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Title: Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight ISBN: 0-688-16738-1 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $50.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Mad about her boldness!!!
Comment: I too, waited on pins and needles as Ms. Dwight's book was delayed and delayed. I had preordered it and it was a considerable wait. It was worth the wait. I bought it and read it in a couple of sittings, loved it so much I bought copies and sent to dear friends. One sent me a thank you card which read "WHY DON'T YOU hire a jet plane and fly to see me so I can thank you for this wonderful (struck out) NO, DELICIOUS book. Id' say that pretty much sums it up.

It was great to read about her lower profile, but still dramatic homelife. Her husband was equally style conscious and quite the fashion plate himself. Their children grew up remarkably well adjusted. I wish we had more Diana Vreelands in this world. She spurned a half loaf. She did it her way!

You will love this book!

Rating: 5
Summary: What becomes a legend most? This book.
Comment: i anxiously awaited this book for more than a year, when it was finally released, i could not wait to see it, then read it.

having been a great admirer of diana vreeland, and having read her autobiography, i could not seem to find much else about her life and her work. but then eleanor dwight came along with the most information you could ever want to read about the legend, diana vreeland.

the book covers diana's entire life, and her work, right up until the end, nothing is missed. the book is full of hundreds of never before seen pictures, of diana with her family, and at work.

if you are interested in reading about others colorful lives, then this book will not disappoint. reading the book sure makes you wish you could have known diana vreeland, if only for a moment, thats all it would take to pull you in. the book does a wonderful job of just that, but nothing beats meeting the real thing, unfortunately ms vreeland is no longer with us, but her legend lives on, and this book helps a new generation to become familiar with her.

this is one of the best biographies i have ever read. i strongly recommend this to anyone interested in fashion.

Rating: 5
Summary: She Was the REAL Deal
Comment: So it's come to this: The New York Times wrote some months back of a hot designer who got a summons from Vogue--yes, Vogue, of all magazines!--at a time when a shot of publicity would have done him a lot of good. The deal fell through. The designer was willing to co-operate, but only up to a point. He just couldn't bring himself to give the magazine his "signature" outfit. No; that was too much--he would not give his signature creation to what he called "that comic."

It was not ever thus, as amply and inspiringly proved by Eleanor Dwight's biography of Diana Vreeland, that grandest of grande dames.

Diana Vreeland was a homely girl born into a beautiful family; in fact, her mother once told her, "It's too bad . . . that you are so extremely ugly." Her response was a program of self-improvement. Dwight says "she emulated her classmates in how to dress; she worked on becoming tidy, enlarging her vocabulary, improving her manners." Eventually, having not found the ideal girl to model herself upon, she decided, "I shall be that girl."

If her mother exaggerated, it is nevertheless true that Vreeland was definitely not beautiful or even pretty. She was plain at best. But that was merely the surface nature gave her to re-make, and re-make it she did. She made herself original, arresting, witty, slightly madcap and rather amazing. She didn't have mere fashion--she had style, her own sensibility. By the time she took over the top spot at Conde Nast's Vogue, in 1963, she had been many years at Harper's Bazaar, where she had re-invented the job of fashion editor. At Vogue, she re-invented fashion magazines, hiring and nurturing (and occasionally driving crazy) the very best photographers and sending them and models to shoot in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She also sent astonishing and urgent memos to her staff. One read simply, "Bring me shoes with chains on them." Another said all of the staff should wear bells at the office. Fashion editor Carrie Donovan explains: "You know the sort of bells. Bells little kittens wear so they don't get lost in closets." So they all bought and wore little bells immediately and, Donovan says, "By the time she came in, we were all walking around with bells on. She pretended she didn't notice anything."

She appear to notice everything else and to express it inimitably: "Pink is the navy blue of India! The best thing about London is Paris! Without emotion there is no beauty! The only real elegance is in the mind. If you've got that, the rest comes from it. Never fear being vulgar, just boring."

She did not shrink from spending Conde Nast's money, though in time Conde Nast did, and in 1971 she was abruptly fired. Down but hardly out, she went on to take on and take over the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. She re-invented that, too. Finally, in 1989 and after a long illness, she--well, it's impossible to say that she died. Ordinary people die. Vreeland simply passed into legend, where she can be found today. In this book and in the literally hundreds of websites that spring up if you type her name into Google.

Through Eleanor Dwight's excellent writing, Vreeland comes alive in this book, and a fresh, clean breeze blows through it with the help of hundreds of photos that express what Vreeland was all about: beauty, style, elegance, allure. The real stuff--not the plated. If that's what you want, buy this book. If, for some perverse reason, you want the opposite--want mere fashion, sullen faces, heroine chic and such--then go to a newsstand and get "that comic."

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