The chic of it

A new book celebrates the wit and wisdom of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue doyenne Diana Vreeland, accompanied by illustrations by artist and designer Luke Edward Hall

Words byJames Collard

“The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that everything follows quite naturally.” That’s just one of many arresting lines in Diana Vreeland:Bon Mots: Words of Wisdom from the Empress of Fashion (Rizzoli), which teams her words, and commentary from her grandson, Alexander Vreeland, with illustrations by the artist and designer Luke Edward Hall (who has also been known to pronounce on matters of taste in his column in the Financial Times). The comment is classic Vreeland – unreasonable, camp even, but with a kernel of truth. For things did follow quite naturally for Vreeland. Born in Paris to Anglo-American socialite parents, she spent the 1920s and ’30s between London – living the fashionable life and selling expensive lingerie out of a chic little shop near Berkeley Square – and New York, over which she would

Below: highlights from Bon Mots, which features a selection of Diana Vreeland aphorisms illustrated by Luke Edward Hall

ultimately preside for several decades as a compelling (if often arbitrary-sounding) arbiter of style, first as a columnist on Harper’s Bazaar, then as editor-in-chief of Vogue. Vreeland’s Why Don’t You suggestions for Harper’s readers combined grandness with a joyous sense of the infinite possibilities of life – and of luxe. “Why Don’t You… Tie black tulle bows on your wrists? Have a yellow satin bed entirely quilted in butterflies?” Or rinse your blond children’s hair in champagne, “to keep it gold, as they do in France?” And readers did – in this, the midcentury heyday of glossy magazines – although, as with all prophets, Vreeland’s exhortations must sometimes have wrongfooted the more plodding of her disciples. “A little bad taste is like a splash of paprika,” she declared. “And we all need a splash of bad taste. No taste is what I am against.”

For all her playfulness, Vreeland’s influence on the fashion world was huge, while her fame stretched well beyond it into popular culture, inspiring characters like the force-of-nature editor in Funny Face who exhorts her readers to “Think Pink”. Vreeland adored pink – “the navy blue of India… Schiaparelli’s pink, the pink of the Incas”. Just not pale salmon: “The only colour I cannot abide.” Half a century after she left Vogue, the woman continues to fascinate – from the 2012 documentary The Eye Has to Travel to Bon Mots, in which Luke Edward Hall deftly captures her strange, bird-like beauty, while her quotes, he argues, “still read as little electric shots of brilliance”. For someone who once said, “I think it’s a great mistake to cater to popularity – where’s the style in it?” Vreeland’s popularity endures remarkably.