D.V.

by Diana Vreeland

  “Well, I hope at least you’ve got the white horse on the beach,” I said.

  “There are practically no horses,” she said. “There’s hardly been a horse on the island for a hundred years, let alone a white horse.”

  “Not one?”

  “Well, there’s one old stallion left.”

  “Well,” I asked, “did they get hold of him?”

  It appears they rounded up this ancient stallion at the end of three weeks of looking. He was indeed white, but his tail turned out to be sort of scrappy, and it was up to Kenneth to put the Dynel tail on him. Well, he approached the behind of this stallion, who hadn’t ever seen a mare in his life—I mean, he was just about alone on this island, wandering around. Now, apparently, if you go near a certain part of the anatomy of a stallion…well, he took off! This old thing, who hadn’t been out of a slow, draggy walk in years, let off this wild shriek—you know the way a horse howls—and crashed off through the mountains. He really took off. He went all the way. He was gone for five days.

  Here’s old Kenneth, terribly embarrassed by what he’d done, which was obviously going a bit too far—in any case, the horse took it as going too far. But you must realize, I only take results. I’ve worked all my life on results. I didn’t give a good goddamn if there were no horses in Tahiti—by God, we’d get some there, white ones, and get them outfitted with Dynel tails.

  “But,” I said to Babs, “look at those pictures. They got him back, didn’t they?”

  They had. Somehow, he came around. He wore himself out, I suppose, on about seventeen mountains and valleys, howling and screaming at the moon…and he came around. They got the tail on. The horse probably came back because for the first time in his life he was getting some attention. And they got the picture, which is too delicious for words. They knew they couldn’t come home to me without a picture of a white horse, and, sure enough, they came home with a horse and he was white.

  Kenneth has a grand sense of humor. When he got back, he told me that one evening Jan and Mike Cowles happened to arrive in Tahiti. They were going to stay there a month. Mike Cowles, who, as you know, was the president of the Cowles empire, Look magazine and so forth, was apparently the most forlorn of creatures; he had been dragged around the entire Pacific. It was not really his intention to go there. Tahiti was not up his alley at all. He was there under sufferance. Not Jan, the romantic wife, of course—she was in paradise. A woman. She was seeing Tahiti.

  So into the bar of the hotel came Kenneth. He went over to Mike Cowles, who knew him, of course, and he said: “Mike, I ought to put my arm around you. I want to thank you so much for asking me to come out here to Tahiti, all this way, to help Jan with her hair while you’re both on the island!”

  Mike almost fell down thinking he was paying for Kenneth to come all that way to fix his wife’s hair. He almost died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At Vogue we were always so busy. Ten years, two issues a month, and every article in it signed D.V. I’d read this and then I’d put: “Please cut out that second paragraph, I think it’s terrible. Come down and see me about it.” And then I’d sign “D.V.” “D.V.?” Oh no, I was never called that. Always Mrs. Vreeland. Someone at the Museum, I think, calls me “D.V.” I can’t think who it is. Rather nice. Deo volente—God willing—or Dominus vobiscum—God be with you. Popes sign that on their bulls, I believe, the way we write “best wishes” on our letters.

  We always seemed to be working on the Christmas issue. I had a bridge table brought in with my lunch on it—a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich. And a shot of scotch. Never took anyone out to lunch. Never, ever. The business lunch destroys the work of the day. It’s got to go. I never could have survived going out to lunch.

  Besides, food is something I know nothing about. I’m the first to admit it. Reed had a marvelous knowledge of food—he always planned our menus. But though I’m totally ignorant of food, naturally I have my own tastes. I adore shepherd’s pie. I could eat it forever. I love kedgeree—bubbling, spouting, and sizzling! I love rice pudding and cold birds with fruit. I love new potatoes, with their skins all taut and shiny like Chinese ivories. When it comes to food, I’m really a very simple woman. I like corned beef hash with catsup on it. This is my common side.

  I loathe native food. This comes as a surprise to some people. For some reason—having to do with aesthetics, I suppose—they expect me to adore raw fish, which I detest. There’re a few places I’ve been in the world, like Hong Kong, Japan, and Russia, where my every meal has been boiled chicken and rice—period. With boiled chicken and rice, you’re never wrong—you’re always sustained, and it’s very good. If ever there’s anything native around, it’s boiled chicken and rice for me.

  Chutney is marvelous—I’m mad about it. To me, it’s very imperial. It’s very much the empire, Victoria, the maharajahs…the great days.

  Lettuce is divine, although I’m not sure it’s really food.

  The consommé at Maxim’s! That, to me, is food. It has every bone from every animal, every vegetable…it’s the best nourishment in the world. In the seventies I was lunching at Maxim’s, sitting there having a wonderful time, when a cockroach appeared on the flute of a cream pitcher. La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha! The service there, which tends to be quite grand, suddenly became about as fast as you can get.

  The best meat, the best eggs, the best fruit, and the best vegetables are all found in the markets of Paris. St. Germain was once a boulevard with many places to shop for food, but now it’s much more chic than it once was, which I don’t like. Now it’s filled with boutiques with one willow tree in the window, which I think is so tacky. What I like is to look at sixty-five thousand brown eggs.

  Toast should be brown and black. Asparagus should be sexy and almost fluid….

  Alligator pears can never be ripe enough—they should be black. What you throw in the garbage can, I eat!

  The best raspberries, too, are the black ones, and they should be tiny—the tinier and the blacker, the better!

  Strawberries should be very big and should have very long stems attached so that you can pull them out easily. Yvonne, my maid, used to choose them individually for me at Fraser-Morris. Very splendid. God knows what they cost nowadays. Once I asked how much they were—apiece. Yvonne was shocked.

  “Ask, madame?” she said.

  “Listen, Yvonne!” I said. “Everybody asks.”

  “But, madame…”

  “So you mean to tell me, Yvonne,” I said, “that you’d walk into Harry Winston’s to buy a tiara—and not ask? One asks!”

  It had never occurred to her—although she herself, being French, saves every piece of string that comes into the apartment.

  Truth is a hell of a big point with me.

  Now just the other day my grandson said to me, “I listen to you and you lie so much. Take last week, take two weeks ago…I don’t care when you take it…you’re always telling the goddamnedest stories!”

  Now I exaggerate—always. And, of course, I’m terrible on facts. But a good story…some of the details…are in the imagination. I don’t call this lying.

  I think there’s nothing more unattractive than a true liar. I am a maniac about anyone who deliberately tells a lie. These people wither for me. I’m perfectly polite to them, shake their hands, smile at them…but to hell with ’em! They can disappear into the ground for all I care. Something dies inside of me. And I can spot ’em like that! Of course, in business, this can be a rather handy instinct.

  But some people really believe the lies they tell. They say they spent the day in Albany. Flew up in David Rockefeller’s plane. Had lunch with the Governor. And it was quite hot in Albany. And…et cetera. They believe it all as they speak. It grows as they speak.

  That was an important lesson Alex Liberman taught me at Vogue. We were talking about one very bad liar in the office, who was a very important, old-fashioned, built-into-the-walls-of-Vogue kind of person I couldn’t do anything abou
t. “Diana,” Alec said. “you know plenty of liars,” and he named two or three people.

  “Oh, I don’t call them liars,” I said. “I call them romantic.”

  “But don’t you see,” he said, “it’s when they don’t believe what they’re saying and are only trying to better themselves that you can’t stand them. If they believe what they’re saying—and you believe them—then you don’t mind.”

  “Right!” I said. “You’ve got a point.” I’d never seen it quite like that before. A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that’s one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting—well, that’s entirely different.

  Now social lies are something else again. I don’t mind if you say, “I can’t dine tonight because I have a business dinner.” That’s almost conventional, isn’t it?

  I once had a marvelous Irish temporary maid whom I was absolutely impossible to. I made her tell lies—social lies—on the telephone by the hour. “Madam has not returned from lunch….” “Madam is taking a nap and cannot be disturbed….” And if I really didn’t want to talk to someone: “Madam is out of town.”

  After six months she finally left me. And as she was walking out the door, she said, “Goodbye, madam. And now I’m going straight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It amuses me, when I look at magazines today, to see the credit line “Perfume by….” We never did this at Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. We were very square in those days—believe it or not—and very literal. But I understand the principle. It’s the repetition of the name, the name, the name…it’s selling! And scent, although you can’t see it, is as important to a well-turned-out woman as her makeup, her nail varnish, her pearls….

  Chanel No. 5, to me, is still the ideal scent for a woman. She can wear it anywhere, anytime, and everybody—husbands, beaus, taxi drivers—everybody loves it. No one has gone beyond Chanel No. 5.

  Chanel was the first couturier who added scent to the ward-robe of the woman. No designer had ever thought of such a thing. Chanel No. 5 is a totally marvelous product—best bottle, stopper, box—and, of course, still one of the great scents. You surely remember: “What do you sleep in, Miss Monroe?”

  “Chanel No. 5.”

  Do you know the story of why it’s called “No. 5”? Chanel didn’t know what to name it. A number of scents to choose from had arrived at the rue Cambon. Coco called up one of her great Russian friends—a very aristocratic, superior man—and asked him, “Help me to choose. I have a migraine. My head is in quarters. You’ve got to do this. Come over instantly.”

  He arrived and was taken to the bedroom, where Coco was lying on the bed, barely able to speak, she was in such pain.

  “Over there is a stack of ten handkerchiefs,” she said. “Place them along the mantelpiece. Put a sample of scent on each handkerchief, and when the alcohol’s blown off, let me know.”

  He did this, and she pulled herself off the bed to go over to the mantel; she picked each one up in turn. First one: “C’est impossible!” Second: “Horrible!” The third: “Pas encore.” The fourth: “Non.” Then, suddenly: “Ça va, ça va!” It was the fifth handkerchief! With those great instincts she was correct even when she was practically unconscious.

  The two best men’s scents in the world were both made by Rigaud. One was called L’Eau Merveilleux and the other was called Cananga. These were strong scents. They reminded me of marvelous Edwardian gentlemen in Paris early in this century. When my sister and I were children, we used to be brought in to curtsy to our parents’ friends and to kiss them goodnight, and it was a pleasure. Many of the men had whiskers and rather longish hair—this wasn’t an American stockbroking group—and they all smelled the same. It had bay rum in it, Florida water…it was clean. It was a healthy smell—good for the skin, good for the soul…and strong.

  There’s a whole school now that says the scent must be faint. This is ridiculous. I’m speaking from the experience of a lifetime.

  I always carry purse scent—that way I’m never without it. Do you notice any scent on me now? Don’t come any closer—if you have to sniff like a hound, it’s not enough!

  Napoleon’s valet, I’m told, every morning, took literally a whole bottle of scent, L’Eau Impériale—one of those divine Napoleonic flacons with bees all over it—and poured it right down the Emperor’s body. One bottle! Now whether it was a pint bottle or a two-pint bottle…don’t ask me. But this is something I understand totally.

  You should never put scent on immediately after your bath. That’s the biggest mistake going—there’s nothing for it to cling to. I must admit that Gertie Lawrence, who lived three terraces down from our house in Hanover Terrace when we lived in London—we played tennis together in Regent’s Park every morning—used to take a big bottle of Molyneux perfume, smash it against the side of her tub…and throw the contents in the water. Of course, you don’t get anything out of a tub with perfume in it—it has no oil in it, only alcohol. This was just a gesture of glory…she was madly extravagant.

  Now Patou, I remember, when he put Joy on the market, did the most extraordinary thing—he advertised it as the most expensive scent ever made. Do you want to know something? Those advertisements made Joy. After that, every woman in America—but everyone—had to have Joy. Perfume is an extravagance. But it’s odd that Americans, who God knows are an extravagant people, have never used scents properly. They buy bottles, but they don’t splash it on. Chanel always used to say, keep a bottle in your bag, and refresh yourself with it continually.

  Even more important, much more important, than scent are your feet. If your feet are correct, you have elegance. If you haven’t got the right foot—forget it. I mean, you can have on groundgrippers, if that’s your line of country, or you can have a foot problem, but there should be something absolutely correct about the foot.

  Elegance is everything in a shoe. I can’t wear readymades. It couldn’t be otherwise—I have a short, fat foot with a high instep like a Spanish dancer’s. Therefore, all my shoes have to be made to order.

  This is a serious subject with me. At last…we’re on a serious subject. This isn’t fashion stuff—this is the real thing. I always say, “I hope to God I die in a town with a good tailor, a good shoemaker, and perhaps someone who’s interested in a little quelque chose d’autre”—but all I really care about is that shoemaker. Everyone should have a shoemaker they go to as seriously as they go to their doctor. I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve always had the best shoemakers in the world.

  Budapest used to have wonderful shoemakers. In Paris in the thirties there was a great Italian shoemaker I was mad about—Perugia. His wife was a blonde so ravishing—she made Mistinguett kind of musty, if you know what I mean. She was behind a cash register on the rue de la Paix: “Bonjour, madame”—you know the type. She was in there so he could keep an eye on her. He made me low-heeled shoes—the kind I still wear—when everyone else was in high heels. I’ve always thought high heels were the end, though they do arch the leg if the leg is sufficiently long.

  Dal Co, in Rome, was marvelous to me in the sixties. They had a man there who never looked me in the face. He only looked at my feet. That’s how absorbed he was in what he was doing.

  Then there is my darling Roger Vivier, whom I’d known from before the war when he worked here in New York. The shoes he made after he’d gone out on his own in Paris are the most beautiful shoes I’ve ever known. In the “Vanity Fair” show at the Museum, I put some of them beside eighteenth-century French shoes—shoes of his made entirely of layers of tulle, shoes of hummingbird feathers, shoes embroidered with tiny black pearls and coral, all with exquisite heels of lacquer—and the level of quality was identical. We’d spend four and a half hours adjusting his narrow, built-up heels. And no one ever got a sole as flat—as flat as tongues—as old Roger Vivier. You should come and study my shoes of his one day. It’s a lesson in perfection.

  These shoes have been awfully good to me. I’ve b
een wearing some of them for twenty years—that’s how well they’re made. Also, I happen to be very light on my feet because of my ballet training. And when it comes to shoes I’m a nut on maintenance.

  Unshined shoes are the end of civilization. It happens that all the men in my life—my father, my husband, my two sons, my two grandsons—have been big shoeshine boys. Reed had shoes of Russian calf, and in London he had our butler polish them for five years or so with cream and rhinoceros horn until they were the essence of really “contented” leather. Only then did he wear them. I don’t know if Russian calf still exists, but don’t forget—everything we did in those days was for forever. And it was a very normal thing for English gents to use rhinoceros horn on fine leather. Leather is alive and lives as it is kept.

  For years Yvonne used the rhinoceros horn on my shoes. A highly emotional French lady, she wouldn’t lift a finger to polish the furniture, but she meticulously stained and polished all my shoes after each wearing—including the soles. Why, I wouldn’t dream of wearing shoes with untreated soles. I mean, you go out to dinner and suddenly you lift your foot and the soles aren’t impeccable…what could be more ordinary?

  And footsteps! I can’t stand the vulgarity of a woman who makes a noise when she walks. It’s all right for soldiers, but when I was growing up the quintessence of breeding in a lady was a quiet footstep. Well, it is to me still. Do you know that I let a brilliant worker go at Vogue because of the way she walked—the clank of those heels! She went to live in Paris after I talked to her. I said, “I can’t stand your footsteps. I can’t!” But, of course, what it was with her was anger; it is a form of anger if you can’t control the foot. I promise you, the heavy tread is a form of anger. You ought to pull up your instep, tense the leg, perhaps wear a little lower heel. Or else just take the trouble to walk a little more carefully. And if you can’t do that, you have to go to Paris! As Napoleon said, “Go to Paris and become a woman.”