YAYOI KUSAMA + DOSSIER JOURNAL
For Dossier Journal's new issue, I asked Yayoi Kusama the question I've always wanted to ask: how do you feel about stripes?
WONDERLAND + DIANA VREELAND
For Wonderland's September October 2012 issue, I interviewed Lisa Immordino-Vreeland on the topic of her new documentary, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel.
---
At
first glance, Lisa Immordino-Vreeland seems like an unlikely candidate
to carry the Diana Vreeland torch into the new century. There’s an
almost outdoorsy look to her despite her chic attire; it’s the
combination of slightly tousled hair and a sun-kissed complexion that
does it. Apparently you can judge a book by its cover, because in
conversation, she’s relaxed and natural — one of those rare people
within this industry without affectation. She’s the polar opposite of
the over-the-top, fashion-fantastic Vreeland fanatic I half-expected her
to be. Since she carries the late editor’s name, authored the hit
biography Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel and directed the new film by the same name, she must be used to people comparing them, right?
“I think people assume that I must be one of those die-hard Diana Vreeland fans, of which there are many, who are utterly obsessed with her,” she explains in the ritzy central London hotel bar that we’ve met in. “These crazy fans…” — she shakes her head, a smile breaking out — “I wasn’t like that. The book, this film, came out of curiosity and a desire to tell the story in a certain way. She’s not my family, you know? I just happened to marry her grandson, and I became fascinated by her.”
It’s not hard to imagine why. Diana Vreeland is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating figures in fashion history. She continues to inspire — her shoots are referenced regularly, her quotes repeated endlessly. Recently, Raf Simons kept a copy of Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel on his desk whilst creating his first Dior couture collection, Immordino-Vreeland reports excitedly.
Diana Vreeland first achieved notoriety with her ostentatious “Why don’t you…” column for Harper’s Bazaar, in which she posed questions like, "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?" After missing out on the top job at Harper’s, Vreeland moved to Vogue, where she shook things up, completely reviving the magazine’s image during her tenure as Editor-In-Chief in the 60s. Next, she moved on to The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she disregarded historical accuracy in favour of theatrical flourishes in her exhibitions (for the museum’s Eighteenth-Century Woman show, she deplored the realistic wigs that then-Exhibition Assistant Harold Koda had created, demanding that the wigs be made ceiling-high to add drama), which captured the imagination of the masses and brought in record crowds. Additionally, she turned the annual Gala Benefit into the social event of the year.
“Diana Vreeland threw the ultimate party at The Costume Institute,” Immordino-Vreeland begins to explain. “It became the fundraiser. It became the social event of New York during her time. And it wasn’t this crazy paparazzi show. The women were sophisticated and beautiful. Someone told me they laughed at some young celebrity wearing a dress with a train on it, because she could hardly walk in it, let alone dance! Diana had this ability to mix people, and the party of the year was very much representative of that.”
It’s clear that Vreeland’s life wasn’t all work — she burnt the candle at both ends. Outside of the office, the late editor was renowned for her jealousy-inducing, super-packed social life. Everyone who was anyone featured in her address book, from Jack Nicholson to Jackie Onassis. Whether she was partying at Studio 54 or entertaining a select group of guests at her home with her husband Thomas Reed Vreeland (apparently, when illness struck towards the end of her life, she’d telephone her dinner guests from bed), Vreeland had a knack for making the night memorable.
When it came to a night out dancing, she was indefatiguable, and by all reports, she could boogie with the best of them. According to her household manager, Vreeland’s last delirious words from her deathbed were: “Don't stop the music or I'll tell my father!”
“You know, there was a definite rhythm to everything she did,” Immordino-Vreeland shares. “One of Diana Vreeland's sons Tim’s first memories of his mother in their house in London was her taking rumba lessons in the living room. There’s this quote in one of the transcripts of her conversations with George Plimpton. She said: ‘I just had terrific energy. I like to tango, I like to rumba. I like to be out dancing.’”
“I heard that there was this photo of her at Elizabeth Taylor’s 50th birthday party at Studio 54,” she continues. “She was up on the podium dancing, and Bob Colacello was there holding her up! It’s obvious that she had a very social life, but honestly, I didn’t find it that interesting. There are certain stories that I had to focus on, otherwise the documentary would have been weighed down by detail, and that part of her life was for me icing on the cake.”
The question remains: what did ignite Immordino-Vreeland’s interest in the late editor? After marrying Alexander Vreeland twelve years ago, the ex-Ralph Lauren PR began to discover DV’s personal belongings in her husband’s basement (some of which feature in the following pages of Wonderland). Her curiosity increased, as she probed deeper into Diana Vreeland’s life. But, if she doesn’t count herself amongst Vreeland’s die-hard fans, why spend so much time putting the book and film together?
“I made the film for people who mightn’t be aware of too much about Diana Vreeland’s life,” she explains. “I mean, her actual life, not just what you saw in interviews. I feel that it’s so important in this day and age to teach a young audience about some of the icons that preceded the Internet age. That was my goal. They know the name, but all they know is that extroverted side of her. I wanted to offer more.”
She has succeeded. The film shows Vreeland had more to offer than style advice and sharp sound bites. She had substance and creativity: two things that the outlandishly costumed stars of today’s fashion industry (the bloggers and street-style-posers whose internet stardom can be attributed entirely to garish ensembles and nebulous style predictions spewed out wantonly) would do well to strive for too. In the film, Diana Vreeland comes off as intelligent, self-aware and — perhaps most surprisingly — kind-of humble.
Immordino-Vreeland agrees. “I’m happy to say that all the people interviewed in the film [which include Anjelica Huston, David Bailey and Manolo Blahnik] knew her more intimately, because you wouldn’t get that insight into her personality otherwise. I’ve had this conversation with some of her old friends, and she really didn’t seem like she had this ego. When you see her in interviews, she’s like, ‘What do I know?’ Her true personality comes so strongly through this film that you almost want to reach through the screen and touch her and squeeze her!”
One note-worthy editor is definitely not interested in that idea.
“Vogue America has gone so far as to not to send anyone to see this film. They are closed off to the idea totally. I definitely think that there’s someone in particular there that’s feeling… Threatened.”
The editor she’s alluding to wouldn’t be alone in that respect. The duality of Vreeland’s memory is this: she was both feared and revered. But let’s not focus on the negative, because the overwhelming consensus from her peers seems to be that Vreeland’s presence in one’s life was a positive and challenging one. In her New York Times’ obituary, The Divine Mrs. V, jewellery designer Kenneth Jay Lane recalled: "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.'"
“I think what’s clear is that Diana Vreeland was the real thing,” Immordino-Vreeland concludes. “She was ‘it’. And I guess that’s why no one’s done a film on her before now, because you have to do it right to do her memory justice. When I showed it to the Ralph Lauren team, one of them said to me, “You could have screwed it up in like five thousand different ways! But you didn’t screw it up. You just told the story the way it should be.” I think it’s the fact that she is the real thing that makes her so threatening.”
The night wanes, but Immordino-Vreeland’s enthusiasm for talking all things Diana Vreeland does not. She could regale me for hours with more DV stories, but we just don’t have time for that (and also, you can buy the book if you’d like to hear more). So, as we pay the bill at the bar, my last question for Lisa Immordino-Vreeland (before we roll off on another tangent) is this: how did exploring Vreeland’s life change her own outlook on life?
“First of all,” she begins after some thought, “I’m never going to be rid of her. She made me look at life differently. She made me look at life much more positively. It’s so easy to say that your life is in the shitter, but her sense of positivity definitely rubbed off on me. This whole thing has shown me that I can do anything that I believe in doing. She was impassioned, and her life was about passion. She believed life was about ideas. And that’s a very important message to take home.”
With that in mind, perhaps Diana Vreeland’s greatest legacy is this question: ‘’Why don’t you?’’
“I think people assume that I must be one of those die-hard Diana Vreeland fans, of which there are many, who are utterly obsessed with her,” she explains in the ritzy central London hotel bar that we’ve met in. “These crazy fans…” — she shakes her head, a smile breaking out — “I wasn’t like that. The book, this film, came out of curiosity and a desire to tell the story in a certain way. She’s not my family, you know? I just happened to marry her grandson, and I became fascinated by her.”
It’s not hard to imagine why. Diana Vreeland is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating figures in fashion history. She continues to inspire — her shoots are referenced regularly, her quotes repeated endlessly. Recently, Raf Simons kept a copy of Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel on his desk whilst creating his first Dior couture collection, Immordino-Vreeland reports excitedly.
Diana Vreeland first achieved notoriety with her ostentatious “Why don’t you…” column for Harper’s Bazaar, in which she posed questions like, "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?" After missing out on the top job at Harper’s, Vreeland moved to Vogue, where she shook things up, completely reviving the magazine’s image during her tenure as Editor-In-Chief in the 60s. Next, she moved on to The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she disregarded historical accuracy in favour of theatrical flourishes in her exhibitions (for the museum’s Eighteenth-Century Woman show, she deplored the realistic wigs that then-Exhibition Assistant Harold Koda had created, demanding that the wigs be made ceiling-high to add drama), which captured the imagination of the masses and brought in record crowds. Additionally, she turned the annual Gala Benefit into the social event of the year.
“Diana Vreeland threw the ultimate party at The Costume Institute,” Immordino-Vreeland begins to explain. “It became the fundraiser. It became the social event of New York during her time. And it wasn’t this crazy paparazzi show. The women were sophisticated and beautiful. Someone told me they laughed at some young celebrity wearing a dress with a train on it, because she could hardly walk in it, let alone dance! Diana had this ability to mix people, and the party of the year was very much representative of that.”
It’s clear that Vreeland’s life wasn’t all work — she burnt the candle at both ends. Outside of the office, the late editor was renowned for her jealousy-inducing, super-packed social life. Everyone who was anyone featured in her address book, from Jack Nicholson to Jackie Onassis. Whether she was partying at Studio 54 or entertaining a select group of guests at her home with her husband Thomas Reed Vreeland (apparently, when illness struck towards the end of her life, she’d telephone her dinner guests from bed), Vreeland had a knack for making the night memorable.
When it came to a night out dancing, she was indefatiguable, and by all reports, she could boogie with the best of them. According to her household manager, Vreeland’s last delirious words from her deathbed were: “Don't stop the music or I'll tell my father!”
“You know, there was a definite rhythm to everything she did,” Immordino-Vreeland shares. “One of Diana Vreeland's sons Tim’s first memories of his mother in their house in London was her taking rumba lessons in the living room. There’s this quote in one of the transcripts of her conversations with George Plimpton. She said: ‘I just had terrific energy. I like to tango, I like to rumba. I like to be out dancing.’”
“I heard that there was this photo of her at Elizabeth Taylor’s 50th birthday party at Studio 54,” she continues. “She was up on the podium dancing, and Bob Colacello was there holding her up! It’s obvious that she had a very social life, but honestly, I didn’t find it that interesting. There are certain stories that I had to focus on, otherwise the documentary would have been weighed down by detail, and that part of her life was for me icing on the cake.”
The question remains: what did ignite Immordino-Vreeland’s interest in the late editor? After marrying Alexander Vreeland twelve years ago, the ex-Ralph Lauren PR began to discover DV’s personal belongings in her husband’s basement (some of which feature in the following pages of Wonderland). Her curiosity increased, as she probed deeper into Diana Vreeland’s life. But, if she doesn’t count herself amongst Vreeland’s die-hard fans, why spend so much time putting the book and film together?
“I made the film for people who mightn’t be aware of too much about Diana Vreeland’s life,” she explains. “I mean, her actual life, not just what you saw in interviews. I feel that it’s so important in this day and age to teach a young audience about some of the icons that preceded the Internet age. That was my goal. They know the name, but all they know is that extroverted side of her. I wanted to offer more.”
She has succeeded. The film shows Vreeland had more to offer than style advice and sharp sound bites. She had substance and creativity: two things that the outlandishly costumed stars of today’s fashion industry (the bloggers and street-style-posers whose internet stardom can be attributed entirely to garish ensembles and nebulous style predictions spewed out wantonly) would do well to strive for too. In the film, Diana Vreeland comes off as intelligent, self-aware and — perhaps most surprisingly — kind-of humble.
Immordino-Vreeland agrees. “I’m happy to say that all the people interviewed in the film [which include Anjelica Huston, David Bailey and Manolo Blahnik] knew her more intimately, because you wouldn’t get that insight into her personality otherwise. I’ve had this conversation with some of her old friends, and she really didn’t seem like she had this ego. When you see her in interviews, she’s like, ‘What do I know?’ Her true personality comes so strongly through this film that you almost want to reach through the screen and touch her and squeeze her!”
One note-worthy editor is definitely not interested in that idea.
“Vogue America has gone so far as to not to send anyone to see this film. They are closed off to the idea totally. I definitely think that there’s someone in particular there that’s feeling… Threatened.”
The editor she’s alluding to wouldn’t be alone in that respect. The duality of Vreeland’s memory is this: she was both feared and revered. But let’s not focus on the negative, because the overwhelming consensus from her peers seems to be that Vreeland’s presence in one’s life was a positive and challenging one. In her New York Times’ obituary, The Divine Mrs. V, jewellery designer Kenneth Jay Lane recalled: "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.'"
“I think what’s clear is that Diana Vreeland was the real thing,” Immordino-Vreeland concludes. “She was ‘it’. And I guess that’s why no one’s done a film on her before now, because you have to do it right to do her memory justice. When I showed it to the Ralph Lauren team, one of them said to me, “You could have screwed it up in like five thousand different ways! But you didn’t screw it up. You just told the story the way it should be.” I think it’s the fact that she is the real thing that makes her so threatening.”
The night wanes, but Immordino-Vreeland’s enthusiasm for talking all things Diana Vreeland does not. She could regale me for hours with more DV stories, but we just don’t have time for that (and also, you can buy the book if you’d like to hear more). So, as we pay the bill at the bar, my last question for Lisa Immordino-Vreeland (before we roll off on another tangent) is this: how did exploring Vreeland’s life change her own outlook on life?
“First of all,” she begins after some thought, “I’m never going to be rid of her. She made me look at life differently. She made me look at life much more positively. It’s so easy to say that your life is in the shitter, but her sense of positivity definitely rubbed off on me. This whole thing has shown me that I can do anything that I believe in doing. She was impassioned, and her life was about passion. She believed life was about ideas. And that’s a very important message to take home.”
With that in mind, perhaps Diana Vreeland’s greatest legacy is this question: ‘’Why don’t you?’’
MAGIC DANSK
DANSK #28!!! Looks good, ja? I contributed a few pieces to this one — an embarrassing story, a tribute to bling and an interview with an influential (but not too talkative) Italian designer.
OYSTER #100
Wonderful news, meine guten Freunde! Oyster's 100th Anniversary Issue, which marks my return to the masthead as Contributing Features Editor, is out now. I asked some really exciting people to be involved — James Franco, David Lynch, Chrysta Bell, Mark Fast, Luis Venegas, Ruth Hogben, Sarah Mower, Olivia Newton-John and Lisa Immordino-Vreeland — and they all agreed! Inside, you'll also find an OTT story about my dream shindig, featuring cameos from The Golden Girls, Nina Van Horn, Patsy Stone and the ghost of Liz Taylor. I'm so very proud and excited to have been a part of this!
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