"Vogue always did stand for people's lives. I mean, a new dress doesn't get you anywhere; it's the life you're living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later." 

Diana Vreeland
Photograph by: Munkacsi 

With the Costume Institute's opening on May 10th of Schiaparelli And Prada : Impossible Conversations we must remember that it is due to Diana Vreeland that dress and costume has become important in museum's worldwide.   We celebrate Harold Koda & Andrew Bolton's hard work curating this magnificent  exhibition on Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli.

"Why don't you paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys' nursery so they won't grow up with a provincial point of view?" 

Diana Vreeland
Harper's Bazaar - August 1936

Photograph: Cover of Diana Vreeland: Bazaar Years by John Esten and Katherine Betts

"There's only one very good life and that's the life you know you want and you make it yourself". 

Diana Vreeland 

Due to Diana Vreeland's close relationship with Jackie Kennedy, Harper's Bazaar published the first picture of the presidential couple in 1961. 

Jackie Kennedy wrote to DV:
"Dear Diana, 
Everyone is wondering why we chose Harper's Bazaar and they invent a million reasons. And no one says the real one, which is you". 

Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1961- Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel pg 116-117

"Style-- all who have it share one thing: originality."

-Diana Vreeland

"Oh I am mad about armour. Mad about it. I love the way that it's put together. I love the helmets with the feathers out the back... Milanese, you see."

-Diana Vreeland

Photograph: "Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland" Exhibit © Francesco de Luca

"For years, I couldn't get over Callas... she was the most extraordinary performer I have ever seen in my life - ever. She just opened her throat. But I want to tell you that a tenth of a second later I was totally drenched, I mean totally - it had nothing to do with crying or weeping. It was shock. It was total electricity. I had prepared to hear the most dramatic singer in the world, but this... and by God, when  she died, was she dead. I've never seen such a death scene. On stage she didn't have a gauche thing about her. She was unique. That's a word I use sparingly." 

Diana Vreeland

Photograph: Maria Callas 1958

"Balenciaga was incredible...I was madly infatuated with his clothes. His clothes were devastating. One fainted. One simply blew up and died."
- Diana Vreeland

Photograph:Balenciaga Dresses © Francesco de Luca 
Image from "Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland", an Exhibit at the Museo Fortuny in Venice. The exhibit opened last weekend and will be up until the 26th of June. It is curated by Maria Luisa Frisa and Judith Clark and is the final element in Lisa Immordino Vreeland's projects entitled Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel.

"Red is the great clarifier - bright, cleansing, revealing. It makes all colors beautiful. I can't imagine being bored with it - it would be like becoming tired of the person you love. I wanted this apartment to be a garden - but it had to be a garden in hell." 

- Diana Vreeland

Photograph: Horst P. Horst, 1979  

What is a Fashion Creator?

"Before even the technique, there is a dream. Chanel had it. The dream is everything".

-Diana Vreeland
November 30th, 1962

"I am extremely disappointed to see that we have used practically no pearls at all in the past few issues. In fact, many necklines could have been helped by pearls worn inside the dress that show inside the cutaway sides and back of most ordinary dresses on top. 

I speak of this very often - and as soon as I stop speaking the pearls disappear. 

Nothing gives the luxury of pearls. Please keep that in mind."

-Diana Vreeland Memos

The Diana Vreeland Estate and The Museo Fortuny are very excited to invite you to the Exhibition: "Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland" that is opening at the Museo Fortuny, in Venice, from the 9th of March until the 26th of June, 2012. The Exhibit is curated by Maria Luisa Frisa and Judith Clark and is the final element in Lisa Immordino Vreeland's troika of projects entitled Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel.

Photograph: Unfolding Vreeland artwork Alessando Gori. Laboratorium MMXII featuring Vreeland's portraits by George Hoyningen-Huene, late 30's-early 40's and Priscilla Rattazzi, 1982. 

"To find beauty in imperfection, in flaw, to go against the common popular opinion of what is good, what is right. That kind of challenging eye, and the ability to find beauty in anything, that was what was so extraordinary about her." 

Excerpt from Marc Jacobs' foreword, Allure by DV

Photograph: "A Singular Jewel," 1970 David Bailey 

"Then I said something I've always known. I don't know where it came from. I didn't get it from you, shall we say, and I didn't make it up, but I've known it for all my life. "Elegance", I said "is refusal."

Photograph: Paris, 1957 

“Diana Vreeland is one of the most exciting, brilliant and daring kooks who ever illuminated the fashion landscape… Working with her was just mind-blowing. She was such a talented, extraordinary person, and eccentric and full of mad ideas… She was a provocateur. Had she been younger she would have been a punk rocker.”

— Simon Doonan

Image Courtesy of Darrylee Cohen

“Going to meet her was like going to meet the Queen. She was over the top, and would go on about how she ‘adored’ me. I know I probably owe most of what happened in New York to her.”

Twiggy excerpted from Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight

Photograph: Vogue Cover April 15th, 1967

"She is the best of America,” said Diana Vreeland of Lauren Hutton. “She is the person people want to look at.” As Editor in Chief at Vogue in the ‘60s, Mrs. Vreeland introduced countless new beauty trends, replacing the passive, swan-like beauties of years gone by with energetic and unconventional models that reflected the excitement of the times; in Lauren Hutton she saw the face of the “New American Look.”

In 1966, Hutton got a job as fit model at the Vogue offices; it was there that Mrs. Vreeland laid eyes on her for the first time. “You have quite a presence, ” she remarked, whisking the young girl into a studio with Richard Avedon who, the story goes, had rejected Hutton at three former castings. The images shot that day captured the joie de vivre and playful charm that would propel Hutton to supermodel status. As she describes it: "It's still the best thing I've ever done. Working with him was like being in the sandbox with another kid." Hutton appeared on the cover of Vogue that very year, and their relationship became one of Avedon’s most important collaborative partnerships with a model.

Mrs. Vreeland had the vision to recognize the many different types of groundbreaking beauty, heralding new looks in the pages of Vogue. Hutton defined a new look that was happening in America: she, and models of the same ilk that followed, radiated healthy, natural beauty along with a sweet-yet-cheeky attitude.

As Alexander Vreeland puts it, “Lauren Hutton was a whole new phenomenon as she was very American and had an athletic, girl-next-door beauty.  She was not a cockney pixie like Twiggy or a German princess like Verushka, or a quirky beauty like Penelope or Angelica, but a wholesome, fit and confident woman.”

Hutton would continue to collaborate with Avedon and other leading photographers for decades to come, gracing the cover of Vogue over twenty-five times. She also went on to revolutionize model compensation with the first-ever exclusive cosmetics contract with Mrs. Vreeland’s old favorite, Revlon. “I am always amazed at how many moods she can project,” Mrs. Vreeland has said. “Sometimes she has the eyes of a baby, the questioning look of a child. Then she has this very special electricity. Her reactions are so fast. I like her speed, her timing." It was these qualities and her “presence” that ultimately landed her the role she was born to play: Hollywood actress.

Photograph: Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel pg 172-173
Spreads by: Richard Avedon, Vogue, November 1st, 1970

"Diana always taught me that there are no boundaries for the imagination."

-Issey Miyake, Designer

Photographer Unknown

“There’s nothing more boring than narcissism - the tragedy of being totally… me. We’re all capable of it. And we all know examples of it - these beautiful tragedies…. I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.” 

– excerpted from Allure by Diana Vreeland

Click here to purchase your copy of Allure

Photograph: Tallulah Bankhead

Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Charlie Scheips at the SVA talk. November 2011.

Photo by Wandael. 
http://www.wandael.com/

“Mrs. Vreeland was one of the most exceptional people I have met in all my life. Her force of character, her glamour, her intelligence, her innate sense of elegance and her exuberance energized all those who met her.”

 -Yves Saint Laurent, designer, excerpted from Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight

Photograph by Roxanne Lowit, Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight pg 262

“I think stars are the only thing we have. We have a star, we follow a star… we may throw that star out tomorrow, but today, without a star, we wouldn’t move at all.”

—   Excerpt, Allure by Diana Vreeland

 Click here to purchase your copy of Allure

Photograph: Young Diana Vreeland © The Diana Vreeland Estate

Lisa Immordino Vreeland was among friends last week at an event in honor of her book, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel, held at the de Young Museum of Fine Art in San Francisco. The evening was hosted by Connie and Barry Baron, Louise and Arthur Patterson, and Helen and Dick Spalding, all of who are close friends of the author. (Connie Baron and Helen Spalding are the great-granddaughters of Michael de Young, the man for which the museum is named.) Immordino Vreeland was especially pleased at the enthusiastic reception from an audience spanning all ages.

The intimate party and signing took place in the Hamon Observation Tower, from which guests could enjoy sweeping 360-degree views of the San Francisco skyline. Immordino Vreeland was thrilled to fête the book in a city that she finds so stylish and elegant, and also at an institution she holds in such high regard. She was “honored to be in a setting where fashion in a museum is so prevalent,” she said. The de Young has established itself as an innovative leader in the field of fashion as high art, and over the past several years has presented a number of important projects. Most recently, the museum presented a much-lauded Balenciaga show and, this coming spring, will hold an expansive, multi-media exhibition on Jean Paul Gaultier. In true Diana Vreeland form, members of the board at the de Young continue the lineage of great fashion events in this way.

Purchase Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel

"I believe you see, in the dream. I think we only live through our dreams and our imagination. That's the only reality we really ever know.”

— Diana Vreeland in A Question of Style: A Conversation with Diana Vreeland by Lally Weymouth, Rolling Stone Magazine, 1977.

Photograph: Richard Avedon, June 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine, 1977

''Whatever the fashion, the important thing is time for upkeep. We take it for granted that a girl gets the best she can for herself. But, if she doesn't keep it up, if it isn't in beautiful condition, if the shoes aren't cleaned before she wears them every day and her bag isn't cleaned and everything in it cleaned, she'll never look like anything.''

 —   Diana Vreeland, The New York Times, 1977

 Mark Shaw Photo, Model in Apartment of Henri Samuel, France, 1960's

When he first met Diana Vreeland in the offices of Harper’s Bazaar, Richard Avedon was an eager young photographer whom she haphazardly referred to as “Aberdeen.” He’d only been shooting in New York a couple of years when was hired by Harper’s to create fashion portfolios under Mrs. Vreeland’s watchful eye. As fashion editor, she had revamped the pages of Harper’s to inspire and beguile in a time of post-war bleakness. Harper’s was the ideal outlet, and Mrs. Vreeland the ideal partner, for Avedon to pioneer and define his groundbreaking style.

For two decades the pair collaborated at Harper’s, bringing a naturalness and ease to fashion spreads while infusing them with a never-before-seen movement, vitality and narrative. Models went from being mere clothes hangers to leaping over puddles, playing roulette or starring in their own romantic stories. "I began to photograph my enthusiasms,” he has said, “I liked girls who were full of imagination and fun, and I loved watching them move.” Avedon and Mrs. Vreeland shot everyone from China Machado to Audrey Hepburn, and he felt that they had an unspoken understanding of how things should look on the page — or nearly unspoken. For a shoot with Dovima, in Egypt, her only direction was to “think of Cleopatra walking those roofs with all these old people!” The resulting images of Dovima with the elephants may be the most recognizable of his career. When she entrusted him with the task of shooting the first photographs of the Kennedy Family at the White House, Mrs. Vreeland instructed that Avedon “Just get that voice!” Of course, Mrs. Vreeland meant the unique and soft voice of her friend Jacqueline, not the President’s famous New England inflection. 

Avedon was the only photographer that Mrs. Vreeland brought to Vogue when she became Editor-in-Chief, and their collaboration continued to chart new territory. The two were kindred spirits — neither believed in conforming to the status quo. At Vogue in the ‘60s and ‘70s they redefined beauty and style in step with the revolutionary times. Together they sought out unconventional beauties like Veruschka, Twiggy and Penelope Tree; their images of Barbara Streisand and Angelica Huston, among others, thrust the young women into the limelight overnight; and they pioneered the energetic, girl-next-door American look with the likes of Lauren Hutton.

At her memorial service Avedon gave a moving speech that revealed the high regard he held her in. “Diana lived for imagination ruled by discipline, and created a totally new profession,” he said. He viewed her as the defining fashion editor and together they created new styles of fashion photography. And later, thinking back to the day they met, Avedon recalls his initial balk: “I went back to Carmel Snow and said ‘I can't work with that woman. She calls me Aberdeen.' And Carmel Snow said, 'You're going to work with her.' And I did, to my enormous benefit, for almost 40 years." 

Archival Image, Diana Vreeland, Dovima and Richard Avedon, 1955.
Via The Nifty Fifties

"She made me realize the importance of positive thinking. She would say, 'Don't look back. Just go ahead. Give ideas away. Under every idea there's a new idea waiting to be born." 

 —   Kenneth Jay Lane, Jeweler

Photograph of DV by: Cecil Beaton

“Naturally, I’ve always been mad about clothes. You don’t get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute.” 

—   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland

Click here to purchase your copy of DV

“Everything is new. At least everything is new the first time around.”

 —   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland

Click here to purchase your copy of DV

Photographer Unknown, © Diana Vreeland Estate 

Lisa Immordino Vreeland for the Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel screening at the Telluride Film Festival. 

Photograph by: Ralph Barnie
Click here to see more images from the Telluride Film Festival 

Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland hosted an intimate screening of her documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel on Park Avenue last week, exclusively for the film’s crew and stars. Among those in attendance who appear in the film were Anna Sui, Harold Koda, Tonne Goodman, Ingrid Sischy, and Carolina and Renaldo Herrera, as well as Mrs. Vreeland’s grandsons Nicky and Alexander. Also in the audience was Bruce Weber, whose archival footage was used in the film. 

Beyond the cast and crew a few close friends also attended, as well as a couple surprise guests. The Herreras brought Lee Radzwill, whose sister Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis often sought Mrs. Vreeland’s style advice; the film reveals personal correspondence between the two fashion icons. Another surprise guest was Bill Cunningham. The photographer is notoriously difficult to get in touch with, but, after a serendipitous run-in on the street with Alexander Vreeland, he arrived at the screening on his bicycle.

The response from those in attendance was overwhelmingly positive, and the film’s theatrical release this coming spring 2012 is highly anticipated. Though the private screening was intended only to thank those who had participated and give them a glimpse of the finished project, Page 6 published a write up of the party, mentioning several of the fashionable attendees. 

Photograph of Lisa Immordino Vreeland by: George Chinsee
Photograph of Diana Vreeland © The Diana Vreeland Estate 

“I think it was Goethe who said, ‘There is a glory to madness that only madmen know.’ It’s a beautiful statement, but I’m afraid I may have made it up. If I did, it’s better than his.”

 —   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland

 Click here to purchase your copy of DV

Photograph by Priscilla Rattazzi 

Lisa Immordino Vreeland returned to Toronto last week for a busy day promoting her book, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel. She conducted a series of interviews for print publications and television and digital platforms including Elle Canada, The National Post newspaper, The Toronto Star and national Canadian lifestyle show, CityLine. A book signing at Toronto’s Teatro Verde capped off the in-depth press junket.

Just a few days later, the author flew to Tuscon, Arizona to attend and speak at the Center for Creative Photography’s October Conversation — the conference drew important gallery owners, dealers, photographers and archivists to discuss the photography community as well as the future of the medium in the digital age. In addition to a limited book signing, Immordino Vreeland was invited to give a special lecture and media presentation on the life and work of Diana Vreeland. The CCP was an apt venue for such a lecture, as their permanent archive includes work by several of Mrs. Vreeland’s long-time collaborators including an extensive collection of images by Louise Dahl-Wolfe and large-scale prints by Richard Avedon. 

Photograph:
Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Jeanne Beker (The Toronto Star) sit down for an interview. 
Image © Nolan Bryant  

Since the premier of Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel in Venice a few months ago, industry interest has continued to grow. After securing North American distribution with Samuel Goldwyn, film’s sales reps at Submarine Entertainment have sold the film in several foreign markets: Madman Entertainment will distribute in New Zealand and Australia, Studio Canal in the UK and Ireland, and Home Screen will roll the film out in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The documentary is slated for worldwide release in spring 2012.

As the negotiations concluded last week, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland expressed her gratitude to Submarine, whose track record includes countless documentary sales including The Cove and The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, saying “We want to thank Submarine Entertainment for arranging all of the great distribution partners for the launch of the film.” She went on to express her enthusiasm for working with the collection of esteemed distributors on the film’s international release.

Photograph by James Karales 

“Vogue always did stand for people’s lives. I mean, a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life your living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later.”

— Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland 

Click here to purchase your copy of DV

Photograph by: Avedon, Vogue, October 1966

“I’ve known two great decades in my life, the twenties and the sixties, and I’m always comparing them because of the music. Music is everything, and in those two decades you got something so sharp, so new…” 

—   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland    

 Click here to purchase your copy of DV

Photographs by Bert Stern, Vogue, March 1965

Though ubiquitous on beaches worldwide today, the skimpy swimsuit known as the bikini wasn’t always in style. Diana Vreeland first spotted what she would infamously dub “the most important thing since the atom bomb” on the shores of St. Tropez in the years just following the Second World War. Though there were some modest two-piece swimming costumes, never before had so much skin seen the light of day. Then fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, Mrs. Vreeland knew she had stumbled upon something that would change the face of fashion: a “swoonsuit” that exposed “everything about a girl except her mother’s maiden name.”

True to form, Mrs. Vreeland shocked her contemporaries when, in the May 1947 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, she featured a Toni Frissell photograph of a model wearing a rayon green-and-white-polka-dot bikini by the American sportswear designer Carolyn Schnurer. The controversy shock that ensued was met by typical Mrs. Vreeland deadpan talk: “It’s that kind of thinking that holds people back for thousands of years.“

Photographs:
Left Page- Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1947
Right Page- Toni Frissell, 1947

“I was always fascinated by the absurdities and the luxuries and the snobbism of the world that fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone. Very few people had ever breathed the pantry air of a woman who wore the kind of dress Vogue used to show when I was young. But I lived for that world, not only during my years in the magazine business but for years before, because I was always of that world — at least in my imagination.”

 —   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland

 Click here to purchase your copy of DV

Although her voice itself almost allows one to see the italics she speaks in, her choice of words is even more arresting than their delivery… For whatever the reasons, now, like a poet, she gives the impression of inventing her own syntax as she goes along.

 —   Christopher Hemphill, editor of Allure by Diana Vreeland. Excerpted from his Notes on a Collaboration.

Click here to purchase your copy of Allure. 
Photograph by: Arnold Newman, 1974

While Diana Vreeland was Editor-in-Chief at Vogue, her “People are Talking About” section became the absolute authority on what — and who — was relevant. It was in these pages that she featured the first portrait of Mick Jagger ever published in the U.S.A.

Photographer David Bailey had shot the 19-year-old, then just an aspiring musician with a mop-top, big lips and a bit of a swagger, and offered the image to British Vogue. The magazine rejected it saying, “No, who is this guy? We don’t know who he is.” Though they were on the charts, The Rolling Stones had not yet made a name for themselves in England, and were even less known in New York.

Details like this mattered little to Mrs. Vreeland. When Bailey showed her the portrait, her immediate response was “I don’t care who he is, but he looks great and we’ll publish it.” The image appeared in the July 1964 issue of Vogue, on the eve of The Rolling Stones’ first U.S. tour. Sure enough, “people were talking about” Mick and the Stones shortly thereafter, including Mrs. Vreeland herself, who famously gushed, “Those lips!”

Over the years the editor and the rock star became friends. Mrs. Vreeland attended Rolling Stones’ concerts at Madison Square Garden and enjoyed intimate dinners at her apartment with Mick and Bianca Jagger, and later Mick and Jerry Hall.

Photograph by: David Bailey, July 1964 

Celebration of Lisa Immordino’s book and film, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, continued this past weekend after a successful showing and festival win in Chicago.

Saturday’s festivities kicked off with a book party at Barneys’s Oak Street location, hosted by Creative Ambassador Simon Doonan, complete with champagne and a fashionable crowd. According to author Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who was on hand to sign copies and chat with guests, book sales and turnout were even better than anticipated. “It was truly great to see the younger generation so interested in the project.”

Later that evening, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel screened at the 47th annual Chicago International Film Festival. Immordino Vreeland took home the film’s first award, the Silver Hugo in the DocuFest category for what has been deemed a “visually and aurally innovative” documentary. According to the festival website, “The filmmakers have used a range of techniques in the service of a central aim: to connect audiences with the essence of this unique woman who reflected her times.” After the screening, director Immordino Vreeland answered questions from the audience about her work and process.

“I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me — projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. GIVE ‘EM WHAT THEY NEVER KNEW THEY WANTED.”

—   Excerpt, DV by Diana Vreeland

Click here to purchase DV.

Photograph by: Rowland Scherman

“Fashion editors are of great importance before the photographing begins. If they have an eye for color, style, form, taste and individuality, they can pull together a ready-made dress in no time at all. Very few of them have the outstanding creativity of Diana Vreeland. She was tops on a sitting. You would be given a dress to do and you had to make a picture. Diana helped brighten up the dress, and her eye would come to the rescue.”

— Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Photographer

Photograph by: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, March 1942 

Photograph: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Harper's Bazaar, March 1942 
Click here to purchase Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel

Today Lauren Bacall is well known as the sultry Hollywood starlet with the husky voice and piercing gaze. In New York City in the early 1940s, however, she was just Betty, another aspiring actress. She was earning a living as a part-time model when Nicolas de Gunzburg arranged for her to meet Diana Vreeland at Harper’s Bazaar — a moment Bacall describes as “the twist of fate that changed my life forever.”

A mere teenager, she was nothing if not intimidated. In her autobiography, she writes that the fashion editor “stood up, shook my hand, looked at my face — with her hand under my chin turned it to the right and to the left… I was scared to death… I hadn’t a clue what Mrs. Vreeland’s reaction to me had been.” At that time, the popular models were curvy and voluptuous; Bacall was skinny and flat-chested. In typical Vreeland fashion, she ignored the trends of the day, seeing in Bacall something that nobody else did — yet. Mrs. Vreeland began booking her for interior fashion stories, simple sittings at first, and then more glamorous location shoots, primarily photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe.

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Vreeland put her on the cover, altering not only the course of Bacall’s life and career, but impacting the history of American cinema. For the March 1943 cover of Harper’s, Bacall leans against the wall of the Red Cross office, lanky and insolent, staring directly at the camera. A bidding war of sorts followed publication of the iconic image, with Hollywood directors and studios clamoring to sign the young beauty. Ultimately it would be legendary director Howard Hawks who would win out. Like Mrs. Vreeland, he glimpsed in Bacall a certain modern attitude he had been searching for and immediately put her under contract. In 1944 she made her silver screen debut in To Have and Have Not, starring Humphrey Bogart, who would shortly thereafter become her husband. Bacall rose to the top of the Hollywood heap, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Photograph by: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, March 1943 

“A good photograph was never what I was looking for. I like to have a point. I had to have a point or I didn’t have a picture. This is what I’ve always found so fascinating about paparazzi pictures. They catch something unintended, on the wing… they get that thing. It’s the revelation of personality.”

 — Excerpt, Allure by Diana Vreeland

 Click here to purchase Allure.

“Allure is a word very few people use nowadays, but it’s something that exists. Allure holds you, doesn’t it? Whether it’s a gaze or a glance in the street or a face in the crowd or someone sitting opposite you at lunch… you are held"

— Excerpt, Allure by DV

Photograph by: Bert Stern 

Today the mark of a put-together woman is a chip-free manicure. But back in Diana Vreeland’s time, getting your nails done was both time-consuming and laborious. Wouldn’t you know that one had to sit for hours to wait for the varnish to dry? Only the most affluent could afford to have their hands sit idle for such lengthy periods. That is until Mrs. Vreeland showed up in New York City armed with her last remaining bottle of red nail polish. “When I arrived in America, I had these very dark red nails which some people objected to, but then some people object to everything,” she says in her autobiography, DV. Her manicurist in Paris was a man named Perrera, who she claimed made a varnish that dried instantly. So, as the last of her red was running out, she took her dwindling bottle and headed downtown to have it copied by a man who was in the business of making polish. That man was Charles Revson. According to Mrs. Vreeland, his original formula had a great color, but still took hours to dry. It was only when he was able to study the remnants of Perrera’s polish that he was able to create a product unlike any seen before in America. All that was left to do was to change the “s” in “Revson” an “l” to “Revlon” and the country’s largest cosmetics brand was born… or so the story goes. 

Photograph by: Jonathan Becker