D.V.
Diana Vreeland (1906-1989) was this century's most formidable arbiter of elegance. As fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar, editor in chief of Vogue, and creator of dozens of famous exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, her passion, charm, insouciance, and genius for style energized and inspired the world of fashion for fifty years. Her bestselling autobiography takes us with her around the globe in the company of royalty, actors, artists, and designers. Throughout, her vivacious conversation is peppered with glittering stories and outrageous pronouncements, displaying fully the talent for perception and persuasion that made her the empress of chic. Here she tells how Buffalo Bill taught her to ride, describes how she redefined the standards of attractiveness with the quirky models she brought to Vogue in the sixties, disparages her own looks, relates her search for the perfect red, and discourses on the nature of elegance. Whatever her subject, from backaches to nostalgia, from Paris to New York, from marriage to dinner parties, from Clark Gable to Swifty Lazar, you never want her to stop. For D. V. is unique among memoirs: a conversation as pleasurable as a perfect wardrobe.