by Cecil Beaton
To the observer Diana Vreeland’s physical appearance is like an authoritative crane; and though, unlike that bird, she always stands upon two feet, she and does give the marvellous illusion of balancing upon one. With her pelvis thrust boldly forward to an astonishing degree, and the torso above it sloping backwards at a forty-five-degree angle, Mrs. Vreeland invites comparison to the medieval slouch, and indeed wants only the hennin and the veil hanging from her head in order to be catapulted backwards in time some six hundred years. Students of posture could no doubt find a certain affinity between the medieval stance and that of the twenties. It may well be, as I suspect, that Mrs. Vreeland matriculated in that Great Gatsby era when ladies willed their bodies to look as much like cooked asparagus as possible, taking the form of whatever sofa or chair they sat in. But whereas the posture of the twenties could be unattractive, it looks good on Diana Vreeland.
Above her small-boned, beautiful body, with its feet like the bound feet of Chinese ladies, Mrs. Vreeland’s head sits independently on top of a narrow neck and smiles at you. Everything about her features is animated by amused interest: her nose, as broad as an Indian’s, is boldly assertive; her eyes twinkle; her mouth emits the most amazingly aggressive and masculine laugh, a red laugh that is taken up by her cheeks, expertly rouged with an art which has gone out of style and of which she is one of the few remaining masters. Surrounding these features like a metallic skullcap is her navy-blue hair, which she wears lacquered back from her face. Diana Vreeland has, in fact, a fetish about hairlines and believes that, together with hands, they are the secret of elegance.
In her dress she is simple to the point of being austere: like the few initiated, she knows that simplicity is the ultimate of fashion, and her appearance betokens it. She never wears a hat, substituting a dark net and a flat bow on the top of the head. Her shoes are always the same—rather low-heeled, closed-toe sandals of black leather, and her handbags, are always identical, of alligator leather with a tortoise-shell clasp. The leather is polished and waxed daily, like an expensive table or automobile, and gives the impression of being utterly new. Her gloves are regularly dyed to maintain their shade, just as her lingerie is frequently tinted to maintain its fresh, black black.
Her dresses are simple also and show and indirect influence of Chanel. Mrs. Vreeland has an almost Chinese appearance, with her black tunics and plethora of gold jewellery. At home she often wears tight ballet-like trousers with a jersey made of black paillettes or white brocade. Whatever the accoutrements, they are enhanced by her over-all sleek grooming: from the tips of her toes to the unreal, shell-pink and shining ears, Diana Vreeland radiates a cleanliness that goes far beyond where ordinary soap and water leave off.
Combined with this compact, fresh-as-a-bandbox appearance and a walk like ballet dancer, Diana Vreeland’s personality is apt to prove a little startling to those who meet her for the first time. She bounces with a life that is utterly natural to her. Her resonant voice covers the gamut from an emphatic whisper to an equally emphatic and almost Rabelaisian roar. The total effect is almost Falstaffian, more remarkable precisely because it issues from a slim wisp of a body. Yet there is not the slightest trace of vulgarity in her positive, booming vivacity. She is totally free of any affectation and so perfect in her manners and her intense human consideration for others that she could never be found guilty of violating even the most subtle of the rules that govern human intercourse.
The terms of Mrs. Vreeland’s human appeal are liberally peppered with an astonishing slang. One would think that she spent hours in ambiguous Times Square drugstores or Fifty-second Street night clubs, absorbing the highly coloured range of pimentoed expressions that are an integral part of her linguistic repertoire. Nor is her slang ever out of date. She will innovate expressions long before they have become popularly known. This gamey speech, combined with her personality, inevitably sends her friends off into gales of laughter at almost every sentence. “You’ve got to give it a lot of pezazz!” she will roar; and to an assistant who was working on a fashion article Mrs. Vreeland cried, “Tassels! Don’t forget tassels! Lots of tassels from Tasselville!” Anecdotes are underlined with a terminal, “It was but to die, my dear!” Once, when the word “amortization” appeared in a fashion article Mrs. Vreeland was supplied with a lengthy definition by the writer and finally commented, “Listen! Any word that’s got amor in it is okay with me; let’s use it!” On another occasion, when Mrs. Snow came back from Paris wearing a Dior suit with very sloping shoulders, Diana Vreeland observed, “Carmel, it’s divine. It makes you look drowned.”
Though she never appears at her office before eleven, Mrs. Vreeland is available from eight o’clock in the morning. Indeed, she is usually telephoning other members of the Harper’s Bazaar staff with ideas that have popped into her head, and they are well accustomed to being wakened out of a sound sleep by her hoarse morning voice. Her later arrival at the office is heralded with hallways full of scent, for she takes her bath in water liberally coated with a bath oil that trails a distinctive atmosphere.
At lunch, which she generally eats out, Mrs. Vreeland eschews dainty dishes in favour of a truck driver’s menu: a good steak or some chops and a salad form her staple diet.
In her working day, when photographic sittings take place, she is like a Toscanini, directing things with a master hand, creating new appearances for models, experimenting with their hair and their mouths as though they were marionettes being prepared for a special gala performance. Everything is extra-polished that day, and photographers take their best pictures. The ideas that she brings to her work are often influenced by theories in science, literary sources, the great masters of painting, or a postscript to some letter from a friend in Europe. But the constant search for a strong, fresh expression in her work is merely a manifestation of her personality.
During the thirties this incentive expressed itself in Mrs. Vreeland’s audacious and quixotic column entitled “Why Don’t You?” This column was subsequently made the subject of many parodies. Some of Mrs. Vreeland’s why-don’t-you’s queried why you didn’t wash your child’s hair in champagne, or bring back from Central Europe a huge white baroque porcelain stove to stand in your front hall, reflected in the parquet. Or, she would suggest, why not practically empty your bedroom? Or why not just have your bed made in China?
It can be seen that Mrs. Vreeland’s column was directed towards an imaginary upper-income bracket in a magazine whose circulation was largely due to the average American woman. The psychology of this, however, was shrewd and appropriate. At the height of a depression, to list such things as fanciful as porcelain stoves brought back from Europe or beds from China gave the reader a feeling that a sentiment de luxe (and hence, the perverse, the capricious) was still operating. Some people may have thought of Diana Vreeland’s column as absurd or laughable, but its very ability to lend itself to parody shows how much brilliance was behind the basic notion.
Mrs. Vreeland’s hours between the office and dinner are often given to messages, facial treatment, and dress fittings, as well as to doctors, osteopaths, and chiropractors, for she is a complete believer in modern medical science. At the cocktail hour in her apartment she will probably serve tea and genuine madeleines which are made by her cook, while dinner visitors may always expect the unexpected almond in the cake, or bits of orange rind in the orange compote.
The visitor is ushered into her apartment from the hallway of a rather anonymous building, but her quarters are far from anonymous. The living room is completely personal. Over her desk is a bulletin board on which she pins newspaper clippings, postcards, and pictures; very much in the Cocteau tradition, though the effect is as clean and immaculate as Diana Vreeland herself. The room is lined with long, low banquettes covered with blue-and-white cotton fabric and loaded with cushions of scarlet cloth. Large bowls of pearl chips contain paperwhite narcissi in bloom, though their scent can scarcely account for the fragrance that fills the room and comes fro
m the Guerlain atomizer burning in discreet, unseen depths of the apartment. Her taste, as exemplified by the objects in the room and the paintings and drawings on the walls, is all-embracing. Piero della Francesca rubs shoulders with drawings by Christian Bérard, while gold-mesh fish paperweights curve their tails on her desk. Among her drawings is a wonderful early sketch of her by Augustus John, showing the Modigliani eyelids and the generously large nose that almost quivers with the sensitive vibrations of her personality. Bookshelves are filled not only with art books but with assortments of shells or curious pieces of glass or china which have caught her fancy. It is a full room, almost a Victorianly stuffed room, but it does not seem so, for every last shell is polished, and there is not a speck of dust to cry accusation.
These surroundings reflect Diana Vreeland’s haphazard genius. She has educated herself to be a very remarkable piece of civilization and embodies knowledge of European tastes, together with a great appreciation for literature and architecture. She is an æsthete without being either a snob or an intellectual. It is completely refreshing.
But Diana Vreeland has always had an original character and natural flair. If she is not a beautiful woman, she has certainly made herself an arresting one. So arresting is she that, indeed, it is not uncommon for her to leave the room for a moment to have a Vitamin B1 injection and then return nonchalantly a moment later, taking up the conversation where she left off. This is all part of her scientific way of preserving inspiration, so that when you do see her she is always, like an athlete, at her best, talking as one would write a poem, allying her verbal brilliance with the novelist’s true gift of description and a tremendous sledge-hammer emphasis that takes the form of repeating phrases with a Claudel-like incantation. But she knows that all great personalities are excessive, and her own excess is as completely natural as that of a great actress. Everything that has cropped up along the line has been absorbed by her, until she is like a fine tea mixture of orange pekoe and pekoe. There is nothing artificial about her; she will never lead you off the scent and has no desire for pretence. She has wisdom and a hard philosophical core, has become cultivated through her enthusiasms, acquiring the exact poetic approach. But for all her remarkable human talent, Diana Vreeland is no egoist. She has an enormous respect for other people’s work, for their personalities and needs. In this she manifests a genuine human warmth which is neither prying nor curious, but desirous of being helpful. If she senses that a friend is in inner or outer trouble, she will telephone on an instinct, just to announce that she is there.
Altogether she is one of the most remarkable creatures who has lived and worked in the zany confines of the fashion world. A combination of Madame de Séveigné and Falstaff, Mrs. Vreeland graces that world with her presence, as unique a presence as it has ever boasted.
In a book that pretends to give any indication of the people who have influenced the taste of their time it would be an omission if no mention was made of Lady Cunard. Not that she has had many disciples or successful imitators, for Lady Cunard was unique. But in her own individual way she did more to generate an interest in the major and minor arts than perhaps any governmental body. The newspapers wrote of her as “society hostess, friend of royalty, statesmen, and men of letters, enthusiast for music, great spendthrift.” These phrases seem so remote in connection with the real Lady Cunard. She was a hostess, yes; leader of fashion, yes; a music lover and devotee of the fine arts. But other people have filled these roles with a greater weight and power. Her distinction is that she possessed so deft a lightness of touch and such remarkable originality.
Lady Cunard appears in many contemporary memoirs, and when she died in 1948 some of her literary friends tried their best to evoke her special flavour in their obituaries. Although her personality was so vivid that no one who had met her for more than a few moments could ever forget her, and all who came within the orbit of her charm were fascinated, she somehow defied definition. As a brilliantly witty conversationalist, she knew the value of surprise, and it is perhaps due to her frankness and unconventionality that one can now say almost anything to anybody. That she moved in the conventional world of society and made that world bow to her idiom was her triumph, for she was essentially a fantaisiste. Although she respected their strict attention to rules, she herself paid little attention to them. When she played the game of society, she was like a great comedienne; yet Lady Cunard was too sincere and genuine a person to be an actress for long.
Born Maud Burke, she came to Europe from San Francisco via New York, where she lived with a French grandmother. Her first ten years in England were spent as the wife of the middle-aged and fox-hunting Sir Bache Cunard, who maintained an enormous house, Neville Holt, in Leicestershire. The hardest-bitten members of the hunt asked in voices of horror, “Who is that extraordinary young woman that comes to the meet covered in turquoises?” But Lady Cunard showed little reciprocal interest in the horsey set and spent her time reading Shakespeare and Balzac. From earliest childhood she had been a consummate bookworm and was thoroughly grounded in the Greek and Latin classics. Indeed, for most of her life she read until four or five in the morning, and her literary memory was such that she never forgot a book once she finished it. Her literary acquaintances were as real to her, if not more so, than those she met in life.
By degrees she came to know artists, musicians, and intellectuals, by inviting them to Neville Holt. But Lady Cunard was not really happy until she had left the country and settled in a house in London, where she soon created a stronghold for the social world that impinged upon the intelligentsia. She became a sprightly critic, speaking with a delicate touch but with much authority upon a diversity of subjects. George Moore was her inseparable friend. Together with literature, music became her passion. The best artists of the day were bidden to perform for her, and her friend, Sir Thomas Beecham, relied upon her encouragement for the survival of opera in England. Enormous sums of her own fortune were spent to launch a further season, while she tirelessly bludgeoned her rich but vandalistic friends into subscribing for boxes at Covent Garden, and in a subtle way she influenced and educated those in high positions who where flattered into feeling they were the means whereby the arts could be more widely appreciated.
Lady Dunard’s appearance was a tour de force. Her nose was beaked and her chin recessed; none of her features was regular. Yet by the way she presented herself she overcame all physical obstacles and succeeded in looking the embodiment of her own charming wit and gaiety. Her skin was incandescently white. Her cheeks, unlike those of other fashionable ladies of the last thirty years, were always rouged bright carnation pink. Added to these were cerise lips and hair as pale yellow and fluffy as the feathers of a day-old chick. Lady Cunard’s legs had the fragility of a sparrow’s, and for shoes she must have taken a smaller size than Cinderrella. Her gesticulations were bold yet gracious. Though in later years she was twisted with rheumatism, the hands remained always so expressive.
Lady Cunard dressed in the height of the latest fashion, choosing the most exaggerated garments. But she wore them with a certain amusement and was aware that they had little affinity with her. She once described to me, in uproarious detail, a Poiret dress she had once worn. “Would you believe it,” she said, almost overcome by her own warm chortles that sounded like mice in the wainscoting, “it had two trains edged with sable. And, if you please, it was called Tramcar.” Somehow she gave to her clothes a “brio” that took one back to the delights of the most impressionable moments of childhood.
I feel very privileged that for nearly twenty years I was a friend of hers. I never ceased to admire her originality and fantasy, her courage and lack of self-consciousness and wit. In France, Italy, Germany, America, I was to see Lady Cunard in many varied and sometimes tragic circumstances. At other times they have been curiously comic. On one occasion I rescued her from a circus roundabout that revolved too fast for her fancy, and in another setting picked her up covered with the contents of a pail of mi
lk after she had been bunted by a cow. I have known as much enjoyment in her company as with any single person and would often say to myself while in her presence, “At this moment I am happy.” Like others, I felt she had a unique sympathy for me and my problems, and she understood all that was passing through my mind sometimes even better than I knew myself. Her real warmth and sympathy endeared her to her friends and made her a touching and vulnerable person. For artists and younger people she radiated a glow of appreciation.
When I first knew Lady Cunard she was living in a large house in Grosvenor Square, decorated in the French eighteenth-century taste with a drawing room rather unsuitably hung with Marie Laurencins in looking-glass frames. Her luncheon or dinner guests would be assembled in a small downstairs boudoir, eyeing one another somewhat coldly as they waited for their hostess to appear. Emerald, as she had become, considering the name more euphonious than Maud—Emerald Cunard was invariably late. She would sometimes come downstairs in an extremely peppery temper. “Oh, everything’s gone wrong. Why doesn’t the footman open the windows and attend to the fire?” She would struggle with the cords of the window and manipulate the poker in a most ineffectual way. Then suddenly she would right herself. A smile would creep over her face and she would chuckle at her own absurdity. Or she would come into the room with, “My maid’s furious at me for coming down. She says I’m not properly dressed and she hasn’t had time to straighten my eyelashes.”
Then she would introduce her guests to each other. “Do you mean to say you don’t know the Ambassador? Why, Mr. Ambassador, this is little Sheila: we all know little Sheila.” (Lady Milbanke would smile like a Lely court beauty.) “And here’s little Poppy. Everyone loves little Poppy, everyone’s crazy about little Poppy.” With her upturned palm pointing towards an elderly gentleman of somewhat formidable appearance she would say, “This is Lord Berners, a saucy fellow.” As soon as the introductions were over she would forthwith commit herself to create an entertainment at which the most widely opposed people, linked together in a bond of admiration for their most surprising hostess, would talk sympathetically to one another.
