Empress of Fashion (17 page)

D
iana appeared as fashion editor on the masthead of
Harper's Bazaar
for the first time in January 1939. She even received a small pay raise. “I am so happy to tell you that Dick Berlin [head of the Hearst magazine division] has okayed the increase of your salary to $125 per week, beginning April 15th,” wrote Snow. It was all very ladylike. “I think it would be terribly nice if you would write him a little line.” In fact Diana had been working on the fashion pages behind the scenes for some time. Soon after she started “Why Don't You?” the language of
Bazaar
's fashion captions began to change: blue felt hats acquired the sad, soft blue of plasticine in kindergarten boxes, a pink faille gown became an iridescent sea-shell that shone in the firelight, and rubber diving glasses took on a spectral quality. However, the formal title of Fashion Editor marked a new departure for Diana, and a formal division of labor. Snow had always been an expert on the Paris couture, and she had no intention of relinquishing what she most enjoyed. Henceforth she would cover Paris, and Diana would take charge of American fashion.

In practice this meant covering New York fashion. Although she had grown up in New York, its fashion industry was unfamiliar territory. Diana had been brought up in the school of Parisian haute couture, where the couturier was the artist from whom all else flowed. This system had been established by Charles Frederick Worth during the Second Empire, but it drew on an older French tradition of elite artistry going back to Louis XIV. New York's fashion industry had emerged very differently. It had been aligned to rude commerce from the start. Trade in beaver pelts had brought the city into existence. Thereafter it became home to a vast garment industry on New York's Lower East Side that grew up to cater to America's fast-growing populace. In this domain the powerful figures were the manufacturers who exploited the invention of the sewing machine and the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Europe prepared to work for very low wages. The New York clothing industry met a huge demand for cheap work clothes and garments for play, and at a range of prices. There was a place for designers in this cosmos, but they were hired by manufacturers, did their bidding, and worked anonymously in back rooms.

This picture was complicated by the desire of New York's rich to distinguish themselves from the common herd. In the years following the Civil War, fashion became a vital element of competitive display among the city's elite, whose members liked to define themselves by identification with the sophistication of European culture. When New York's plutocrats traveled to Paris in the late nineteenth century, their womenfolk distinguished themselves from their more lowly female counterparts by purchasing beautifully made clothes in luxurious fabrics from French couturiers, or having them copied by skilled dressmakers back home. In the early twentieth century, department stores on Broadway and Fifth Avenue opened up to cater to the aspirations of many more middle-class women by importing and copying Paris clothes and by making garments to order, often finishing garments with a false French label. It was no coincidence that Diana's dress for her debutante party was a copy of a design by Poiret. She may well have seen the original in
Vogue
, which occupied a pivotal place in this fashion system, reporting on Paris couture for the benefit of privileged American women.

It looked, therefore, as if Snow had decided to keep the glamorous world of Paris couture to herself while delegating the second-rate to Diana, but it was more complicated than that. By the early 1930s the market for French fashion in America had grown to such an extent that a number of dressmakers, store buyers, and manufacturers from New York had begun to travel regularly to Paris to catch new trends. However, Snow grasped that simply reporting on French fashion trends would no longer be enough. To stay ahead
Bazaar
had to be proactive. It had to work with the New York fashion industry, and encourage the manufacturers whose advertisements were the lifeblood of the magazine to raise their own standards so that their clothes were sufficiently attractive to be photographed for
Bazaar
. This needed someone to whom American manufacturers would listen. It needed someone steeped in Paris style; someone with daring and creativity prepared to charm, poke, and prod; and someone—like Daisy Fellowes—whose fashionable persona the fashion industry would respect. The success of “Why Don't You?” had the effect of positioning Diana as a worthy successor to Daisy Fellowes. Her task now as fashion editor, as directed by Carmel Snow, was not only to report on new trends but to catalyze change in the American fashion industry and give it some pizzazz. Snow's conception of the role of the American fashion editor as a creative force—and a stylish international thorn in the flesh of Seventh Avenue—set the tone for the rest of Diana's career.

By the time Diana entered the fray in the late 1930s, New York's garment industry had moved uptown and to the west from the Lower East Side, into specially designed fireproof buildings with large lofts around Seventh Avenue, with much of the activity concentrated in the eight blocks between Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Second Streets, spilling over onto Broadway. These new buildings combined factories with showrooms and concentrated on the manufacture of particular types of clothes, at particular price points. They were only a stone's throw from the influential buyers in the great department stores of Fifth Avenue that sold their own made-to-order models and copies of Paris designs. It all led to a convergence of frenzied fashion activity in one tiny area of midtown New York that became known as “Seventh Avenue.” “Could we take you on a tour of the district. . . . You'd see small workrooms where fashion is turned out as if custom-made, and huge factories where a dress must sell at least two thousand copies to be considered successful and power-driven machines cut thirty coats at a slash,” reported an article in
Bazaar
that had Diana's fingerprints all over it. The great characters of the garment district were “merchants with knowledge in their fingers.” Often Jewish or Italian, they had a language of their own: “A good model is known as a runner, a bad model a dog, and the dress that you are going to get engaged in, and lay away in lavender, is simply called a piece.” Diana soon discovered that Seventh Avenue was an acquired taste. Though it was a world away from the couture salons of Paris, she loved it. “I was always going up rusty staircases with old newspapers lying all over the place and the most ghastly-looking characters hanging around . . . but
nothing
was frightening to me. It was
all
part of the great adventure, my métier, the scene. . . . It wasn't a letdown, even after Chanel. After all, it was my world.”

Diana's chic helped her to win acceptance. “I never wore clothes from Seventh Avenue, myself, you understand. I always kept a totally European view of things. Maybe that's why I was so appreciated there. I was independent.” The more inspired manufacturers learned to listen even if it did mean agreeing to tiresome alterations in order to get a piece photographed in the magazine. “She began suggesting daring and successful ideas to manufacturers,” wrote Snow. “When she talked to Seventh Avenue about ‘corduroi' they didn't understand at first that she meant
corduroy
(later, she always pronounced a popular synthetic Chelanazee ‘because it makes me feel better about it'), but they latched onto her brilliant ideas for its use.” Diana had another success when she persuaded the milliners John-Fredericks to adapt the South American
chola
, a big felt hat with a cloth attached that tied around the head. “It was found that the effect was best produced by knitwear, which had been completely out of fashion,” wrote Snow. “That hat may have started the ‘snood' effect that was so popular then, too.” Snow and Diana were women on a mission. As well as American manufacturers, they also had the American woman in their sights. Diana was deeply shocked when she returned from Europe. “I couldn't believe what I saw,” she told Christopher Hemphill. “Every woman wore diamond clips on crepe de chine dresses. And they all wore silk stockings—this was before nylons—under these hideous strappy high heels. This is in the summer—you understand—in the
country
. It was
unbelievable
.” To make matters worse it was combined with an intolerable sloppiness. “There was one other thing I noticed right away about American women. Everyone—but
everyone
—had chipped finger nails.”

At
Bazaar
, Diana revealed a capacity for hard work unsuspected by those who did not know her. “You never do anything unless you're asked, and I was asked. And I couldn't get over it. I'm so basically simple, you know. I had a job and I thought it was the best thing that could ever happen to me. I had a job and I wanted to make the most of it because every job is
made.
” She fitted with ease into the
Bazaar
team and loved the camaraderie. She was once again avid to learn. The harshness of her upbringing meant that Diana was far more resilient than many women of her background, and unusually well placed to withstand what Beaton called the “tough elegance” of the fashion world. Some criticism from her boss was inevitable as Snow set about training Diana in the craft and practice of producing a groundbreaking magazine. There was certainly a good deal to digest about the business side. It was not long before Diana's dedication to ideals of silhouette and line clashed with immutable commercial reality. “I knew so little when I started,” she said. “I must have terrified them.” One of her earliest brain waves was inspired by a Chanel shirt with pockets inside. If Diana could carry around her lipstick, her rouge, and her cigarettes and money in an inside pocket, so, in her view, could everyone else. American women would look much more elegant without handbags. “What do I want with a bloody old handbag that one leaves in taxis and so on? It should all go into pockets. Real pockets, like a man has, for goodness sake.” On top of that—and this was a very serious matter to Diana—a heavy handbag affected the way a woman walked. She once put this to an editor who happened to be ambling about outside her office. “Well, the man ran from my office the way you run for the police! He rushed into Carmel's office and said, ‘Diana's going crazy! Get hold of her.' So Carmel came down and said, ‘Listen, Diana, I think you've lost your mind. Do you realize that our income from handbag advertising is God knows how many millions a year?' ”

A
fter they moved back to New York in 1935, Reed and Diana still returned to Europe frequently. Diana, of course, continued to buy her clothes in Paris: at least two Chanel suits that she later gave to the Metropolitan Museum date from this period. And they saw their friends. The “Why Don't You?” column had the effect of reinforcing Diana's position in the pantheon of 1930s women of style in international circles too. Lighthearted fashion journalism was perfectly acceptable in high society, though Diana kept quiet about the extent of her professional relationship with Seventh Avenue, which many of her acquaintance regarded as distinctly infra dig. Far from being damaged in any way by Diana's work or by their departure from Europe, the Vreelands' social life flourished. The
Tatler
described them as “one of the most popular American couples in Europe” in 1937, when they were photographed with Gilbert and Kitty Miller at Le Touquet. They were guests, with Mona Harrison Williams and many others, at a magnificent
fête champêtre
given by Cecil Beaton at Ashcombe that summer. But amid the parties and the fun, café society sensed the tension in the air, even if some of its members denied that anything was going to happen until the last possible moment.

W
hen war was declared in September 1939, Diana was in Paris with Reed. They were on their way back from a holiday with Mona Williams on Capri. Reed promptly boarded a ship back to America with friends, leaving Diana behind to get on with fittings at the couture houses. This caused a certain amount of adverse comment from their friends. “ ‘You mean you'd leave your
wife
,' they said—you know, that bourgeois spirit—‘in a country that's at
war
?' ‘Look,' he said, ‘there's no point in taking Diana away from Chanel and her shoes. If she hasn't got her shoes and her clothes, there's no point in bringing her home. That's how it's always been and that's how it has to be.' ” Bettina Ballard remembered Diana beside the pool at the home of the photographer and illustrator André Durst, “packing and unpacking an enormous suitcase in her indecision about leaving.” Eventually Leo d'Erlanger forced her onto one of the last passenger ships to leave France. “I'll never forget that afternoon, coming down the rue Cambon—my last afternoon in Paris for five years. I'd just had my last fitting at Chanel. I don't think I could have made it to the end of the block, I was so depressed—leaving Chanel, leaving Europe, leaving all the world of . . . of my world.” She cheered up on meeting an acquaintance whose aptitude for denial was even greater than her own. In reply to “Isn't it awful about the war?” he said, “What war?” and walked on past her “like a shadow.”

I
n September 1939 Snow's first instinct was to continue to support the Paris couture for as long as possible, but it soon became clear that this would be impossible. Life became extremely difficult for Paris designers. Some were called up for military service or, like Chanel, closed their ateliers. Foreigners such as Mainbocher headed home. After the fall of France in June 1940, trade between the United States and France broke down, and the influence of Paris over New York's fashion industry came to a standstill. To the dismay of many, there was no alternative to clothes designed and manufactured in America. But there were others who immediately saw war in Europe as a huge opportunity for American fashion. The charge was led by Dorothy Shaver, the influential vice president of Lord & Taylor since 1931. She had long argued that American design talent was underestimated and that proper attention to a handful of key American designers was overdue. Shaver felt strongly that Paris couture was not necessarily suited to the rapidly changing lives of many of her female customers, particularly after the Wall Street Crash. In a bold move she had started promoting American designers as early as 1932, putting their work—and their names—in the windows of Lord & Taylor. Under her aegis the work of Clare Potter, Vera Maxwell, and Lilly Daché came out of the wholesale back rooms of Seventh Avenue and into shop windows on Fifth Avenue where it could be seen by the paying customer. With the outbreak of war these designers and others found themselves swept to the forefront of American fashion—partly of necessity, and partly on a wave of patriotic enthusiasm. The outbreak of war gave them a chance to shine; but it also marked a turning point for Diana, the editor at
Bazaar
who was in charge of American fashion.