Empress of Fashion (49 page)

  60 “to avoid running into my mother and father”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 29.

   61 “By the time I was seventeen, I knew what a snob was”: ibid., p. 28.

   61 “one of the most attractive of this season's debutantes”:
Town Topics
, clipping from private collection, 1921, n.d.

   61 a “smart figure” and “one of the new notes in millinery”:
Vogue
, June 1, 1922, p. 45, and July 1, 1923, p. 58.

  62 titled “Ten Thousand Miles from Fifth Avenue”: The article appeared in
Harper's Bazar
, February 22, 1922, p. 31.
Bazar
presented it as a lead feature, and later ran a caricature by Ralph Barton of Emily in a sola topee in a montage of its outstanding contributors of the period. This was subsequently reproduced in Trahey,
100 Years
, p. 84.

  62 
Vogue
published a major article about big-game hunting in the Rockies: “When You Hear the Far West Calling: How to Slip the Leash of Civilization and Still Avoid Tenderfoot Troubles,”
Vogue
, June 15, 1923. p. 55.

  63 “I believe in love at first sight”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
pp. 30-31.

  63 Unlike Diana's British father: by the time Diana met her future father-in-law, he was managing the tobacco, insurance, and diamond mining business interests of the magnate Thomas Fortune Ryan.

  64 “I am sorry I cannot go on record”:
Town Topics
, January n.d., 1924, private collection.

  64 “Everybody who was invited to a Condé Nast party”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 48.

  65 “He was the most beautiful man I've ever seen”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 31.

  65 an “achievement”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 33.

  65 “I never felt comfortable about my looks”:
D.V
., p. 30.

  65 “Isn't it curious that even after more than forty years of marriage”:
D.V
., p. 33

  66 The news that Lady Ross was suing Sir Charles for divorce: the New York press had been unusually slow off the mark. The divorce papers had in fact been served in early January, an event reported in Britain in
The Scotsman
on January 4, 1924.

  66 “Lady Ross has evolved a very interesting fiction”:
New York Evening Journal
, February 28, 1924, p. 5.

  66 “All these stories about your mother”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
pp. 31–32.

  66 “It wasn't sparse—it was practically empty”: ibid., p. 33.

  67 “Oh, everything I own has my baby bell”: ibid., p. 32.

  67 “a very strict line and a very high neckline”: ibid., pp. 32–33.

  67 “Everything about the wedding”:
Town Topics
, March 6, 1924, p. 4.

  67 “In other words it means that I am popular”: Diary, DVP, Box 60, Folder 2, January 14, 1918.

  68 “We're all exiles from something”: Vreeland,
D.V.
, p. 184.

CHAPTER THREE: BECOMING MRS. VREELAND

  69 At the time of the Vreelands' wedding: see Lester W. Herzog, Jr.,
150 Years of Service and Leadership: The Story of National Commercial Bank and Trust Company
(New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1975).

  69 “this environment of good food, good housekeeping”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 35.

  69 “During this phase when I lived in Albany”: ibid
.

  69 “Reed and I were like the little children”: ibid., p. 34.

  70 Under the heading “Labor Economy”:
Albany Evening News
, April 26, 1926.

  70 “He still wears his little wooly [
sic
] nightgowns”: DVP, Box 67, Folder 1.

  70 “Now that Diana, who married Reed Vreeland last winter”:
Town Topics
, January n.d., 1925, private collection.

  70 Diana completed the migration to American housewife:
Albany Evening News
, April 7, 1925.

  71 Balnagown in Scotland, was part of America: the British government responded vigorously to this assertion, since allowing citizens unilaterally to declare their homes to be part of other countries would—among other things—have had dire consequences for tax collection. The official response to Sir Charles's maneuver was to have him declared a legal “outlaw”(the last in the UK). This had the effect of preventing him from returning to Scotland legally and further delayed divorce proceedings.

  71 In 1925 he even forced apologies: Frederick Dalziel could have responded in this way because he was tired of seeing lies about his wife in the gutter press, but he may also have construed “barefoot” as a subtle slur, linking Emily in the minds of those in the know with the scandalous behaviour of the Happy Valley set in Kenya, where the much-married Idina Sackville went barefoot and appeared naked at parties that turned into orgies at her behest. Clippings from HDFA, April 11–15, 1925.

  71 “guilty passion” in the African jungle: see
The Scotsman
, June 6, 1927.

  71 Alexandra knew very well: private interview, 1991.

  72 “None of her African experiences”: Maury Paul was a syndicated gossip columnist for the
New York American
, who wrote as Cholly Knickerbocker; undated clipping ca. 1930, HDFA.

  72 “the madness was attributable to something more personal”:
The Scotsman
, December 10, 1928.

  72 The case was finally settled only in 1930:
The Scotsman
reported every twist and turn of the case in great detail from 1924 to 1931. Lady Ross eventually obtained her divorce in 1930, though she was still pursuing Sir Charles through the courts for payment of alimony in 1931.

  72 “She lived only for excitement”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 30.

  73 “She was quite young and beautiful”: ibid.

  73 reaction to the death of a damaging parent: see Cyrulnik,
Resilience
, p. 77.

  73 “All the things that happened to me there”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 48. Diana often misremembered or miscounted the number of years the Vreelands spent in Europe. She told Christopher Hemphill they were in England for twelve years, but they spent five and a half years in England, and a further year based in Switzerland.

  73 partly a matter of timing: see Bettina Ballard,
In My Fashion (
London: Secker & Warburg, 1960)
,
p. 78. Bettina Ballard was American
Vogue
's Paris editor before the Second World War. “A woman was not considered important in Paris until she was well in her thirties and had her children behind her so she could concentrate on the fashionable life,” she wrote of this period.

  74 “I lived in that world”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 47.

  74 The scrapbook suggests: Diana's fashion scrapbook is in DVP, Box 62.

  75 “Condé Nast was a very, very extraordinary man”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 60.

  75 They took over the lease of 17 Hanover Terrace: I am grateful to Andrew Thomas of the Crown Estate for providing details of the Vreelands' lease.

  75 “Greenery, you know”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 8.

  75 Diana snipped articles: in the scrapbook, DVP, Box 62.

  76 “Friends who visited”: Phyllis Lee Levin,
The Wheels of Fashion
(New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965), p. 102.

  76 Reed's job at the Guaranty Trust: according to Hugo Vickers, biographer of Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough, it was Reed's job to hand over the check when she called to collect her allowance from the London branch of the Guaranty Trust.

  77 “I first met him there”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 63.

  77 “The family house in Piccadilly”: Cecil Beaton,
The Glass of Fashion
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954), p. 141.

  78 “an absolutely fascinating, marvelous-looking”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 62.

  78 Tyrolean beachwear: the last word in whimsy, since the Austrian Tyrol has no beaches. Carolyn Hall,
The Thirties in Vogue
(London: Octopus Books, 1984), p. 35.

  79 Café society was therefore characterized: see Thierry Coudert,
Café Society: Socialites, Patrons and Artists, 1920 to 1960
(Paris: Flammarion, 2010), pp. 7–71 passim.

  79 Diana's friendship with Cecil Beaton: Diana Vreeland Tapes, Tape 2A.

  80 In her book
Romantic Moderns
: Alexandra Harris,
Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper
(London: Thames & Hudson, 2010), p. 75.

  80 “For all I know the old girl is still a virgin”: Nina Campbell and Caroline Seebohm,
Elsie de Wolfe: A Decorative Life
(London: Aurum, 1993), p. i.

  81 “I adored her because she was so . . . methodical”: Diana Vreeland Tapes, 6A.

  81 “I started to get a little education”: Weymouth, “A Question of Style,” p. 42.

  81 “Diana has made an enviable niche”: Maury Paul (Cholly Knickerbocker
), New York American
, undated clipping, HDFA.

  82 “I'm mad about her stance”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Box 35, Folder 1, p. 19.

  82 “He passed me by like so much white trash”: Vreeland,
D.V.
, p. 64. The tradition of presenting aristocratic women at Court in the early summer went back to the reign of George III (and ended only in 1958). Most of the young ladies presented were marriageable debutantes, but socially distinguished married women were eligible too. “Ladies of foreign nationality . . . and British women married to foreign nationals could be presented only through the diplomatic representative of the country concerned.” Anne de Courcy,
1939: The Last Season
(London: Phoenix, 1989), p. 25.

  83 “The small egocentric group of women”: Ballard,
In My Fashion
, pp. 78–79.

  83 “
Les Dames de
Vogue”: see Bettina Ballard, ibid., p. 83.

  83 “the elegance of the damned”: Vreeland,
Allure
, p. 93.

  83 
“
None of these were stupid women”: Diana Vreeland Tapes, Tape 15.

  84 “I can remember a dress”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 95.

  84 “I had a little string-colored dress”: Weymouth, “A Question of Style,” p. 43.

  84 Backed by Elsie Mendl: an invoice shows that Diana bought a cape, a belt, and a dress of “crepe de main quadrille” in June 1933, three years after Mainbocher opened his Paris atelier; DVP, Box 1, Folder 1.

  85 “It's one thing I do care so passionately about”: Diana Vreeland Tapes, Tape 15.

  85 “She'd come in to see about a skirt”: Weymouth, “A Question of Style,” pp. 42–43.

  85 “Everyone thinks of
suits
when they think of Chanel”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
pp. 95–96.

  85 “the most beautiful dress I ever owned”: ibid., p. 96.

  86 “First, there was the beautiful rolling staircase”: ibid., p. 127.

  86 “
Coco was a nut on armholes
”: ibid.

  86 “Chanel saw the need”: Diana's entry on Chanel,
The 1972 World Book Year Book: the Annual Supplement to the World Book Encylopedia,
p. 350.

  86 “Smart women went to her shop”: ibid.

  87 “The art of living was to Chanel”: ibid
.

  87 “Chanel was the first couturier”: from Diana's draft of her entry on Chanel for
The 1972 World Book Year Book
, DVP, Box 41, Folder 1
.

  87 “I'd always been
slightly
shy of her”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 131.

  87 A Chanel suit that Diana bought in the late 1930s: see Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog for
Chanel
exhibition, May 5–August 7, 2005.

   88 “Today, an old boot of a face”: quoted in Hall,
The Thirties in Vogue,
pp. 15–17.

  88 When a group of Paris dressmakers drew up a best-dressed list: widely reported but see, for instance,
New York Times
, November 26, 1935.

  88 “What a disappointment that woman is”: PCB, Diary, January 15, 1930, Volume 61, p. 146.

  89 “I'd spend days and
days
in bed reading”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 83.

  89 Diana made long lists of writers: see, for example, notebook in DVP, Box 60, Folder 3.

  89 “When I think of Natasha in
War and Peace
”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 82.

  89 “When you've
heard
the word”: ibid., p. 81.

  89 Beaton was the first to capture the manner: Cecil Beaton,
Cecil Beaton's New York
(London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1938), p. 244.

  90 she slipped one of Acton's photographs into her own fashion scrapbook: see DVP, Box 62.

  90 “The vision of Diana Vreeland arriving”: Levin,
The Wheels of Fashion
, p. 102.

  91 the odd one out: Vreeland,
D.V.,
p. 43.

  91 “The top of the palace was flat”: ibid., p. 46.

  91 “you know, the sort of business”: Allure Manuscript, DVP, Folder 1, p. 65.

  91 “ ‘Reed,' I once said, ‘What happens . . .' ”: Vreeland,
D.V.,
pp. 44–45.