Her first assignment for the Costume Institute was delicate. The Duke of Windsor had died on May 18, 1972, a few weeks before Diana signed her contract. A short time later the duchess agreed to give some of his clothes to the museum. The point of contact had been Ashton Hawkins, who had a connection with the Duchess of Windsor’s private secretary in Paris, John Utter. At some point the idea emerged that there should be an exhibition alongside the gift, though it is not clear whose notion this was. On July 10, 1972, Diana wrote to Hawkins, enclosing a list of the duke’s clothes as she remembered them and saying she thought the men’s cosmetic industry and wholesale tailors could be asked to put up money for the show. In August, Hawkins reported from Paris that Utter was giving the project his full support and he thought they might be able to announce the exhibition and Diana’s appointment simultaneously. He emphasized that the duchess was “changeable” but was sure Diana would sort everything out splendidly. Diana arrived in Paris in early September determined to rise to the challenge. She spent part of every day during her first week in Paris with the duchess and Sydney Johnson, the duke’s devoted Bahamian valet, picking out items of civilian clothing of particular interest.
Then something went wrong. Much later Diana wrote to Hawkins that “the news came from the Palace that we were to stop the proceedings.” As she recollected the affair, she telephoned the duchess’s solicitor in London, who said it would be impossible to do the show. The idea that Buckingham Palace blocked the exhibition then became the accepted version of events. The evidence that survives, however, suggests that it was the “changeable” duchess who had second thoughts, and that Buckingham Palace was greatly relieved. The duchess seems to have decided quite suddenly that it was too soon after the duke’s death for an exhibition. While she had been enthusiastic about the idea while sorting through the duke’s clothes with Diana and Sydney, she appears to have changed her mind within a few days and decided that the museum was behaving dishonorably in proposing the idea. The biographer Hugo Vickers paints a picture of enormous strains in the household in the months after the duke died. As the duchess’s health deteriorated, she became increasingly unpredictable, turning against Utter, who supported the idea of an exhibition, and sacking the loyal Sydney Johnson when he asked for more time off to look after his children after his wife died. “It was like a small court, with little for anyone to do and all kinds of machinations going on in the background,” writes Vickers.
Given their long-standing friendship, however, it was easier for both the duchess and Diana to blame the palace while keeping up the pretense that everything was going beautifully. When Diana heard that the president of the Metropolitan Museum, Douglas Dillon, was in Paris, she enlisted his help in sustaining this illusion because by now the duchess was having second thoughts about the gift itself, let alone an exhibition. “Please forgive me tracking you down in Paris as you probably are here on a flying trip,” Diana wrote in some panic. “It is my suggestion that you call and see the Duchess of Windsor if you can possibly manage it. I have struck some rather sticky wickets and I think you could clear the air so easily by just assuming all was going beautifully.” In an attempt to restore harmony, Diana and Douglas Dillon both wrote to the duchess assuring her of the museum’s honorable intentions and saying that they would wait until the time was right, reassurances that suggest that it was the Duchess of Windsor, rather than Buckingham Palace, who blocked the show.
However, the collapse of the Windsor exhibition put Diana under real pressure. She was in Paris on her own, and had little idea how to do the job for which she was now being paid. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was an unfamiliar institution with its own ways; and she was working, at long distance, with colleagues to whom she had barely been introduced. The role of special consultant was an experiment in itself. Expectations were running high. While not explicitly hostile to her appointment, the curatorial team at the Costume Institute was watching to see what she could add. It was already starting to look as if she had failed her very first test, and she had to change tack fast. But there was no one on hand to advise her and she had to feel her way.
The Spanish couturier Balenciaga had died on March 23, and Diana’s correspondence suggests that she began tentatively to explore the idea of an exhibition of his oeuvre as early as May 1972. To her great relief her first formal meeting on the subject was productive. The Museum Bellerive in Zurich had mounted its own Balenciaga exhibition two years earlier. Diana flew from Paris to see its curators, whereupon they offered to lend her anything she wanted, including Balenciagas from the Bellerive’s own collection. Their exhibition had been imaginatively mounted and made Diana think afresh about backdrops, mannequins, and lighting. She returned to Paris, hired a temporary secretary, and set about some detective work from her room in the Hôtel de Crillon. She met Madame Felicia, the dressmaker in Balenciaga’s atelier who finished his last work. Her secretary tracked down Balenciaga’s right-hand man, Ramon Esparza, who agreed to lend documentary film of the master at work; Diana unearthed unpublished photographs by Tom Kublin; and Susan Train at Vogue’s Paris office rode to the rescue with much practical help.
What proved unexpectedly hard, however, was the task that should have been easiest: persuading friends in Europe who owned Balenciagas to loan them to the Metropolitan Museum. This was partly because the friends who responded quickly and efficiently had quite as efficiently given away their unwanted Balenciagas years earlier. Pauline de Rothschild, on the other hand, still had her Balenciagas but was not as cooperative as she might have been. “Please Pauline do not be bored,” begged Diana in one letter from the Hôtel de Crillon. “As I told you it is agreed that you had the most interesting clothes from Balenciaga and it is important that you be well represented in order to make the exhibition complete.” Even when they were cooperative, Balenciaga owners did not seem to appreciate the urgency of the situation—an understandable reaction when it was urgent for Diana only. “Everyone loves and adores Balenciaga but are very lazy about finding the one or two dresses that would make such a difference. . . . Do say a little prayer for me as I need the support at the moment very badly,” Diana wrote to Cecil Beaton. Beaton had mounted a costume exhibition at the V&A the year before, and agreed to look in its collection on her behalf. But it was all a great change from Vogue, where Diana had only to pick up the phone to get what she wanted. Sitting alone in the Hôtel de Crillon with one temporary secretary, Diana felt her initial exhilaration give way to anxiety and frustration as she began to understand the scale and complexity of the task ahead. “I am now beginning to wonder how you ever put your show together,” Diana sighed to Beaton on October 6.
Confronted by such unexpected difficulties, she postponed her return to New York twice. Shopping for Kay Graham was canceled unceremoniously by telegram: “Things moving very slowly in Europe . . . feel terrible letting you down . . . know you will get along famously . . . any trend that looks well on oneself is fashion please forgive me.” But slowly the tide began to turn. Mrs. Gardner Bellanger agreed to take over administrative arrangements in Paris. Countess Aline Romanones, who had been Madrid editor of Vogue, undertook to approach a group of aristocratic Spanish women on Diana’s behalf. Romanones was successful in unearthing Balenciagas in Spain that had never been seen before, including a child’s communion dress, and in helping to secure the loan of the wedding dress of Queen Fabiola of Belgium. Diana soon realized that she would have to round up more designs than she could actually use, and from every period of Balenciaga’s career. In New York, Mrs. Paul Mellon, Mrs. Joseph Kennedy, Doris Duke, and art collector Mrs. Charles Wrightsman all agreed to lend significant garments. After her grumpy first reaction Pauline de Rothschild produced no fewer than eighteen pieces, including some that were very rare. The Musée de la Mode et du Costume de la Ville de Paris loaned a dress belonging to Daisy Fellowes from 1949; and Diana herself contributed a “baby doll” dress from 1957, a black lace overdress with ruffles at the hem
, worn over a closely fitted sheath dress.
However, it soon turned out that locating the right sort of Balenciagas from the important moments in his career was only half the battle. Hoving agreed that a show could take place in March 1973, barely six months after Diana started. This left her very little time to work on the way the exhibition was presented, and there was a huge amount to do to make it look arresting. Diana hated the Costume Institute’s mannequins, maintaining that they were too lifelike, gave her the creeps, and made the museum’s costume exhibitions look like a display in Saks. She battled to use mannequins made by the Swiss manufacturer Schlappi, which were taller than the average person, were produced in different finishes, and had an abstract quality about them that Diana greatly preferred. Furthermore she insisted they be as close to the visitors as possible, and not behind glass, and should be grouped together above head height for maximum drama.
The main problem, however, was that surrounded by inert mannequins, Diana badly missed the Girl. Where was the woman who actually animated Balenciaga’s designs, with her thoughts, her dreams, her inner world? Deeply frustrated by her absence, Diana drew on years of experience in fashion to re-create the impact and drama of Balenciaga at his most spectacular. She demanded subtle lighting effects on the dresses, insisting that background was as important as foreground and that color was critical to creating atmosphere. The connection between Balenciaga’s designs and Spanish culture was highlighted in paintings from the Met’s collection by Goya, Velázquez, and Picasso; and Diana prevailed upon the museum to loan a magnificent suit of Spanish armor as a centerpiece for the show. Ramon Esparza’s documentary films were cleaned up, dubbed with new music, and looped, a process paid for by Halston. Working in three dimensions for the first time, Diana was able to appeal to other senses. The exhibition was accompanied by flamenco music, and Balenciaga perfume was sprayed through the galleries two or three times a day. When it came to dressing the mannequins, it was Mrs. Vreeland the fashion editor who prevailed, not the scholars. Diana was interested in conveying the tactile qualities of Balenciaga’s universe. In the process, she had no compunction about stepping on curatorial toes, and her instinct for what would have impact now led to some wild anachronisms. Curatorial staff looked on appalled as Diana improvised a sleeveless Balenciaga sack designed in 1956 as a minidress on a tall Schlappi mannequin.
As she went through the process for the first time, Diana discovered that putting on a costume exhibition involved an enormous amount of unexpected and invisible work, not to mention an aptitude for hustling. She had to talk many people into providing everything for nothing. She and her secretary handled a multitude of details, from clearing permissions, checking the spelling of names, keeping in touch with every donor to the exhibition in the United States and Europe, acknowledging the clothes as they arrived, and finding the right accessories for every outfit, not to mention editing, mounting, and grouping the displays. A habit of hard work and thirty-seven years in the world of fashion stood Diana in good stead as the opening drew closer. She pulled in all the outside help she could, most of it given out of friendship. Kenneth Jay Lane provided jewelry; Priscilla Peck designed the catalog; Richard Avedon, David Bailey, and Bert Stern contributed photographs. Ara Gallant helped with wigs. Pauline de Rothschild and Gloria Guinness wrote articles for the accompanying program. Oscar de la Renta, fashion illustrator Joe Eula, and Eleanor Lambert all lent their assistance. This set up tensions that lasted for a very long time. “She’d never say what it needed,” said one long-term member of the Costume Institute staff. “Then, just before the opening, she’d call in every famous person she knows . . . to save the show.”
Though modest compared with what followed, the preview party for Diana’s first exhibition included New York’s plutocrats and Diana’s friends as well as Balenciaga donors and many Seventh Avenue designers. Kitty Miller lent a Goya as well as a dress, though she complained loudly that she was taking it home because no one could see it in the wretched subtle lighting. Press reaction was favorable, and the exhibition stimulated a debate about the importance and relevance of the clothes in 1973. Halston, for one, found it inspiring though Calvin Klein thought that most of the clothes looked out of date. Standing beside a raincoat of 1962 that was shown with boots and patterned stockings, Diana remarked once again that she often saw what people thought of as street fashion for the first time at Balenciaga. Bernadine Morris, senior fashion writer of the New York Times, observed how fast the world had changed since the late 1960s. “Balenciaga closed his house in 1968, when fashion, like other institutions, was splintering,” she wrote. “It’s a shock to realize it was only five years ago.”
The Balenciaga Exhibition attracted more than 150,000 visitors, making it—as far as the museum was concerned—a success. But Diana was slightly disappointed by the low-key press reaction and became anxious about the renewal of her contract. Under the terms of her severance agreement with Vogue, her full Condé Nast pension was payable only from 1975, and she had given up the salary and expenses otherwise due to her as consulting editor. She needed to keep going at the museum for at least one more year to bridge the gap. According to writer Michael Gross, the turning point came at a lunch party in 1973 at the Connecticut home of Oscar de la Renta, when Diana’s friends rode to the rescue once again. Kenneth Jay Lane and Bill Blass were among the guests and conversation turned to Diana, who was not present. They knew she was worried about the lack of press coverage and about the renewal of her contract. The Balenciaga exhibition showed just how capable she was; and she had also made a case that benefited them all, for the couturier as artist. They knew she had exciting ideas for other exhibitions. As it happened, Oscar de la Renta had just been made president of the dressmakers’ lobby, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), founded a decade earlier. At lunch that day, the guests decided to support Diana by making the CFDA a benefactor of the Costume Institute.
This was helpful, but it was even more helpful when Oscar de la Renta, president of the CFDA and thus cobenefactor of the institute, turned his attention to the Party of the Year. The Party of the Year had originally been conceived by Dorothy Shaver and Eleanor Lambert as a way of adding to the Costume Institute’s endowment in 1948, but in its early years it was essentially an industry event. “It was basically Seventh Avenue, a lot of Jewish people,” recalled an institute staffer. “A rabbi’s wife who knew everyone did the seating.” From the moment Oscar de la Renta became involved, the Party of the Year changed. Its focus swiveled toward circles where fashion and high society intersected. All guests, regardless of fame or fortune, were obliged to buy high-priced tickets. To make it attractive to New York’s finest, it had to be exclusive. To make it exclusive, its committee had to be drawn from New York’s elite, which in turn bound them into supporting the Costume Institute. As far as Thomas Hoving and the Metropolitan Museum were concerned, this was a most welcome development, not just because the Party of the Year brought glamour and social distinction but because the strategy was such a success that revenue from party tickets helped to finance the Costume Institute exhibitions thereafter. For example, expenditure on one exhibition in 1974 was estimated at around $100,000; but costs were covered before it opened by sponsorship of $35,000 and Party of the Year ticket receipts of $78,200.
One effect of the CFDA’s support for the Costume Institute and its close involvement in the Party of the Year was to boost the influence of fashion industry figures at the Met more widely, to the dismay of some who regarded the emergence of this new circle of influence and power as sinister. This was not, as alleged later, an aristocratizing plot orchestrated by Diana from her basement office on behalf of her fashionable friends. Apart from being insufficiently strategic, she was far too busy to undertake such a project. In attracting new sources of money to the Met, she was doing what she had been asked by Thomas Hoving; and in any case support from the fashion industry had been central to the development of the Costume Ins
titute since 1944. She had little direct involvement in the Party of the Year, which was run by the museum’s development office. She gave away as few tickets as possible and regarded making her friends pay as a way of raising some money for the Costume Institute. “Mrs. Vreeland was actually quite discreet about her involvement in the development of the actual guest list,” her assistant from that period remarked. “She did not talk about who she considered ‘in’ or ‘out.’ ”
By the time of Diana’s second exhibition in 1973, Bernadine Morris of the New York Times noticed that the party’s character had subtly changed. Each of 450 people paid $150 to dine in the Great Hall, surrounded by the Chinese porcelains on permanent display, upon tablecloths of an Oriental pattern chosen by Oscar de la Renta himself. As president of the CFDA he had sent the fabric around to some of his members’ workrooms to be stitched into tablecloth shape. He was also credited by Bernadine Morris with the design of at least three of the most eminent guests’ dresses: the mauve satin-back crepe worn by Mrs. Douglas Dillon, the flowing aqua chiffon dress of Mrs. de la Renta, and a red chiffon worn by Mrs. Jacob Javits, though Morris noted with some alarm that both the chiffon dresses sported small burn holes by the end of the evening, which suggested that they constituted a major fire hazard. At least some of the guests, according to Morris, managed to tear their eyes away from each other and look at the exhibits.
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