Empress of Fashion (31 page)

Shortly after he went in, a doctor called her at work to say that the results of tests were back. He was about to tell Reed he had terminal cancer.

I said, “What do you take my husband for—an idiot? Don't you think he knows?”

“Have you discussed it with him?”

I said, “Of course not! Why would he and I discuss cancer?”

The doctor said, “Mrs. Vreeland, you're not at all modern. We always tell our patients.”

I went to the hospital that evening. Always, Reed had been in the hall to meet me: marvelous foulard, and wonderful this and that. Not this time. He was in bed with his face to the wall. So I said hello.

He didn't answer. So I sat down.

Twenty minutes later he turned, “Well, they've told you and they've told me, so now it's on the table. Nothing to be done about it.” I didn't even answer him.

Reed was in the hospital for about six weeks. One person who helped Diana through it was Yvonne Brown, because she understood the Vreelands so well. “Reed died loving Yvonne more than anything in the world,” said Diana.

Because she had the tact, the intelligence—the grace—to bring him one flower, never flowers, three times a week when she brought him clean linen. The apartment, you see, was filled with flowers, cards . . . we had to keep them away from him. They meant that he was dying. But Yvonne would bring him one rose. She'd put the rose in a little cream pitcher by his bed . . . and he'd be perfectly happy.

Diana confessed to Christopher Hemphill that Reed's final illness was worse than it should have been because his business affairs were in a muddle. “The terrible thing was that he became ill at a time when he couldn't quite . . . get on top of things. I can remember his looks in his hospital bed. He'd look at me and in his looks I'd read, ‘My
God
, I'm going to leave her with nothing.' ”

Later Diana said that she refused to think of anything except how wonderful their life together had been. At the time, however, the strain showed. She was rumored to have chased Cordelia Biddle Robertson out of the hospital; and most uncharacteristically, she sent for Emi-Lu, who came dashing across the Atlantic from England to be on hand. Tim Vreeland came to see his father and went back to New Mexico, where he was living. Although Reed's black hair had turned steel gray, it was not apparent that the end was near, and no one mentioned that it might be. Reed died soon after Tim's visit. He discovered later that Diana's first reaction had been not to tell him, and that Emi-Lu had had to insist. Diana was shattered. On the day Reed died, August 3, 1966, she drew a little heart with an arrow straight through it in her engagement diary. But she wore white to his funeral and insisted it should take place privately, and quickly. She was almost sixty-three, and her sons expected that she would now wind down and think about retirement. As they later acknowledged, they could not have been more wrong.

Veruschka, mink by Emeric Partos, Japan, February 1966. Photographer: Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Veruschka as a Tartary princess in “The Great Fur Caravan: A Fashion Adventure Starring the Girl in the Fabulous Furs, Photographed for
Vogue
in The Strange Secret Snow Country of Japan.”
Vogue
, October 15, 1966.

 

Diana in her office at
Vogue
. (Photographer: James Karales)

 

Veruschka in a “magnifcent windup” by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo,
Vogue
, July 1968. (Photographer: Franco Rubartelli)

 

Vogue
shoot in Palmyra, Syria, 1965. (Photographer: Henry Clarke)

 

Veruschka in fur hood by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo,
Vogue
, July 1968.
(Photographer: Franco Rubartelli)

 

Jean Shrimpton photographed by Bert Stern, September 1, 1963. (Stern/
Vogue
/Condé Nast Archive © Condé Nast)

 

Four years later: Vanessa Redgrave, photographed by Bert Stern in a 1960s reworking of one of Diana's lifelong favorites, the leotard, under a rhinestone-studded vinyl coat. Both by Oscar de la Renta.
Vogue
, February 15, 1967.

 

Diana at home at 550 Park Avenue. (Photographer: Cecil Beaton)

 

Installation view, “American Women of Style” (December 13 1975–August 31, 1976), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Costume Institute Galleries, photographed in 1975.

 

Installation view, “Yves Saint Laurent: 25 Years of Design” (December 14, 1983–September 2, 1984), The Metropolitan Musem of Art, The Costume Institute Galleries, photographed in 1983.

 

Diana Vreeland, fashion editor, New York, June 21, 1977. Photographer: Richard Avedon © 2008 The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Diana photographed for “A Question of Style,” by Lally Weymouth,
Rolling Stone
, August 11, 1977 (a variant image was published).