By Laura Medina
Diana Vreeland in her "Garden in Hell" all-red living room.
Diana Vreeland, the former fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar under Camilla Snow then the Editor in Chief at Vogue, is what the Brits say "one-off." It is a simple one word saying, "She made the mold then broke it."
Every fashion editor or/and fashion celebrity in this media mad world has been trying to copy the flamboyant Ms. Vreeland but failed. They try to mimic her without knowing her.
Her family, especially her son, Timmy Vreeland (UCLA professor of Architecture and former Beverly Hills Planning Commissioner), feel it is about time all these fashion/style bloggers, writers, and celebrity stylists know who Diana Vreeland was and how significant she still is.
This past Monday was Diana Vreeland Day. She would had loved that.
At Rodeo Drive's "Walk of Style" ceremony, they honored her in their Hall of Fame, with a plaque and a star on Rodeo Drive.
Diana would had been swooning...she loved Beverly Hills, especiallly the "Hollywood Set." Her son, Timmy, said when she was done with Vogue (or Vogue was done with her), she was swinging it with Jack Nicholson, Angelica Huston, Warren Beatty, and Julie Christy up in those hills back in the swinging '70's.
During the '70's, she was a high society grande dame who wanted to be where the action is. So, her son, Timmy, asked his mom if he can hang out with her "Hollywood" friends. She told him, "no" because they're too young for him.
Alright, in the Diana Vreeland documentary, "The Eye has to Travel" and the accompanying book, both her sons said whatever she lacked in being a mother, she made up for it as a passionate fashionista who saw it as a survival tool for a woman in the urban jungle.
The refrain in the weak motherhood yet strong in the arts and culture driving style and fashion is a recurring theme in "The Eye has to Travel."
Diana and her sister were children of the Edwardian Age. Yes, they were of the "Downton Abbey" set. Diana's father was a minor English/Scot aristocrat and her mom was an American socialite, well-done but not big.
There is a common belief in Diana, her parents, and through-out her life...whatever you lack, you made up for it, in some form or another. It was this refrain that Diana constantly advised her readers at Harper Bazaar's then shoved it into turbo drive at Vogue in the '60's then fully lived it to the hilt in the '70's.
Whatever money the Dalziels lack (that's Diana's maiden name), they had perks, access, and privilege that came with the aristocratic turf. Her parents used them wisely. They used it to educate their girls.
In the documentary, Diana riffed forever about spending her childhood watching legendary Ballet Russe then seeing Sergei Diaghilev leaping across the stage like a deer in Paris then watching King Edward and King George being coronated Kings of the British Empire, setting in the stands of London then meeting Buffalo Bill while summering in Montana. Of course, being a child of "The Downton Abbey" set, she was exposed to great Parisian designers, from mummy of course.
Then at age 10, her family moved to Manhattan because of her dad's job. She didn't liked it until her parents enrolled her into a Russian school where she can dance her days away.
George Plimpton's candid interview with her in the '80's, formed the backbone of this documentary.
Honest as she was flippant as she was insightful, her mother always called her "an ugly duckling." Again, whatever she lacked, Diana made up for it somewhere, somehow, as in wit, experience, and intelligence.
Lacking in the looks department, she filled it in with being an eye witness to history (this is why she wanted to be where the action is), traveling (hence, "The Eye has to Travel), culture (she loved it), the arts (ideas!), and dance (she was one heck of a dancer).
Maybe, this is why in her later years, she was upfront and flippant because she witnessed and experienced so much history, like having Charles Lindberg flying over her house with her son, as a young mother or seeing Adolf Hitler for the first time at the Berlin Opera. She called his square mustache "ridiculous."
Or, how as a lingerie boutique owner in Paris, she sold lingerie to Wallis Simpson's weekend getaway with King George. "My lingerie brought down the British Empire" with pride.
Ironically, it is her long line experiencing history first-hand that made her such a trend-setter and ground breaker. Again, she broke the mold. To such a point, those who worked with her and socialize with her or just plain survived her, called her an "oracle." This fashion ESP said this to her co-horts at Harper's Bazaar then at Vogue, paraphasing her, "Don't give what people want. You gotta give what people know what they want yet!"
Combining her strong sense of history with her lackings in the looks department and her traveling eyes for all sorts of culture and art, Diana Vreeland pushed the '60's forward during her tenure at Vogue.
She said that the '60's remind me of the Twenties and the Twenties was her era when women were fun and daring, when she used to danced the nights away at the Cotton Club up in Harlem. The '60's were fun!
Breaking the comfortist '50's mold, Diana sought stars and models with unusual features that she called "striking" that misinformed and not-so-cultured would call "odd."
People she influenced said this about her and she taught them this lesson, "She saw in people what they saw in themselves before those people know it." That made her one heck of a talent scout and casting director.
She put the teenaged Lauren Bacall (she had a Russian face) on Harper's Bazaar cover. Before you know it, Hollywood cast Lauren in a movie with Humprey Bogart.
Now, let's get back to the '60's. She taught her underlings (who are wise elders today), "Accentuate the faults then push it to make them into an asset. Show their flaws then pushed it forward." It was the first time Barbara Streisand was shown in full side profile with her nose, photographed as a Egyptian goddess. Diana stretched Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra look further and longer.
Her incorporating her childhood taste for travel was put to good use at Vogue. She brought readers to far-flung places and cultures they cannot get in the American suburbs. She brought fantasy...with some really awesome clothes and makeup.
The Americans would look at Diana's greatest discovery, the ultra-lanky and the exotic (in an Eastern European way) Veruschka then say "what is that?!" They exclaimed the same thing when Diana pushed China Machado, Dovima, and Marisa Berenson. They weren't the Eisenhower '50's WASP society swans. Diana found that All-American look boring then busted it apart with women who didn't fit that mold. She expanded the idea of what beauty is. There is all different types. She even dabbed red rouge on her ear lobes because the Japanese geishas did it.
There is one thing Diana hates...boring. Perhaps, this is why Diana quipped, "Americans don't have taste because they don't want taste." So, she saw it as her mission to both educated and treat her readers.
She always saw the December Vogue issues as gifts to the reader, a real treat, "The vision...the dream transporting people to fantasy, taking people somewhere they never been before."
Towards the later half of the documentary, her former workers recounted this tale of how she used an ancient Japanese epic poem as the storyline for a photo spread with the tall, lanky, Eastern European blonde Veruschka and an equally tall and lanky 7 ft. tall Japanese sumo wrestler. This is was a love story in the snowy uplands of Japan. It is better to be bold than be boring.
She used Veruschka to full advantage. She thought Veruschka's lanky body was great in body paint and dance, like Diaghilev.
D.V. "Movement...we are a living body. We need rhythm," based on watching the Ballet Russe and Diaghilev in Paris as a child.
Fashion for her wasn't standing there looking pretty, "It wasn't about clothes. It was the life living in the clothes. What a woman did in her clothes."
She upshook the establishment again, in the last third of her life, when she took over the costume department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the '70's. She took it when Vogue's advertisers weren't happy with her.
The established departments at the Met didn't like her when she turned those quaint, lil cocktail parties into full-flung, profitable galas that made the museum money. Who cares the disco beats shook the tea cups off the shelves. Remember, she was a girl when these so-called "costumes" were real, fresh clothes back in the Edwardian Era. These weren't artifacts, they were clothes.
Her main objective as a curator and an exhibitor is to make sure that little girl up from Harlem care about these clothes. She could care less about the blue-bloods. Diana wanted the upcoming generation to care and take over the mantle.
She loved the Seventies because it mixed the highs and the lows together, just like the Twenties. In Manhattan, she hang out with Andy Warhol at Studio 54 then she hangs out with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty over in Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Yes-she pushed the envelope, made the mold then busted it then pushed the 20th Century forward and onward...and she still does today.
If you want to know how she turned a milquetoast of a woman's magazine into a fashion powerhouse, go out and watch this Diana Vreeland documentary, "The Eye has to Travel."
Diana was never a great beauty but she was an oracle.
No comments:
Post a Comment