She’s one of my old friends. We never miss each other if we’re in the same city. Big cities are all the same—it seems difficult to get in contact with people—but we always find each other. She’s still six feet. She hasn’t shrunk at all. She still has the presence. She’s always made me think of a great golden baroque archangel.
Once she said to me, “Why do you stay so well?” She really wanted me to say in answer, “Oh, but I’m not so well.” Then we both could complain. That’s very Russian.
So I said, “What do you want me to do—wither away and die?”
She said, “Is hard, no? Is hard to stay alive, don’t you think?”
“No,” I said, “not really—not if you stay busy, not if you stay interested, not if you keep the discipline, not if you keep the rhythm….”
It was rather touching being with les russes.
But I do think any form of rhythm is absolutely essential. I mean, we are a physical people, we do count on action, mood, and the wit of the body and so on to survive, don’t we? Do you know what I think a lot about? Surfing! I do think that surfing would be the most beautiful thing in the world to do. I do really believe that. Oh, I’ve seen surfers by the hour! In California I used to go down to Malibu Beach; I’d stay until midnight, wrapped up in shawls and helmets and things around my face. Out there, they were all in rubber suits, and I could just catch sight of them on the top of the waves in the light of the moon. I could watch forever! Forever!! And envy them. You know I’m not an envier. I envy no man…usually. But I do envy their surfing. I think it’s because I had such a passion for dancing and had those years in the Russian ballet school. Of course, the surfing didn’t hit me till I was what you might call a little older.
Surfing’s a bit of all right!
But then, of course, I’ve got such a thing about water. Have I told you that I think water is God’s tranquilizer? Being part Scottish, I think to walk in the rain is just divine. I don’t mean to walk around in a heavy downpour—to enjoy a fire doesn’t mean the whole room has to be in flames—but to be in water, to feel it around you, to wake up in the morning to know that the skies and the whole world are in this lovely fresh clean condition…always was a mania with me. One thing I hold against Americans is that they have no flair for the rain. They seem unsettled by it; it’s against them: they take it as an assault, an inconvenience! But rain is so wonderfully cleansing, so refreshing, so calming….
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’ve been with such wonderful young people always—whatever their age. Late in life, people seem to live their years as if it were sort of a timetable. But, you see, I’ve really been terribly busy. Of course, I don’t say I work today like I used to—that’s ridiculous to suggest. But I’ve never taken time off to anticipate, to add up the days, to ask the day of the month, or even my own age. I have wonderful friends of my generation, but I’ve never made a fetish of it.
I used to love to talk to Mr. Clarence Dillon, who got to be over one hundred. He never remembered me. I’d sit down and take hold of his hand and say, “You and I are best friends, and don’t let’s think of each other’s names because we’ll never remember them.”
I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring…and so many Americans can’t get on with it. They’re haunted by aging, by getting old. I think it’s because of this terrible retirement thing. If you’re through with work, what do you do with yourself?
There’s an excellent profile in Interview in which Jeanne Moreau says: “I shall die very young.”
“How young?” they ask her.
“I don’t know, maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.”
But let’s suppose I was young and just starting out in New York today. I’d have to work, of course, because to be in New York today is to work. What would I be doing? I’m not at all certain that I wouldn’t be in a laboratory somewhere studying medicine.
Modern medical science I find so absorbing. So many things have been brought to such a fine point. Penicillin, of course, is the greatest invention I’ve seen in my lifetime. And as for the pill, which in the sixties released the whole association between boys and girls…well, you’ve heard me go on about these marvels a thousand times.
My own notions about medicine are actually much more primitive: now, a good massage—that’s what I believe in! It’s all we need. We’d live forever! My dear, it’s the ABCs.
I believe in backcracking! I’ll crack your back—but you have to crack mine, too. This is a rather strict rule with me. I practice it with my grandsons all the time.
Stretching! I believe in that totally. I stretch in the tub, I stretch when I’m standing up, I stretch talking on the telephone…whenever you’re doing anything, if you can do something else—stretch! In your spare moments, stand against a door, like your bathroom door, and press your spine against it. It pulls everything in your body into place. Everybody should do this.
I spend hours in my bathroom. All my life I’ve never gone out before lunch. Except to the dentist. It’s important to go early because at that time they’re at peace and not rattled and tired. Dealing with a tired dentist is really very tough on you. But usually I spend the morning in the bathroom and I get half my day’s work done. This started out as a form of laziness, but now I believe totally in metabolism. Also thyroids are very important. At Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, when I was serious about secretaries, I didn’t have one I didn’t send to have a thyroid test. “You’re a bit slow, my girl.”
The liver is vital—and don’t forget the gallbladder! I remember seeing a marvelous friend at dinner here in New York when she’d just gotten off a flight from Japan—and she looked like a rose.
“How could anyone look as well as you after such a terrible trip?” I said.
“I’m never, never, never ill,” she said, “although I used to have these terrible migraines and other problems. One day I went to my village doctor in the country and I told him, ‘I have the most terrible job. Every night I have to take these American buyers out on the town, and they want six different kinds of wine, three kinds of brandy. But I’m the one who has to sit through this night after night, and my entire liver is being destroyed.’”
The country doctor felt her liver, and it was quite swollen. So he told her the story of a monk who lived near their village who every day washed his face in the cold water of the river that ran through the village. He’d always had these pains and pains. And one day, after washing his face, he placed his cold, wet hand there on his gallbladder—and the pain went away. So he took to going down to the stream after each meal, taking the cold water, and pressing it in the same place—and the pain and the swelling disappeared! “Take a little sponge,” the country doctor told my friend, “soak it in ice water, and press it against your gallbladder after every meal.”
And that’s exactly what my friend always did. I’ve done it myself when I’ve had terrible, paralyzing migraines, and I can tell you it works. Never lose sight of your gallbladder!
My father, at the Hotel Ritz during the time of Proust—1909, 1910, 1911—was witness to a man who had had hiccups for three weeks. He couldn’t eat, naturally, and his bones had started to go…he was convulsing himself to death. They didn’t know what to do with him. And Olivier, a great gentleman, the very great maître d’hôtel of the Ritz who later became such a friend of mine—he committed suicide when the Germans entered Paris—approached the man with a big beautiful pepper pot and a large piece of very soft linen and said, “Monsieur, I wish to reverse….” And with that he threw the pepper all over the linen square, which he then placed to the man’s nose—an exquisite handkerchief it was—and the man sneezed rather than hiccupped…reversed, you see, and it was over.
One night, not that many years ago, I got a telephone call from my great friend Walter Moreira-Salles, who was then the Brazilian ambassador to the United States. “Diana,” he said—he was to dine with us that nigh
t—“I know you always put me on your right, but tonight may it be across from you, as it is easier to leave the table? I feel I’m going to have the hiccups. You see,” he went on, “I am someone who has been told that he will die of the hiccups.”
That night Walter arrived. I placed him opposite me. And, sure enough, he started the hiccups. “Walter,” I said, “do as I tell you…worship the moon!” Then…I taught him my cure, which is not so dramatic as M. Olivier’s. Whenever you see me doing it, don’t think I’ve gone berserk; it’s just that I’m at work curing the hiccups. I call the procedure “worshiping the moon” because that’s what it looks like. It’s rather an attractive gesture, but it’s not at all conspicuous. Let me show it to you. Lift your arm straight up with the glass as if you were toasting the moon, lift your diaphragm…swallow, release your diaphragm. Then again, and keep swallowing. Then again. That’s all there is to it—but the way it works! “Walter,” I said, whispering, “up! Open! Swallow! Up! Open!…Salute, salute!”
Walter’s own hand:
“Dear Diana, You have saved my life. You have taught me the way. Now I will never have to live in fear again.”
I evolved that technique on my own. Worshiping the moon.
I also do a sort of unconscious yoga I made up myself, although I’m told it is yoga. Once, at the Golden Door in California, I said to the yoga instructor I’d been to every afternoon, “Now I’m going to show you what I do!”
After it was over, he said, “This is absolutely the greatest!” He was riveted.
Let me show it to you. Relax your arms and your legs. Close one nostril with your hand…and breathe in. Release it. Now close the other nostril and breathe in…are you feeling it in your eyes? What you’re getting is circulation in your head. Now I’ve only done it two times, but I usually do it about twenty times. I often do it sitting in my tub. It makes me feel so relaxed, and it makes the backs of my eyes feel so great. I made it up. But one minute can change the whole body. It pumps the blood, you see. It’s marvelous. Everyone should know about it.
I’d like to know why Tiger Balm isn’t better known in this country. Tiger Balm isn’t drugs—I mean, you’re not going to get arrested for buying it. It smells rather like Vicks Vapo-Rub, and it has a similar effect—but it’s so much more effective.
A few years ago I was awfully concerned about my voice. I thought I’d have forever this awful, false Tallulah Bankhead voice which I absolutely loathe. But Tiger Balm cured it! I’m dying to take a jar of it to my doctor. “Oh, my God!” he’ll say. “What are we on to now?”
“But you’ve never helped me with my sinuses and my little congestions here and there,” I’ll say. “Tiger Balm has!”
I’ve also fallen in love with ginseng tea. It’s taken me several years to get on to it, but now I’m hooked. I take it every evening when I come home from work. It’s so strengthening. I feel it in my limbs and in my face and in the backs of my eyes…a little stronger.
Tea is very, very important. The Orient discovered that thousands of years ago, and the English, having picked it up from the Orient centuries ago, perhaps overdo it a bit. But it’s much too much undrunk in America. There’s nothing healthier than tea!
And don’t forget witch hazel! After work, before going out, I often take naps on my bathroom floor with witch hazel pads over my eyes. All I need to do is to pass out for fifteen minutes with my witch hazel pads…and I can get up and conquer the world.
And when I do go to bed at the end of the day, I never go to bed tired. This was something Reed taught me: you wake up as you go to sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep…this, of course, is what’s most important. This is why I always say that the best time to leave a party is when the party’s just beginning. There’s no drink that kills except the drink that you didn’t want to take, as the saying goes, and there’s no hour that kills except the hour you stayed after you wanted to go home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Excuse me for interrupting you, but you know how sometimes if you don’t say something while you’re thinking of it, you’ve lost it forever? I’m thinking of Diane de Poitiers. I think the school of Fontainebleau paintings of her are so divine. Whether she looked like that or not, I don’t know, but in the memoirs of the period you read that her skin was fantastic. When she hunted with the King, you know, she wore a mask so that the wind and the ravages of winter didn’t touch her. Under a full moon she would go out on a terrace naked for a “moon bath.” And she took three cold baths a day—fantastic discipline. But what I’m thinking about right now is the motto she had over her bed. It read: “Seule.” Naturally, she wasn’t that alone—she had two kings, after all.
When I think of my childhood, I was always alone. When I think of the war years it was the same…and now I’m alone again. But I knew how to be alone because I’ve been so often alone. Maybe that’s the secret of life.
Still, you have to begin somewhere. It’s like when I was thrown by the taxi—I didn’t tell you about that?
It was three weeks before the “Vanity Fair” exhibition opened at the Museum. I had just put one foot into the cab, the cab started to go, and I was thrown back on my head and dragged along the ground. The whole time—this is while I was being dragged—I kept thinking, “You’ve got three weeks to go before the show opens—you’ve got to be all right.” I heard my head hitting the concrete. Damnedest thing to hear your own head bouncing on the curb. And then the driver saw me, stopped the cab, got out, and looked at me on the ground.
“Oh, my God!” he said. “What have I done!”
“You started to move,” I said, “and I wasn’t in the car. Why did you move?”
“I have no idea!”
“Now listen, there is a mirror, and you can always look to see if your passenger’s managed to get in. But never mind—no bones are broken. No one’s hurt. Let’s get on with it.”
So I finally got in the cab, and the driver said to me, “Lady, I’ve got to tell you something—this is my first day out in the cab, and you’re the first person I’ve driven in my life.”
“You’ve got to begin somewhere,” I said. “Never look back, boy! Never look back…except in the mirror to see if the person’s in the car!”
I’ve taken a number of blows in my life, but I think they’ve all been for the best. Never look back! I refuse to think anything else.
A life like mine has developed in the most fantastic way over the last years. Before that, I had my place, I did my bit, I really worked—no three people have ever worked harder, seriously—but it was routine. Fashion is always fantaisie, it was always unreal to me; but it was routine. Even now that I’m no longer officially in the fashion business…I am still in the business of fashion, because it’s the only life I’ve ever known.
Being recognized in the street for my involvement in fashion is truly fantastic. It amazes me every time. I mean, I’ve been recognized by cab drivers. I just can’t get over it. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think that it’s because fashion must be even stronger than the lure of the stage. I really have come to that conclusion. Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.
When strangers stop me, I have the flair to say, “Of course, of course…” and extend my hand. This started about ten years ago. As soon as I started to see less clearly, I lost all my shyness. I was never shy in business, but I always had a terror of meeting people. Now, instead of suffering this terrible thing of seeing everyone and everything much too clearly, I hardly see anything.
Andy Warhol came to photograph me the other day. Andy’s photographed me hundreds of times…and awfully well. He knows what he’s doing. He clicks the shutter once and he’s done. Then he’ll sit with you. When Andy came, he said he’d arrived with an assistant. I hadn’t noticed because my eyesight is so poor.
“What do you need an assistant for?” I asked. “Are you like French Vogue that you think you need a big entourage?”
“Oh, yes.”
&nbs
p; “You don’t need him. Why don’t you ask him to go?”
“You’ll like him,” Andy said. “He’s very good-looking.”
“Don’t lie to me, Andy.”
I asked the assistant, “Are you good-looking?”
No reply. I asked: “Why doesn’t he speak?”
“He’s Chinese,” Andy said. “His name is Ming Vase.”
You never know what you’re going to get with Andy Warhol.
Of course, on the telephone it’s very easy for me since you don’t have to see. I simply introduce myself and tell whoever it is exactly why I’ve called.
That is how I got the Légion d’Honneur. I asked for it. I was told by someone quite reliable that you only get it if you ask for it, so I asked. At the time it hadn’t been given out in America for years. De Gaulle stopped giving it outside of France because right after the war it was being given to every waiter in New York who served French brandy. Instead, when I was on Vogue, I got the Ordre du Mérite, which is very nice and pretty—it’s blue and silver, from the time of Louis XIV, reintroduced by de Gaulle—but it was not the Légion d’Honneur. And that’s all I really, really wanted.
I’m crazy about medals and orders. Just after Barbara Hutton married the Laotian, she had his Laotian order of the million elephants and one parasol done over in diamonds and white enamel. Beautiful! It was so elaborate. I was talking about it in the office one afternoon…and somehow or another news of my admiration got to the Laotian minister here at the United Nations. He wrote me a charming letter saying, “Mrs. Vreeland, what an honor to have you so interested in our order. Yes indeed, it is a splendid order, and I hope you enjoy looking at my order.” So he sent his medal to me. I kept it for two days. It was rather shabby, his—a piece of tin with a bit of white paint on it that was chipped. It needed Barbara Hutton’s hand. Anyway it dazzled my imagination.
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