Why Don't You ....

Maleeka and I love fashion. We talk about trends, shoes, clothes, bags all day long on our bbm’s. However, the other thing we have in common is a mutual love for the history of fashion. Both of us have this innate curiosity of wanting to know more.  We constantly read up on designers from the early 19^th century, prominent personalities who have influenced the industry from times gone by, etc. You see for any fashion lover, its never just about the clothes or bags. There’s so much more to it. What inspired the designer, how did fashion photography become what it is today etc etc. So I feel today, I should inform our readers briefly about Diana Vreeland aka, The High Priestess of Fashion. 

One day, a very fabulous and stylish friend of mine (you know who you are girl!) frantically bbm’ed me and demanded I download a documentary called The Eye Has to Travel. No questions asked I did so and immediately. For the next hour and a half or so, time just ceased to exist for me as I stayed glued to the screen watching recordings of Diana Vreeland that took place in her living room which she fondly called “the garden of hell” in the 1980’s.

In her Garden of Hell

Diana Vreeland was one of the most influential women in the fashion industry till date. A fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar (1936 – 1962), the editor in chief of Vogue (1963 – 1971) and finally a consultant at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971 onward); Diana Vreeland was a true fashion legend. 

The irony of it all was the fact that she was never really a beautiful woman. She was constantly treated like an ugly duckling by her mother; therefore Diana knew that if she were to make it anywhere, she had to stand out. That’s exactly what she did.

According to Marc Jacobs’s foreword in the book Allure, “she had the ability to find beauty in imperfection, in flaw, to go against the common popular opinion in what is good, what is right.” If you thought a crooked nose is ugly, she somehow would make it one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen! That was the power of Diana Vreeland.

Vreeland wouldn't just deliver a magazine; it was a book of dreams. Her “why don’t you” column for Harper’s Bazaar was to make women think outside the box, to dream, to fantasize. The photo-shoots were just the same. They weren't just models wearing clothes, they were stories.  She often sent off models and photographers for shoots to far away and exotic locations to inculcate a sense of adventure and fantasy which resulted in the most iconic images of our time. She once famously quoted, “Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.”

The iconic image of Lauren Bacall for a Vogue shoot

For a shoot in Egypt, she memo’ed Richard Avedon, her photographer “think of Cleopatra walking the roofs, think of a young beautiful Cleopatra pacing that roof and everyone is so old!” This was a woman bursting with imagination. She changed the face of fashion photography. She discovered trends, people and created beauty. She just knew how to look at things in a way very few could ever do so.

The Egypt shoot with photographer Richard Avedon and model Dovima

With that being said, here are some of her most famous “why don’t you” quotes to encourage you to fantasize a little bit. Go ahead, why don’t you…

Use a gigantic shell instead of a bucket to ice your champagne?

Paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys’ nursery so they won’t grow up with a provincial point of view?

Tie black tulle bows on your wrists?

Wash your blond child’s hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?

Wear violet velvet mittens with everything?

Have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car?

Bring back from Central Europe a huge white baroque porcelain stove to stand in your front hall?

Have a room done up in every colour green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful—a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens?