The Tamesis
Chanel and Diana Vreeland, two modern fashion stars who disliked each other, were comparable. Both men were great monarchs, and each considered the other a serious rival. Diana’s sense of drama, sparkle and glamor was more prominent than Chanel’s. Chanel was the seamstress in her salon responsible for inventions. Diana Vreeland has dominated the world’s fashion scene. She had always loved Russia and the extravagant character of Russians. Somewhere inside her, she was inextricably linked to the Ballets Russes. There is something Baxter, Diaghilev about her: lots of jewelry, exaggeration, Russian overtones, brutality, opulence, extravagance. But like Chanel, she’s also very modern. She was a quintessentially Anglo-Saxon, delighted in all things English: titles, precise tailoring, uniforms, the rigor of English life, the accuracy and meticulousness of note-writing. She had an admiration for thoroughbreds, both for their extraordinary beauty and their outstanding racehorses.
She was a dictator in many ways and could be harsh. Yet for all the difficulties and idiosyncrasies of this eccentric man we are forgiven. I know her goal is to achieve the transcendent, the extraordinary, the best for Vogue. I respect and admire her relentless drive to excel. I loved her and we had a wonderful ten years at Vogue. She is a great joy in my life.
André Leon Talley, creative director of Vogue
Diana Vreeland started working in the thirties and never looked back. She believes in individuals who “stand up, go on, go for it”. “What I’m most proud of is that I always go to work,” she often said. She was a thoroughly modern woman, happily married for forty-two years, raising a family and raising four great-grandchildren before her death in August. Her career at Vogue, followed by fifteen years as a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, was an exciting tonic.
She knew that modern life was as rich on the streets as in the most exquisite salons of Paris. Style must come from all levels of society. She found the same passion and authority in Tina Turner’s stiletto-clad steps back as she did in the work of Isak Dinesen. She saw romance and spirituality in everything from Voltaire to Jack Nicholson. I remember one time we had a three-hour conversation about espadrilles. This obsession with the perfect espadrille might seem neurotic to some, but it represents a certain sense of perfection that she has always believed in. When we finished, around four in the morning, she decided we had to explore her apartment. So we walked into the kitchen, a place she hadn’t set foot in for years. She always communicated with the chefs over the phone, scribbling detailed notes in Chinese green ink on a yellow legal pad, or in person in the dressing room. We were hungry and needed a peanut butter snack, it was one of her favorite foods and she loved having it served to her with a spoon on a Kangxi porcelain plate. She didn’t know where her pantry was, where the dishes were. This is indeed a nightcrawler’s adventure. Her feet were on foreign soil in her own kitchen. Another time, she had a craving for English clotted cream. For weeks she had been indulging in clotted cream from the English countryside. She will ask for anything, and if it is humanly possible, it must be done. Finally, I asked Manolo Blahnik if he could bring some clotted cream from England to the Red Queen. Blahnik traveled to Bath, two hours’ drive from London, to sort out the clotted cream, package it in a special container of dry ice and take it with him on a work trip to New York on Concorde. The first thing we did was deliver clotted cream to Diana Vreeland’s doorstep. The notes she sent the next morning were framed by Blahnik and myself.
