“The High Druidess of fashion, the Supreme Pontiff, Perpetual Curate, and Archpresbyter of elegance, the Vicaress of Style”
That is how you describe Diana Vreeland. Truly at 20th Century woman, Diana Vreeland led a fascinating career as society royalty, fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, editor of Vogue, and leader of the Met’s revival of its Costume Institute in the late 1970s. She walked the curious line of modern working woman versus refined and fashionable American aristocrat. Mrs. Vreeland defined American style and chic during the country’s most volatile periods carving a niche for herself that allowed her to be the “Everywoman” of fashion while maintaining her eccentricities.
Mrs. Vreeland had a selective memory and a habit of modifying her personal history. During her life time she claimed to have been raised in France until the age of 9, and when she was forced to move to New York with her family she could only speak French and refused to learn English as her own childish protest to the change of scenery. Her ahistoricism is revealed, for better or worse, in the biography Empress of Fashion by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. It turns out that while Diana may have been born in Paris, she grew up in New York from the age of 3 and was fully capable of speaking and understanding English. Stuart spends a good portion of the biography debunking many of Mrs. Vreeland’s fantastical fabrications about her life, but it almost seems a shame since her active imagination was one of her most defining qualities.
I am including my reading of Empress of Fashion in my artistic education for the very foundation of imaginative energy. While Diana Vreeland did not consider herself an artist, nor looked for art in the photographs for her fashion spreads, she also did not consider her role as editor to be “work.” For Vreeland, the whole goal of her life was to create fantasy and the dream, and this, I believe, is my lesson. Fashion was a gateway to a self-identification that was controlled by the wearer of the clothes. Dreams could be made possible simply by picking and choosing. It did not matter that Mrs. Vreeland fibbed about her childhood or her encounters with distinguished figures because she was determined to be the creator of her own life and to become her best self.
Whether she defined herself as an artist or as something else, Diana Vreeland was practicing with a vision for which she would not compromise. Her detail oriented processes, her relentless modifications to make something just right in a spread, her unending wandering creative eye share the foundation of artistic mission. Creating was her life’s passion! Not only did I become aware that I should acquire some quirks of my own, I also understood that determination, detailed, nuanced work with an ever-navigating creative energy and constant observation would take me to my fullest artistic realization.
Squatting Artist 