DIANA VREELAND. WOMAN, WHO WAS FASHION BY HERSELF.

"You don't have to have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive"

- Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland was a significant figure in the fashion world connoisseur of haute couture. She had incomparable sense of style, beauty and luxury. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1964. Her flair to new trends, understanding future development of fashion, which had a considerable influence at life fashion. Vreeland was a mixture of energy, art and fantasy. Woman, who created fashion, and, as her contemporaries were telling, she was a fashion by herself.

 

Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland and Cecil Beaton look at a drawing, 1965

Diana Vreeland was born in 1903, an aristocratic family in Belle Époque Paris. Her parents led a prosperous lifestyle. Eminent guests were regular their house, Vaslav Nijinsky and Sergei Diaghilev were ones of them.  Diana visited  the ballet and opera all time, and she admired "Russian Seasons" of  Diaghilev. In 1914 family moved to United States to escape World War I and settled in New York.  

In 1924, Diana married Thomas Reed Vreeland, a socially prominent banker. The couple moved to London in 1929, where they remained until 1933. In London, Vreeland opened own lingerie boutique. As a patron of designers such as Jean Patou, Elsa Schiaparelli, Madeleine Vionnet, and Main-bocher, Vreeland's intuition for dressing, combined with her social standing, made her the subject of commentary in the social pages and in magazines such as American Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Town and Country.

 

Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland  on a session photographed by Richard Avedon for Harper's Bazaar in 1946

The Vreelands moved back to New York in 1935. Diana began her first job in fashion editorial work at Harper's Bazaar in 1937. She was promoted to the position of fashion editor in 1939, working under editor-in-chief Carmel Snow, and remained at the magazine until 1962. Vreeland first came to the readership's attention with her 1936 column entitled "Why Don't You?". It was extraordinary suggestions, influenced by Vreeland's imagination and sense of style, which captured women attention and moved them in world of beauty. '' Why Don't You ... wash your daughter's light hair with champagne to stay them golden? " or '' Why Don't You ... wear violet gloves regularly? ". Vreeland honed her editorial skills at Harper's Bazaar by working closely with such photographers as Richard Avedon and Louise Dahl-Wolfe to implement her ideas and transfer her imaginative vision to the fashion pages.

In 1962, Vreeland moved to American Vogue as associate editor. In 1963, Sam Newhouse, the owner of Condé Nast, promoted her to editor-in-chief in an effort to reinvigorate the magazine. During Vreeland's tenure, she transformed magazine into aristocratically glamour and exoticism edition. Politic, art, fashion, celebrities and advertisement imbued magazine's pages. She discovered many photographers and models. She liked models with not typical appearance such as Veruschka, Penelope Tree, Twiggy, and Lauren Hutton - " Turn deficients into benefits.  If model has long neck, you should make it even longer and emphasize. And long nose you could reflect like ancient Nefertiti profile ."

Clive Arrowsmith, Penelope Tree, Vogue UK 1970

Lauren Hutton Vogue 1966

Twiggy, photographed by Bert Stern, 1967

Streisand Vogue 1966

Barbra Streisand for Vogue

Penelope Tree photographed by Richard Avedon for Vogue

In 1971 Diana Vreeland was named special consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (founded in 1937 by Irene Lewisohn). There she mounted a series of exhibitions that attracted a multitude of visitors.

Even among the outsized, eccentric personalities of the fashion world, Diana Vreeland stands out. A style icon, zealous aesthete and one of the foremost creative visionaries of the ’60s and ’70s, she blasted ahead of her contemporaries like a comet, illuminating the way to the next big thing (jeans! the bikini!) while crackling with charisma.

Diana Vreeland and Yves Saint Laurent, 1983

June 14, 1984 At Diana Vreeland's Book Party