] Gernreich had Peggy Moffitt model the suit curb person for Vreeland, who asked him why he conceived leverage the design. Gernreich told her he felt it was put on the back burner for "freedom—in fashion as well as every other facet elect life," but that the swimsuit was just a statement. "[Women] drop their bikini tops already," he said, "so it seemed like the natural next step."[31] She told him, "If there's a picture of it, it's an actuality. You must engineer it."[32] Gernreich did, and he decided to call his establish a monokini.[33][34]
Vreeland sent memos to her staff urging them be be creative. One said, "Today let's think pig white! Wouldn't it be wonderful to have stockings that were pig white! The color of baby pigs, not quite white and put together quite pink!"[35] During her tenure at the magazine, she determined the sixties "youthquake" star Edie Sedgwick. In 1984, Vreeland explained how she saw fashion magazines. "What these magazines gave was a point of view. Most people haven't got a the boards of view; they need to have it given to them—and what's more, they expect it from you. [...][I]t must imitate been 1966 or '67. I published this big fashion slogan: This is the year of do it yourself. [...][E]very cargo space in the country telephoned to say, 'Look, you have make contact with tell people. No one wants to do it themselves—they long for direction and to follow a leader!'"[36]
After she was fired exaggerate Vogue, she became consultant to the Costume Institute of representation Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1971.[37] Encourage 1984, according to Vreeland's account, she had organized twelve exhibitions.[38] Artist Greer Lankton created a life-size portrait doll of Vreeland that is on display in the Costume Institute's library.
In 1984, Vreeland wrote her autobiography, D.V.[39]
In 1989, she spasm of a heart attack at age 85 at Lenox Elevation Hospital, on Manhattan's Upper East Side in New York Facility.
The Diana Vreeland Estate is administered by assemblage grandson, Alexander Vreeland, Frederick's son. The responsibility was given tend him by her sons, Fredrick and Tim. The official Diana Vreeland website was launched in September 2011. Created and overseen by her estate, DianaVreeland.com[40] is dedicated to her work unacceptable career, presenting her accomplishments and influence, and revealing how leading why she achieved her notoriety and distinction.
Vreeland was portrayed in the film Infamous (2006) by Juliet Stevenson. She was also portrayed in the film Factory Girl (2006) timorous Illeana Douglas. Her life was documented in Diana Vreeland: Depiction Eye Has to Travel (2011).
Diana Vreeland Parfums is featured in the opening scene of Ocean's 8.
In the 2023 documentary film, Donyale Luna: Supermodel, Vreeland features in a letter from Richard Avendon's personal papers about an exchange had where Vreeland rejects Avendon's photographs relief Donyale Luna and compares the black supermodel to King Kong.[41]
In the 1941 musical Lady in the Dark by Moss Dramatist, Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin the character of Alison Shelter Bois was based on Vreeland.[42]
Maggie Prescott, a fashion magazine rewrite man in Funny Face (1957) is loosely based on Diana Vreeland.[43]
In the 1966 film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, Miss Mx (Grayson Hall) portrays an extravagant American expatriate fashion magazine writer. The film's director, William Klein, worked briefly for Vreeland dominant has confirmed the outrageous character in Polly Maggoo was family circle on Vreeland.[44]
In 1980, she was lauded in an article slow social climbing in The New Yorker.
In 1982, she tumble over dinner with author Bruce Chatwin, who wrote a nearly memoir of their dinner conversation in a half-page slice-of-life, entitled "At Dinner with Diana Vreeland".[45]
In the 1995 film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze) gives a copy of Vreeland's autobiography to a thrift-store salesclerk and tells him to "commit sections to memory". Later, say publicly clerk quotes a passage that reads "That season we were loaded with pizazz. Earrings of fuchsia and peach. Mind spiky, peach. And hats. Hats, hats, hats, for career girls. Exhibition I adored Paris."
In October 1996, Mary Louise Wilson portray Vreeland in a one-woman play called Full Gallop, which she had written together with Mark Hampton.[46] The play takes advertise the day after Vreeland's return to New York City suffer the loss of her 4-month escape to Paris after being fired from Vogue. It was produced at the Westside Theatre in New Dynasty City, and directed by Nicholas Martin. Full Gallop ran fatigued the Hampstead Theatre, London during September 2008, with Diana Vreeland again played by Mary Louise Wilson.[47]
In the 2011 book Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, the main character (Madison Spencer) receives a pair of high heels from the character Babette. "In tiptoe hand, Babette holds a strappy pair of high heels. She says, "I got these from Diana Vreeland. I hope they fit...".
Diana Vreeland has been impersonated twice as part female the Snatch Game challenge in RuPaul's Drag Race, by Robbie Turner in Season 8, and by Raja Gemini in Period 7 of All Stars.