Empress of Fashion (48 page)

  24 “He never had any money”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 22.

  24 “Whispers would go around”: ibid., p. 29.

  24 “I remember this”: ibid., p. 30.

  25 “I think she was someone who was possessed by a great fear”: ibid
.

  25 “My father was rather amused”: ibid., p. 30.

  25 “She had a great many men”: private interview, 1991.

  26 “So many of the things”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 140.

  26 “She was all in black”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 17.

  27 “red red,
violent
violet”: ibid., p. 14.

  27 “That's where everything happened”: ibid., p. 17.

  28 “Sister” was a sensation even when taken out in her pram: Diana said that this happened in 1914, the year she claims the family moved back to New York. But Alexandra would have been seven, rather too old for a pram.

  28 “
I can remember she was The Most Beautiful Child in Central Park”
: Vreeland,
D.V.,
pp. 10–11.

  28 “wretched health . . . nothing definite”:
New York Telegram and Evening Mail
, Tuesday, February 10, 1925.

  29 “You ask ‘do I love you' ”: n.d. but probably written between 1925–27 when Alexandra Dalziel was at Bryn Mawr, HDFA.

  29 “All I knew then was that my mother wasn't proud of me”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 30.

  29 Though there was a nurse of that name: Diana appears to have plucked this name for her hated nanny from her childhood album.

  30 “She didn't like Diana”: private interview, 1991. Years later Alexandra's daughter still felt the full force of Kay Carroll's antipathy toward Diana and found herself affected by it; see chapter 4.

  30 “My nurse was appalling”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 2.

  30 “It was a wall of water”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 178. Diana told Christopher Hemphill that the nightmare only disappeared in her seventies, when she found herself looking at a wave on a lacquered Japanese screen at the Metropolitan Museum and suddenly remembered a wave on a similar Japanese screen at her grandmother's house in Southampton. “I turned to the person I was with and said, ‘My God, this is the
beginning
and the
end
of my nightmare.' ” (DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 178).

  31 “Actually, when I was brought to America”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 20.

  31 “It's one time in my life”: ibid., p. 21.

  31 “I lasted three weeks at the Brearley School”: “The Empress and the Commissioner,” a 1980 documentary for the Manhattan Cable series
Andy Warhol's Fashion
, directed by Don Monroe, featuring Henry Geldzahler in conversation with Diana.

  32 a level of expertise and degree of focus that was uniquely exhilarating: The writer Isak Dinesen described the chase as if it were a euphoria-inducing drug. “There is nothing in the world to equal it,” she wrote. Quoted in Fiona Claire Capstick,
The Diana Files: The Huntress-Traveller Through History
(Johannesburg: Rowland Ward Publications, 2004), p. 203.

  32 the hunt “took possession of her”:
New York Telegram and Evening Mail
, February 10, 1925.

  33 An epidemic of infantile paralysis swept through New York: On Saturday, June 17, 1916, the existence of a polio epidemic was officially announced in Brooklyn, New York. The names and addresses of confirmed cases were published daily in the press, and the affected families were quarantined. The epidemic caused widespread panic, and thousands fled the city.

  33 “The last time I saw him”: Vreeland,
D.V
., p. 24.

  33 “We were there in the wilds with the moose and the bears”: Diana Vreeland Tapes, Tape 1A.

  34 “If I thought of myself, I wanted to kill myself”: Weymouth, “A Question of Style,” p. 42.

  34 “But I think when you're young”: Vreeland,
D.V
., p. 25.

CHAPTER TWO: THE GIRL

  35 Fokine did not open his New York studio until 1921: at 4 Riverside Drive. Diana often muddled or forgot names when she was older and frequently confused Fokine with Chalif.

  35 “I am simply crazy over dancing”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 22, 1918.

  35 “Music can do something to me”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 14, 1918.

  36 “I still don't think mother thinks I dance well”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 14, 1918.

  36 “Ama and Daddy Weir went to saw me [
sic
]”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 22, 1918.

  36 “I suffered, as only the very young can suffer”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 23.

  37 “I realize now I saw the whole beginning of our century”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 13.

  37 “I like dancing with lots of noise”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 5, 1918.

  38 the invigorated, well-stretched body and long, long limbs: See, as just two examples, photographs by Richard Avedon and Edward Steichen in Diana Vreeland,
Allure
, pp. 125 and 179.

  38 “When I discovered dancing, . . . I learned to dream”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 25.

  38 “Mother and I agree on practically nothing”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 19, 1918.

  39 “Freud thought that a happy man”: Boris Cyrulnik,
Resilience: How Your Inner Strength Can Set You Free from the Past
(London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 276 and 277. I am most grateful to Frances Campbell for introducing me to the work of Boris Cyrulnik on resilience in childhood.

  39 “I have always had a wonderful imagination”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 14, 1918.

  39 “I keep constructing tableaux in my mind”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 140.

  39 “There is something so wonderfull [
sic
] about a girl”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 23, 1918.

  40 “I was much stronger”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 30.

  40 “Some children have people they want to be”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 2.

  40 “I want sometimes an artist”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 23, 1918.

  41 “I am making a divine collection of pictures”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 23, 1918.

  41 “Mrs. McKeever has lots of taste”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 15, 1918.

  41 “The house is terrible”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 3, 1918.

  41 “I would love a bedroom in French gray”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 20, 1918.

  41 “She was perpetually scanning”: Lieberson, “Empress of Fashion,” p. 25.

  42 “Some times I feel as if I did not want anything”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 14, 1918.

  42 “
I shall be that girl
”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 12, 1918.

  42 “Never to be rude to mother sister or anybody”: ibid.

  42 “I have descoved [
sic
] I don't look pleasant”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, January 23, 1918.

  42 “I have decided that my vocabulary is very small”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, January 11, 1918.

  42 “I shall please everyone in my appearance”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 5, 1918.

  43 “Have smoked a cigarette & adored them”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 23, 1918.

  43 “I am going to be able to sing at liberty”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 14, 1918.

  43 “I dreamt of many men coming to me”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 14, 1918.

  43 Triumph over youthful adversity: See Cyrulnik,
Resilience
, pp. 19–20.

  44 “Sister's music teacher told me”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 8, 1918.

  44 “Emily said I talked very well”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 6, 1918.

  44 “You know I'm vastly popular”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 21, 1918.

  44 “Lots of things have happened”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 5, 1918.

  44 “E Billings and I are going to get up a ballet”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 7, 1918.

  44 “he lost them all & we had a wonderful time using slang”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 2, 1918.

  45 “I fought for a long time”: Lieberson, “Empress of Fashion,” p. 22.

  45 “I want art, pure art”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 14, 1918.

  45 “Diana was a goddess”: ibid.

  46 “It was the most tragic & harrowing thing”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 7, 1918.

  46 The cultural historian Ann Douglas suggests: see Ann Douglas,
Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (
London: Picador, 1996), pp. 32–33. I am indebted to Ann Douglas for her analysis of New York at this period, and to Judith Mackrell for introducing me to this remarkable book.

  47 “It's not just nightmares I can't stand”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 179.

  47 “Changing herself covered up a deep wound”: Dwight,
Diana Vreeland
, p. 15.

  47 “In later life . . . Diana's models”: ibid.

  48 “If I can change the way you see me”: Cyrulnik,
Resilience
, p. 11.

  48 “I simply must be more perfect”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, June 23, 1918.

  49 “It's very touching”: Allure Manuscript, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 165.

  49 “Yesterday I painted my brackets”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 10, 1918.

  49 “He had that
thing
about him”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 22.

  49 “My father was so much easier”: ibid., p. 21.

  49 “a tidy little group”: ibid
.
, p. 29.

  49 “My grandmother could be appalling”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 2, p. 177.

  50 “He thought it was a riot”: ibid
.

  50 “My grandmother had a huge farm horse”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 20.

  51 when the Villa Diana was sold two years later: on October 22, 1922, the
New York Times
reported that it had been sold for $125,000, approximately $1.6 million in today's money.

  51 He was known as a “stinker”: see Fritz von der Schutenberg,
Balnagown, Ancestral Home of the Clan Ross: A Castle Through Five Centuries
(London, Brompton Press, 1997), pp. 83–89.

  53 “a natural preliminary to the guilty use of opportunities”:
The Scotsman
, December 10, 1928.

  53 Emily talked of watching, entranced:
New York Times
, July 27, 1921.

  54 a handful of compositions: Diana's compositions, which appear to have been written mainly in the fall of 1920, are in DVP, Box 60, Folder 1.

  54 spawned a host of imitators: “Unabashedly flamboyant in sequins, lamé, feathers and transparent veils, the sultry charmers writhed and clawed and enraptured their victims, only to lose them, inevitably, to the ingénues with fluttering eyelashes and sugar-water curls.” Jane Trahey,
Harper's Bazaar: 100 Years of the American Female
(New York: Random House, 1967), p. 34.

  55 Diana's Type still bore traces of Theda Bara: Bara's real name was Theodosia Burr Goodman, and she came from Cincinnati, Ohio.

  56 “debutantes' first bow in town”:
New York Times
, October 15, 1921.

  56 “You might do the work of ‘making' outside the city”: Douglas,
Terrible Honesty
, p. 15.

  57 cigarettes began to be promoted as a slimming aid: see Lucy Moore,
Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties
(London: Atlantic Books, 2009), p. 66.

  58 “I adore artifice. I always have”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 27.

  58 “When cosmetics began to be seen as an ‘affordable indulgence' ”: Moore,
Anything Goes
, pp. 69–70.

  58 New York's newspapers: clippings in private collection, n.d.

  59 Her dress for her coming-out: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 28.

  59 “I was always a little extreme”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 27. This coincides with
Vogue
's report at the time: “Miss Diana Dalziel, at her coming-out ball, wore an all-white dress with a skirt of fringe, made of tiny ribbons. But she added a modern accent by wearing brilliant red slippers.” Her friends Ellin Mackay and Jeanne Reynal were even more extreme. Ellin Mackay's dress was blue and silver, while Jeanne Reynal wore rose taffeta (
Vogue
, February 15, 1922, pp. 34–35).

  59 “ ‘
Circus people
—where did you ever meet them?' ”: Vreeland,
D.V
., p. 28.

  60 “Since I was not interested in getting married”: Maud Morgan,
Maud's Journey: A Life from Art
(Berkeley, CA: New Earth Publications, 1995), p. 45.

  60 Her debutante year was a triumph: clippings in private collection, 1921, n.d.

  60 She adored the newly fashionable lowlife: “picturesquely depraved” was a phrase used by Diana's friend Ellin Mackay in an article she wrote about her generation's preference for nightclubs and cabarets over debutante balls, which appeared in
The New Yorker
in November 1925. The article caused a sensation and made Mackay's father furious, though he was even more furious when she married the songwriter Irving Berlin, an Orthodox Jew, a few months later.