D.V.

by Diana Vreeland

  My father, Frederick Y. Dalziel, was a totally continental Englishman; he had no more to do with New York than I would with Persia or Siberia. My mother was very brunette. As brunette as I once was, but of course she was a beauty. I didn’t look like her at all. She was one of the beauties of La Belle Epoque in Paris, no question about it.

  I was terribly fortunate—don’t think I’m not grateful—in that my parents loved us very much. They were racy, pleasure-loving, gala, good-looking Parisians who were part of the whole transition between the Edwardian era and the modern world. Money didn’t seem to be of any importance to them, and they were wonderful in the way they surrounded us—not because of us, but because of the life they led—with fascinating people and events. All kinds of marvelous people came to the house, Irene and Vernon Castle. Nijinsky came with Diaghilev. He wasn’t impressive, exactly, but he was there—you were aware of him. Diaghilev was very impressive. He had a streak of white hair and a streak of black hair, and he put on his hat in the most marvelous way. I remember him very clearly. But little Nijinsky was like a pet griffin. He had nothing to say. Of course, we knew we were seeing the greatest dancer in the world. We just knew it—you can’t fool kids.

  My nurse, though, was appalling. Naturally, nurses are always frustrated. They may love the children, but they’re not theirs, and the time will come when they will have to leave them forever. I couldn’t stand mine. She was the worst.

  But I have to say there was one terribly attractive thing about her which I’ve always remembered. Her name was “Pink.” I’ve always thought that name had great style.

  Every day in Paris, except Wednesday which was her day off, Pink would take us from our house on the avenue du Bois, now avenue Foch, to the Bois de Boulogne to play. On Wednesday, my grandmother would lend us her secretary, Miss Neff, this ghastly, godforsaken, broken-down, American old thing—but old—who always wore the same ancient black lace dress. On Wednesday, Miss Neff would take us to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. Always the black lace dress, the Louvre, the Mona Lisa….

  One day for the hundred-and-tenth time we were shown the Mona Lisa. We had to stand here and then there, here, here, and here, because, as Miss Neff used to explain to us every time, “she is always looking at you….”

  My sister and I always did as we were told, so we did get to know the Mona Lisa rather well. This particular Wednesday afternoon, we saw it from so many angles that the guard had to come and tell us to get out because we were the last people in the Louvre. I can remember our hollow little footsteps as we walked through deserted marble rooms trying to get outside. The next morning it was in all the newspapers that the Mona Lisa had been stolen during the night.

  I think they eventually found the poor old girl in a trash-can in the dank bathroom of a poor artist, cut out of her frame and rolled up. For two years she hadn’t been unrolled. Don’t forget, it was the most famous painting in the world, and don’t forget how small the world was in those days. It was a total tragedy. It was like the kidnaping of a child you love more than anything in the world.

  It was a big story when they got her back, but it was a bigger story when she was stolen. My sister and I were the last people to see her before she disappeared. For one day we were the most famous children playing in the Bois de Boulogne. The next Wednesday, when Miss Neff was supposed to take us to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, of course it wasn’t there. Do you think at that age we cared very much? No, to us it was all a great relief. We were taken instead back to the Bois, which I much preferred.

  Actually, my dreams are in the Bois. I was brought up in a world of “great beauties,” a world where lookers had something to give the world, a world where the cocottes, the women of the demimonde, were the great personalities of Paris. They were the great hostesses, the great housekeepers, the great women of glamorous dress. They were in their own half-world and that half-world was very important. And the Bois was where they paraded early in the morning. That was the secret of the beauty of the demimondaines. They took the morning air. They were there at eight-thirty in the morning. Then they went back home to rest, for a massage, and to arrange the menus of the evening for their gentlemen friends. They went to bed much earlier in those days, you know…these midnight dinners such as we attended in the last few years are for the birds. So these demimondaines were extraordinary beauties.

  Naturally, I’ve always been mad about clothes. You don’t get born in Paris to forget about clothes for a minute. And what clothes I saw in the Bois! I realize now I saw the whole beginning of our century there. Everything was new.

  Of course, much was the influence of Diaghilev. The flavor, the extravagance, the allure, the excitement, the passion, the smash, the clash, the crash…this man smashed the atom! His influence on Paris was complete. The Edwardian era before it had been as strong as steel. It was going to stay until something else came along. Well, that something else came along and swept everything in its wake—including fashion, because fashion is a part of society and a part of life.

  The colors! Before then, red had never been red and violet had never been violet. They were always slightly…grayed. But these women’s clothes in the Bois were of colors as sharp as a knife: red red, violent violet, orange—when I say “orange” I mean red orange, not yellow orange—jade green and cobalt blue. And the fabrics—the silks, the satins, and the brocades, embroidered with seed pearls and braid, shot with silver and gold and trimmed with fur and lace—were of an Oriental splendeur. There’s never been such luxury since. These women looked rich.

  Their silhouettes were totally new. Almost overnight, the trussed, bustled, corseted silhouette of Victorian women disappeared. Poiret was the designer responsible for the shift in fashion—from “La Belle Epoque” with its beautiful Edwardian women with their gigantic eyes and their hard corsets. Women then had a waist and bazooms, and I suppose they had a stomach and everything else. But Poiret removed everything. The corset went. In place of curves there was a straight line. It seemed that everyone became streamlined to the ground. The naturalness of these women’s bodies was what was new. But often their skirts were so tight they could hardly walk. I can remember them balancing enormous hats trimmed with birds of paradise, cockades, and aigrettes, walking through the Bois with tiny, mincing steps….

  Their shoes were so beautiful! Children, naturally, are terribly aware of feet. They’re closer to them. I remember shoe buckles of eighteenth-century paste, which is so much more beautifully cut than rhinestones are—so much richer looking. I love decor on the foot. To this day, that’s the way I like shoes.

  And horses! The automobile was new, but these women maintained horses, and always in pairs or in tandem. In my childhood, their beauty and the beauty of the women who owned them were inseparable.

  Think of the Champs-Elysées—it’s still the same…though there are fewer trees, and they don’t seem to grow as lushly as they did then. It’s still so restful to the eye—its straightness and length…. I can remember races up the Champs-Elysées to see whose teams—a pair of grays or bays—could make it up the last hill at a trot without breaking—that was a bit of news! It was all part of the glory of these women—and of the men who kept them.

  Do you know who knew all about these extraordinary women? How well do you know Maxim’s? Well, as you come in off the street, naturally there’s the doorman. Then there’s the head chasseur—or there used to be. The chasseur was a runner. He was the one you’d ask to go out and buy three copies of Paris-Soir or whatever—there were always runners—and they’d be delivered to your table.

  Several years after World War II, an important chasseur at Maxim’s, a very old man, offered his cahier—his little notebook—about these demimondaines of the Belle Epoque—to Harper’s Bazaar. Don’t ask me how it fell into our laps. But Harper’s Bazaar had a great name in Paris in those days. Also, Carmel Snow, the editor in chief, was a great personality in Paris then; everyone knew this crazy, brilliant Irishwoman. Drunk or sobe
r, they adored her. She was always marvelously dressed. And she was often very drunk—I don’t mean tipsy. She would talk absolutely brilliantly—but she couldn’t get up and walk.

  But that’s not the point. The point is the cahier that Carmel passed on to me. I had it translated and published in Harper’s Bazaar. And do you know that not one person on the magazine, and not one reader, mentioned what an extraordinary social document it was.

  It was a tiny, odd-looking notebook. You know how economical the French are with paper. You and I leave the first page of a notebook blank and start on the right-hand side. This chasseur was a real French peasant: he started on the left, so far up that there wasn’t any paper left above the first line. In this notebook was a list of all the available women of Paris, with complete descriptions—things like “mole on left hip” and “pas tout à fait de premier ordre” and “born in Chaillot” and “Baronne not to know” and…et cetera. This little old man…just think of it: he was the only person in the world who knew that there was a girl with a mole on the left hip very much desired by the Duc de Quelque Chose at one time but who, since his passing, was not perhaps assez connue—and therefore should bring a big price! I mean, this was something fantastic. You couldn’t make it up, because, as everyone knows, truth really is stranger than fiction.

  The great ones were the English. They were marvelous. Their demands were very, very firm. The demimondaines could have as many lovers as they wanted as long as nobody knew it. The demimondaines had their own newspapers; they had their own hairdressers; they had their own dressmakers. You’ve seen Gigi. They knew how to test a cigar; they knew brandy, and they knew wine; they could pick out chefs. Many of the men did not live in Paris, but they maintained great houses there. A marvelous old girl who used to work for Christian Dior told me, “And don’t forget, Madame Vreeland, that we were often the front for the Englishmen who only came for the boys. The girls were the front. We ran the house; it was apparently for us. We’d get a pink pearl from an archduke and a gray pearl from a grand duke, and it was all very luxurious and wonderful. The gentleman had to be kept absolutely immaculate in the eyes of his friends…putting on a show with the new sable coats and the new pair of grays and the beautiful carriages, and the whole bit.” She used to tell me a lot, because she had been so magnificently well kept herself.

  In 1909 Diaghilev brought Ida Rubinstein to my parents’ house on the avenue du Bois. He thought my mother had wonderful taste. It was very important to him. If my mother approved, Ida Rubinstein, a great beauty and a totally unknown dancer who was being championed by Fokine and Bakst, would play the title role in Cléopâtre, and Lord Guinness would help to pay for the entire season of the Ballets Russes at the Châtelet. Now Lord Guinness was one of the great keepers of Paris women. Perhaps he liked the boys as well. Therefore, to protect his reputation, so to speak…Ida Rubinstein would act as a kind of front.

  My sister and I, you know, missed nothing. No children do—unless you keep them locked up in a padded cell. I was behind a screen. And Ida Rubinstein came in….

  She was all in black—a straight black coat to the ground. In those days, you kept your coat on indoors because you never knew what the temperature would be. At the bottom of the coat was a wide band of black fox to here; at the collar and cuffs were wide bands of black fox to here and here; and she carried an enormous black fox muff—it was almost like sleeves—that she put her hands in as she came in the door. Under the coat she wore high black suede Russian boots. And her hair was like Medusa’s—these great big black curls, draped in black tulle, which kept them in place and just veiled her eyes. Then her eyes, through the veil…I’d never seen kohl before. If you’ve never seen kohl before, brother, was that a time to see it! These long, slow eyes—black, black, black—and she moved like a serpent. But there was no danger. She was long, lithesome, sensuous, sinuous…it was all line, line, line. She wasn’t a trained dancer, but she wanted to be in the ballet. I think she came from quite a rich family in St. Petersburg—a sexy Jewish girl with quite a lot of money.

  My mother was fascinated by her. She gave her approval to Diaghilev. I can remember her saying to him, “She may not be a trained dancer, but after all she has nothing to do but lie there with a look of complete pleasure on her face.”

  As you probably know, in this spectacle she was carried in on the backs of four Nubians, who naturally were dressed in solid seed pearls. She had practically no clothes on. She had one big turquoise ring on her toe…so pretty. There was a terrible orgy where everyone consumed everyone else…but she didn’t have to do a thing.

  Diaghilev was more than pleased, because he knew that the entire season at the Châtelet would be supported by Lord Guinness. Lord Guinness was also pleased as punch, because he had his front. And that’s where everything happened, and 1909, that’s the year it happened, and they say that’s how it happened.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In retrospect, I adore the way I was brought up. I adore the amount I knew before what I know today and I adore the way I got to know it. My experiences were so innocent and so easy and so charming. I grew up in the springtime of so many things. There was still the British Empire. I’m a product of the empire. I don’t think anyone realizes what the riches were like.

  I’ve had no formal education; I’m the first to say it. But my family did think of the most wonderful things for my sister and me to do. They sent us from Paris to London with our nurses and we sat in the bleachers and watched the coronation of George V in 1911. The excitement lasted three days and three nights, so you can imagine what I could say about that. You could say a child of my age wouldn’t have taken it all in. But you have no idea what I did take in, what I did see….

  Everything was horses. There were skewbald horses, piebald horses, and there were tiger horses, roans, greys—those beautiful prancing animals bred in Hanover especially for the equipages, the carriages, and the liveries. Terribly big-time stuff.

  Everything was a principality, you see. Don’t forget how many states, for instance, there were in Germany. I can’t even remember the names anymore—Hanover (they were the ones who bred the horses), Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, Württemberg, Schaumburg-Lippe. There was the King of the Belgians with all his equipage. The Kings and Princes of all those Balkans—Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia—with their equipages. And the Czar of all the Russias—I mean all the Russias—with his equipage. The Hungarians. The Rumanians. And the Turks. And the Chinese. And the Japanese. We really had to know our geography then and, what’s more, we really did. The mélange was something so incredible. I love a mélange. That is still Europe to me—a mélange of bloods, races, chemistry….

  Don’t forget how bizarre it all was. I mean, the King of Serbia—that’s bizarre! And don’t forget that King George and Queen Mary were Emperor and Empress of India. The maharajahs were a dime a dozen, and they put jewels on their elephants—their elephants! They all had elephants if they were any good! Do you realize what an elephant is today? They’re even hard to find in India. During the coronation in London, my sister and I saw them go by like taxis on Park Avenue. Until the night was black. It was so exhausting. I was so sleepy and so bouleversée.

  Maharajahs and maharanis, the Czar and the Czarina, the Kaiser and the Kaiserin…and Queen Mary and King George V! She passed by for just a few minutes, but to this day I would recognize her as I recognize you. Of course, later I lived there for many years of her reign. There was something about the way she sat and her proportions and the size of her hat which was immediately recognizable and never changed. A very, very good idea, hats—especially for queens. The toque was worn over a pompadour and fringe, giving Her Majesty hauteur and revealing the face. Queen Mary’s hats tended to look like the head of a secretary bird, a sort of a brush of a thing; they looked as though they could be taken off and used for something—to dust the house.

  Queen Mary was Edward VII’s daughter-in-law, and she was an Edwardian. I�
�m mad about her stance—it was up, up, up, and so was she. The Edwardian influence in England lasted long after Edward’s death and blossomed like a cherry orchard in the best sun. Each period casts a long, long shadow. That’s my period, if you really want to know. You might think it was my mother’s period, but it’s mine. One’s period is when one is very young.

  Actually, when I was brought to America from France in 1914, I didn’t know any English. But what was worse, I didn’t hear it. I was the most frustrated little girl. I was sent first to my grandmother’s house in Southampton, Long Island, in the month of April (which is an odd month to go there, but never mind; it was never explained to me then, and I have no way of finding out now). Then the war broke out and we were stuck. And I still couldn’t speak English.

  My family moved from Long Island to a tiny little house on East Seventy-ninth Street, one door off Park Avenue. My sister had a floor with her nurse and I had a floor with my nurse. All I cared about was horses. I never had a doll. I only had horses—these little toy horses I kept in little stalls along one side of my room. I’d stroke them and talk to them in a curious language of my own. I can’t remember much of it except that chickens were “uddeluddels” and elephants were “eggapatties.” I talked to them all night. The awful thing was that I adored my horses so much I’d get up in the middle of the night to see that they had water; then the glue on their manes and their tails would run. The room always smelled of glue, which is like dead fish.

  My grandmother had a huge farm horse in the country outside of Katonah, New York, who wasn’t used a great deal. He just stood in his stall. After lunch I’d run off, get on the horse. I had to use steps because he was enormous, and I’d sit there all afternoon, perfectly happy. It would get hot, the flies would buzz…occasionally he’d swat his tail because the flies were bothering him, and I’d just sit there. That’s all I wanted—just to be with the steam and the smell of that divine horse. Horses smell much better than people—I can tell you that.