“Diana Vreeland” first appeared in the December 1989 issue of Vogue. For more highlights from Vogue’s archives, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter here.
Alexander Liberman, Editorial Director of Condé Nast
From the moment she arrived at Vogue, she sparked a revolution. Diana Vreeland shook up years of tradition that were overdue for a fresh look. She brought bold, rule-breaking daring. She encouraged people to challenge norms and taboos.
She pulled this off because she was brilliantly disciplined. She wasn’t reckless—she was a disciplined rebel. She was the first editor to tell me, “You know, this is entertainment.” In many ways, she acted like a brilliant theater producer. She saw Vogue as a stage. She pushed for excess because she knew you had to go beyond the spotlight to connect with your audience. She was the most talented editor of her time because she could stamp an era in the reader’s mind.
She admired and instinctively felt that America’s excitement came from its youth. She pushed Vogue forward, making it more dynamic, younger, and more in tune with the times. She was the first editor to truly pick up on changes happening on the street. And she was more obsessed with fashion than anyone I’ve ever known. She worked incredibly hard. She was a perfectionist, very thorough. She cared as much about the technical details of retouching and engraving as she did about getting the hair exactly right. She was deeply focused on how an image came across on the page. And she made decisions very quickly. She relied on instinct and chance, her way of working in the unpredictable world of fashion, beauty, and style.
She didn’t like having her authority questioned. She refused interference to protect her creative process. There was a special kind of excess about her. When she arrived at work, everything suddenly became very formal, like a royal court. She surrounded herself with charming young secretaries and assistants who acted as a small court to guard the queen. Things were slipped under the door, then returned mysteriously. She wouldn’t be ready for discussion until a certain time. There was a regal quality about her. She had a very distinct way of placing her feet when she walked through Vogue’s hallways, which always struck me. Her careful balance made it seem like she was walking through a palace. Yet, despite all this courtly rigor and regimented style, she believed in a daily uniform: a black sweater, a beige skirt, and always, comfortable shoes. She changed the idea of office life by bringing a sense of allure to the workplace. She combined that allure with strong encouragement. Every planning session for a photo shoot was a moment of seduction. Manners and behavior were everything, which made work feel attractive. She never seemed bogged down by drudgery. A friend once said, “Proust would have liked Diana.” Diana Vreeland was the ultimate in refinement.
I remember Diana coming to one of my exhibitions in the sixties. As she left, she said, “Alex, what wonderful sweaters these paintings would make.” In her mind, the show became a new graphic idea for sweaters—perhaps her highest compliment. Art, literature, ballet, and music were her passions, her sources of inspiration, her driving force. She had extraordinary instincts. One of her secrets was a creative generosity through encouragement. She thought big. There was nothing, as the French say, mesquine, about Diana Vreeland. Nothing small or petty. If she was excited about a story, we had to give it sixteen pages, thirty pages! In those days, everything was possible because Vogue published two issues a month. More extravagant adventures could happen. Before her, Vogue had been edited with a certain strict, social-register idea of the proper life. She shocked a puritanical America. She dared to push for greater impact to the fullest.
Those two stars of modern fashion, Chanel and Diana Vreeland, were comparable, even though they didn’t like each other. Both wereThe magnificent potentates sensed a major rival in each other. Diana, with her flair for drama, flash, and flamboyance, projected more than Chanel ever did. Chanel was the couturiere in her salon, creating. Diana Vreeland commanded the world stage of fashion. She always loved Russia and the extravagance of the Russian spirit. Deep down, she felt connected to the Ballets Russes. There was something of Bakst and Diaghilev in her: the abundance of jewels, the exaggeration, the Russian colors, the wildness, the opulence, the lavishness. But like Chanel, she was also very modern. She was very Anglo-Saxon and at ease with all things English: the titles, the precise tailoring, the uniforms, the strict order of English life, the correctness, the careful note-writing. She admired the thoroughbred, whether it was a stunning beauty or a superb racehorse.
In many ways, she was a dictator and could be harsh. Yet, despite all the difficulties and quirks of this eccentric person, you forgave everything. I knew she was reaching for the extraordinary, the best of everything for Vogue. I respected and admired her for that endless drive to go beyond excellence. I loved her, and we had a wonderful decade together at Vogue. She brought great joy to my life.
— André Leon Talley, Vogue Creative Director
Diana Vreeland started working in the thirties and never looked back. She believed in the “get up and go, get cracking” individual. “What I’m most proud of is that I’ve always gone to work,” she often said. She was a thoroughly modern woman, happily married for forty-two years, raised a family, and lived to enjoy 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 her exhilarating life tonic.
She knew that modern life was as rich on the streets as it was in the most sophisticated Parisian salons. Style had to come from every level of society. She found the same passion and authority in Tina Turner’s backstep in stilettos as in the writings of Isak Dinesen. She saw romance and spirit in everything from Voltaire to Jack Nicholson. I remember once we had a three-hour conversation about espadrilles. That kind of obsession with the perfect espadrille might seem neurotic to some, but it stood for a certain sense of perfection she always believed in. And when we finished, around four in the morning, she decided we had to explore her apartment. So we went into the kitchen, a place she hadn’t set foot in for years. She always communicated with her cooks by phone, with detailed notes scrawled on large yellow legal pads in Chinese green ink, or in person in her dressing room. We were hungry and needed a snack of peanut butter, one of her favorite foods, which she loved served on K’ang Hsi porcelain plates with a spoon. She had no idea where anything was in her pantry or where the cutlery was kept. It was truly a nightcrawler’s adventure. Her feet were on foreign soil in her own kitchen. Another time, she craved English clotted cream. For weeks, she was obsessed with clotted cream from the English countryside. She would ask for anything, and if it was humanly possible, you had to make it happen. Finally, I asked Manolo Blahnik if he could bring some clotted cream from England for the Red Empress. Blahnik made a special trip to Bath, two hours from London, organized the clotted cream, had it packed in a special container with dry ice, and brought it with him when he flew on the Concorde to New York for a work trip. The first thing we did was deliver the clotted cream to Diana Vreeland’s doorstep. And the notes she sent the next morning were framed by both Blahnik and me.
From the age of fourteen, I knew who Diana Vreeland was from reading Vogue. I never thought I’d get to meet her. She became not only my mentor but my best friend. I’ve had dinners alone with her that, for me, were as important as attending a state dinner.After dinner, I would read to her on weekends. She loved my deep, booming voice. I gave up holidays and weekend evenings to read to her, sometimes until I lost my voice. I’d sit up straight in a chair she picked out. We read everything—articles about Prince, Flaubert, Truman Capote. Every Christmas Eve, I’d read her A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, who was a close friend. One day, I decided to read from D.V., and she thought it was wonderful that I’d read to her from her own book.
She wasn’t selfish. She gave you a lot of her time. She always cared, and she’d call at the strangest hours just to ask how you were, what you’d eaten that day, what you’d done. As The Reverend John Andrew, rector of Saint Thomas Church—the same church where she was married in 1924—said so perfectly in his eulogy, “Diana appreciated the human contribution to excellence.” As Isak Dinesen wrote of a character in Anecdotes of Destiny, “Ah, how she will enchant the angels.”
Polly Allen Mellen, Vogue Fashion Director
I remember when Mrs. Vreeland went to see Millicent Rogers, who at the time was wearing a huge black cotton skirt with layers of petticoats. She had rings on every finger. She was designing her own jewelry, and each finger was covered in oversized turquoise—her own rough pieces. Mrs. Vreeland said to Millicent, “Not that ring, Millicent, it looks like someone’s lost tooth filling.” When Mrs. Vreeland came back from that trip, we went to the market, and she had a big black cotton sateen skirt made. That year, we all wore a black sateen skirt with ten petticoats underneath and a pink Brooks Brothers oxford button-down shirt. Mrs. Vreeland started that. She also brought back black ballet slippers, which we all wore.
People only think of her for fantasy. But she was the gray flannel suit lady, the gray flannel pants lady. Tailoring was very important to her. Watching her get fitted was painful. She held a mirror to her face so she could see that everything being fitted was perfect in the back. In the fifties, it was all Mainbocher; everything was made for her by Main. She had the most incredible gray flannel coachman’s coat made by him. Then Mainbocher did denim. She thought it was the best thing he ever did.
She always made an entrance—always. She was flamboyant and never alone. She’d arrive at a party with a man, or two men. Before her husband died, she went to parties with him. They were the most attractive couple. Her jewelry at night, her accessories—everything was extravagant, extreme, flamboyant. If it was black, it was jet black to the extreme. No matter what party you went to, she was surrounded by the most attractive people there. She was so entertaining. If you didn’t join her, you felt like you were out in Siberia.
In Paris in the sixties, she had her hair cut by Alexandre. Before that, it was combed back into a snood—her perfect snood, maybe with a point d’esprit bow. Then, snap. She wanted all her hair off, a new, short pageboy she wore for the rest of her life. I’ll never forget it. A decade had passed, and she wanted to embrace the newness of the sixties. She had her hair cut during the couture collections. Then she went out and bought an emerald green tweed suit. All the gray Mainbochers disappeared. She started wearing bright colors. She changed, she got wilder. Then you’d see things in Vogue like Marisa Berenson in a pink wig.
But even back then, it was the American market she believed in and pushed: Claire McCardell, Tina Leser, Charles James, Norman Norell, James Galanos, B. H. Wragge. She went wild over Stephen Burrows. She thought him and Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo were brilliant. She was always in the fabric department at Vogue. She went into the market and inspired people. She loved working behind the scenes. She was a backstage person, working with the tailor. She instinctively knew everything about cut, drape, and the shoulder line.
Before she sent…When I first went to Japan, she made me read the entire Tale of Genji. She told me, “You need to immerse yourself in it, feel it, so you truly understand everything I’m asking of you.” I couldn’t believe she was making me read this massive book. I mean, it was erotic. So when I finished, I said, “Mrs. V., I’m done. Wow, that part when they were together, their love affair and everything…” And she replied, “I wouldn’t know, darling. I couldn’t read it. I simply couldn’t, but I knew it would be good for you.” And when we were working on a sitting based on Scheherazade, she talked about the seraglio and said, “It needs at least one hundred fifty more beads! After all, if you’re going into a seraglio, you might as well bring something with you.”
She never thought about anything negative. Never. There was no time for that kind of negative thinking. Her motto was to turn everything into a positive. “There’s no such thing as failure, Polly, if you learn from it the first time.”
— Horst P. Horst, Vogue photographer
She would say, “Come into my office, I want to show you something.” On the floor in front of her desk was this tiny thing, a two-piece bikini. She said, “Don’t you think it’s the most exciting thing since the atom bomb? Now find me the right girl to wear it.” Of course, she had to have the right girl. “I don’t want any of those girls who do underwear photographs.” A girl named Veruschka came to my studio. I told Vreeland about her. She called Veruschka and asked if she would pose for Vogue. Since Veruschka was a German countess, she said, “I’ll do it, but only if you mention my name.” And so Veruschka launched her career as a symbol of the sixties in Vogue.
The first thing I ever did for her at Vogue was the house of Consuelo, the Duchess of Marlborough. I said to Diana, “Listen, I’ve never photographed a house. I wouldn’t know where to start.” But you couldn’t say no to Diana. So that’s how I began photographing houses, with a little Roloflex, like a Brownie camera, no assistant, no lights. Valentine Lawford wrote the accompanying texts. When Diana saw the photos, of course she said, “We need more.”
I’d say that Chanel and Diana Vreeland made incredible contributions to the world of style and elegance in this century. They could both create anything. With Diana, it always had to be new. Like Chanel, Vreeland was a very strong woman, very decisive. She was a loyal friend. A week before she died, I suddenly thought, I have to send her some beautiful flowers. She called to thank me. “I can’t wait to come see you, Diana,” I told her. She said, “No, no. Don’t come see me. Just call me and give me the news.”
— Snowdon, Vogue photographer
When I actually met her properly, I went into her office, which was pretty intimidating at first. And she said, “I want you to do a story on these amazing white whales. They’re so aristocratic you wouldn’t believe it.”
I said, “Mrs. Vreeland, where are they?”
She said, “I don’t know where they are. But you’ll find them. Or I’ll have someone find them for you.”
Well, these whales were beautiful, seventeen feet long. They were in a tank on Coney Island. I had to put on a scuba suit and dive into the tank to photograph them. I had an assistant outside the tank, writing down the exposures on the side. And there was a guy at the top of the tank yelling down at me, telling me not to get between the whales because they could flip me with a flick of their tails and that would be the end of me. I thought they were harmless until that moment. But I got the photo. By chance, they intertwined for the shot. Then Diana asked me to do white horses. I worked for about two months on white horses, terrible photos of white horses with daffodils. And they were rejected. In the end, I went to Maryland and surrounded a whole paddock of white horses with smoke bombs. I created an entire f…So when the horses galloped into it, the heads were just extraordinary. She loved that.
She had real depth. I don’t think she cared much about dresses. What mattered to her was elegance, style, and a strong sense of individuality. She was the least snobbish person I’ve ever known. Like most truly grand people, she was humble in her thinking. As Kenneth Clark said about Leonardo da Vinci, Mrs. Vreeland was great because she was curious. She stayed young because she was curious. People loved her because she was curious. She inspired others with her curiosity. That was her greatest quality.
— Susan Train, Paris Bureau Chief
Her way of working was completely different. When she was in Paris, we would take a suite at the Hôtel Crillon and turn the living room into our office. She had her own bedroom and bathroom. Two secretaries, my assistant, and I would sit in that big room. We added extra phone lines, brought in our own typewriters, moved out furniture we didn’t like, and brought in large work tables. She was an early riser. She’d wake up, have her usual breakfast of tea and porridge, and start taking calls. One former editor said Diana Vreeland got more done from her bed in the morning than most people do sitting in an office all day. She always spoke to every photographer working that day. She kept everyone moving. Then she’d go into the bathroom, where she’d spend an unbelievable amount of time. I never knew what she did in there. It must have been yoga, meditation, exercises, and creams. I could never figure it out, because when she came out, she’d sit at her dressing table and do her makeup. We placed little notepads everywhere—at least three in the bathroom, several on her desk, on every surface. Whenever she had a thought, she’d write it down immediately. She was always working. Even from the bathroom, she kept things moving. Everything she did, everything she saw, everyone she talked to, every color and feeling she experienced—it all eventually turned into fashion and ended up in Vogue.
I spent hours with her while she was being fitted for clothes. At that time, her favorite designer was Balenciaga. She loved Givenchy, and she went all in for Yves Saint Laurent when he came into his own, and of course, Madame Grès. Mrs. Vreeland inspired Madame Grès to create amazing clothes. Those dramatic hemlines and brocades would then appear in Vogue.
She was always on time. And she never forgot to thank people, even for the smallest things. When she watched the collections, she would sit there almost in a trance. You could tell she was dreaming. She imagined each piece as it came out—where and how it would be worn.
Of course, she was very theatrical and truly exceptional. People who didn’t know her well can’t imagine how human she was. The artificial persona she sometimes seemed to have was actually one of the most tolerant people I’ve ever known. She never criticized. She accepted people as they were and never tried to change them. She focused only on the good. If there was something bad, she simply ignored it. She never put anyone down. She had humor, great courage, understanding, kindness, and depth. She was a good friend, always loyal. And she valued loyalty in others. Whether you were up, down, in, or out—she was always there as a friend.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about Diana Vreeland the fashion editor who made Miranda Priestly look tame
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 Who was Diana Vreeland
She was the most powerful fashion editor of the 20th century known for her bold eccentric style and her work at Harpers Bazaar and Vogue She basically invented modern fashion journalism
2 Why do people say she made Miranda Priestly look tame
Miranda Priestly is tough Diana Vreeland was a visionary She didnt just demand perfection she demanded fantasy She was more creative more outrageous and had a much bigger personality than any fictional boss
3 What was her most famous quote
The only real elegance is in the mind if youve got that the rest comes from it Another classic The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb
4 Did she actually work at Vogue
Yes She was the editorinchief of Vogue from 1963 to 1971 Before that she was the fashion editor at Harpers Bazaar for 25 years
5 What did she look like that made her so memorable
She had a severe black bob bright red lipstick and wore dramatic almost costumelike clothes She was a living piece of art
AdvancedLevel Questions
6 What was her Why Dont You column
At Harpers Bazaar she wrote a monthly column with crazy aspirational ideas like Why dont you wear a black velvet evening dress with a white ermine muff or dye your hair blue It was pure fantasy not practicality
7 How did she change the way fashion magazines looked
She was the first to use action photography and reallife settings She didnt just show a dress she showed a story She put models on the street in pools and jumping in the air
8 What was her biggest mistake at Vogue
She famously predicted that the miniskirt was dead right as it was peaking It was a huge miscalculation that hurt her credibility
9 Why was she fired from Vogue
The