D.V.

by Diana Vreeland

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Violet is a color I really like. But then I like almost every color. I have an eye for color—perhaps the most exceptional gift I have. Color depends entirely on the tonality. Green, for instance, can look like the subway—but if you get the right green…a spring green, for instance, is marvelous. The green of England and the green of France are the most beautiful spring greens. The green of England is a little deeper than the green of France, a little darker….

  Red is the great clarifier—bright, cleansing, and revealing. It makes all other colors beautiful. I can’t imagine becoming bored with red—it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.

  All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, “I want rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple”—they have no idea what I’m talking about. About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.

  I loathe red with any orange in it—although, curiously enough, I also loathe orange without red in it. When I say “orange,” I don’t mean yellow-orange, I mean red-orange—the orange of Bakst and Diaghilev, the orange that changed the century.

  At the same time, I love nineteenth-century colors. I love the names of the colors of men’s clothes of the Regency period—buff, sand, fawn…and don’t forget snuff! My God, there were words in those days. But where is snuff today?

  Balenciaga had the most wonderful sense of color—his tête de nègre, his café au lait, his violets, his magentas, and his mauves. Every summer I’d take his same four pairs of slacks and his same four pullovers to Southampton with me. Then…one year I went down to Biarritz. I laid out exactly the same four pairs of slacks, exactly the same four pullovers…and I’d never seen them before! It’s the light, of course—the intensifying light of the Basque country. There’s never been such a light. That was Balenciaga’s country.

  Lighting is everything in a color. It’s affected by the way the sun shines in certain countries. And the farther north you go, the more sense of color you get. I’m not talking about little gray stone Scottish villages…but the roses of Scotland are so rose-pink! And the purple heather—the violent violet of heather under the blue Scottish sky…I adore Scotland. If only I didn’t have to sleep there at night—it’s so bloody cold.

  I don’t like southern skies. To me, they’re not…enough. Although the most beautiful sky I’ve ever seen in my life was in the tropics, over Bahia—until I saw exactly the same sky over Hong Kong. I’d been told in Bahia that the only other place where that special blue existed was China, although they couldn’t be farther apart. Bahia is practically on the equator, and most of China is very cold northern country; but the blue of the sky is identical. It’s a cold blue of hard enamel, and it’s too beautiful.

  There’s never been a blue like the blue of the Duke of Windsor’s eyes. When I’d walk into the house in Neuilly, he’d be standing at the end of the hall. He always received you himself, which was terribly attractive, and he always had something funny and friendly to say to you while you disposed of your coat. But I’d see him standing there, and even in the light of the hall, which was quite dim, I could see that blue. It comes from being at sea. Sailors have it. I suppose it’s in the family—Queen Mary had it too. But he had an aura of blue around him. I mean what I say—it was an azure aura surrounding the face. Even in a black-and-white picture you can feel it.

  Black is the hardest color in the world to get right—except for gray.

  Pauline de Rothschild, when she was Pauline Potter, lived in a house in New York where everyone used to argue about what color she’d had the drawing-room walls painted. I can tell you what it was. It was a light gunmetal gray—the color of the inside of a pearl.

  In Paris, Molyneux had a salon painted and carpeted in another perfect shade of gray. All his vendeuses wore crêpe-de-chine dresses of the exact same color. Everything was gray so that the clothes he was showing would stand out. You saw nothing except the clothes he showed.

  The Eskimos, I’m told, have seventeen different words for shades of white. This is even more than there are in my imagination.

  But don’t you adore the look of white silk slippers with the dark hem of a velvet dress? For months at Harper’s Bazaar I went around saying, “Remember Velásquez!” That was one of my ideas that never reached the general public.

  Purple is a beautiful color—a bit overdone at the moment because people have been so slow to take to it. It’s associated with the church—ecclesiastical and powerful things—and it’s also very Japanese, although it isn’t really a purple the Japanese like. They prefer a sort of currant red with a little violet in it.

  Taxicab yellow is marvelous. I often asked for taxicab-yellow backgrounds when I worked in photography studios.

  At Harper’s Bazaar a story went around about me: Apparently, I’d wanted a billiard-table green background for a picture. So the photographer went out and took the picture. I didn’t like it. He went out and took it again. I didn’t like it. Then…he went out and took it again and I still didn’t like it. “I asked for billiard-table green!” I’m supposed to have said.

  “But this is a billiard table, Mrs. Vreeland,” the photographer replied.

  “My dear,” I apparently said, “I meant the idea of billiard-table green, not a billiard table.”

  This story is apocryphal, but it could well be true. The other day someone was talking about the idea of painting a room the color of the pupil of an eye in a Vermeer painting. I understand this totally.

  Actually, pale-pink salmon is the only color I cannot abide—although, naturally, I adore pink. I love the pale Persian pinks of the little carnations of Provence and Schiaparelli’s pink, the pink of the Incas….

  And though it’s so vieux jeu I can hardly bear to repeat it—pink is the navy blue of India.

  Oh, but violets. You should have seen Balenciaga’s violets. He was the greatest dressmaker who ever lived. Those were the days when people dressed for dinner, and I mean dressed—not just changed their clothes. If a woman came in in a Balenciaga dress, no other woman in the room existed.

  He wasn’t interested in youth. He didn’t care a bit about bones or anything to do with what we admire today. Oh, those collections! They were the most thrilling things! We’d stand in the corner of the salon if we couldn’t get a chair to see his collections. You’ve never seen such colors—you’ve never seen such violets! My God, pink violets, blue violets! Suddenly you were in a nunnery, you were in a monastery.

  Nobody else compared to him.

  His voice was very low, and often you had to concentrate to hear it. His first name was Cristobal. His inspiration came from the bullrings, the flamenco dancers, the loose blouses the fishermen wear, the cool of the cloisters…and he took these moods and colors and, adapting them to his own tastes, literally dressed those who cared about such things for thirty years. He loved the coquetry of lace and ribbon, and yet he believed totally in the dignity of women. Balenciaga often said that women did not have to be perfect or beautiful to wear his clothes. When they wore his clothes, they became beautiful.

  One never knew what one was going to see at a Balenciaga opening. One fainted. It was possible to blow up and die. I remember at one show in the early sixties—one put on for clients rather than for commercial buyers—Audrey Hepburn turned to me and asked why I wasn’t frothing at the mouth at what I was seeing. I told her I was trying to act calm and detached because, after all, I was a member of the press. Across the way Gloria Guinness was sliding out of her chair onto the floor. Everyone was going up in foam and thunder. We didn’t know what we were doing, it was so glorious. Well, what was going on was that Balenciaga was introducing the maillot for the first time. A maillot is like a body stocking, closed at the neck, ankle, and wrist. At this show it was a nude color, half-gold and pink, and over it was a tent of chiffon surrounding the model, the girl. It was incredibly beauti
ful. And don’t forget, Balenciaga didn’t use long-legged models—he used rather short-limbed, plump models, because he liked Spanish women. It was the most exciting garment I’ve ever seen. It was a dream. And do you know, I tried to get it for my Balenciaga show at the Met and no one could even remember it—how like a dream it had passed!

  And then one day Balenciaga just closed his doors. He never even told Bunny Mellon, who of course was his greatest client…I suppose she had the greatest collection of Balenciagas in the world.

  I was staying with Mona Bismark in Capri when the news came. I was downstairs, dressed for dinner, having a drink. Consuelo Crespi telephoned me from Rome, saying it had just come over the radio that Balenciaga had closed his doors forever that afternoon, and that he’d never open them again. Mona didn’t come out of her room for three days. I mean, she went into a complete…I mean, it was the end of a certain part of her life!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When people ask me what the greatest change in my life is, I always say it is Fear—the sense of imminent physical danger that we must all live with in big cities everywhere today.

  I was once afraid of nothing. All those years on Seventh Avenue—the garment district—how many years was it? The years I was on Vogue I wasn’t that much on Seventh Avenue, but on Harper’s Bazaar I was the fashion editor. So I went there to see what they they had to offer. I tramped the streets. I covered the waterfront.

  I’d walk home those sixty blocks alone all those years. I loved the fur district, and that’s where I’d walk when I finished working.

  These are the war years I’m speaking about now. Believe me, there were no cabs; I’d walk these long, long blocks. We were practically in a blackout—what they called a brownout—the lights were very dim. I was absolutely freezing. There weren’t slacks in those days, and there weren’t boots—I was in sandals. I had a fur coat on—a fur-lined raincoat—and I’d just shout to myself, “Keep walking! Keep walking!”

  I did this evening after evening. I took it as much for granted as the fact that I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight.

  When I got home, I was alone. The boys were in the armed forces. Reed was living in Montreal through the whole war, working for British interests. He was there for seven years. We were married for forty-six years, and for seven of them he was away. It was a very vivid period in my life. For seven years, I was by myself….

  But I was so happy when I was down on Seventh Avenue. I was always going up rusty staircases with old newspapers lying all over the place and the most ghastly-looking characters hanging around…but nothing was frightening to me. It was all part of the great adventure, my métier, the scene. I suppose that’s why I have such a devotion to Seventh Avenue today—because the whole bit was interesting to me. So many of them were Jewish refugees. Hardly spoke English. They meant a great deal to me because they provided a touch of old Europe. It wasn’t a letdown, even after Chanel. After all, it was my world. The men down there were my pals. They were the people who looked after me. They were the people who made my life possible.

  I never wore clothes from Seventh Avenue myself, you understand. I always kept a totally European view of things. Maybe that’s why I was so appreciated there. I was independent. In those days, don’t forget, fashion traveled very slowly. When I arrived back in this country after the war started, I couldn’t believe what I saw. In the summer, every woman wore diamond clips on crêpe de chine dresses. And they all wore silk stockings—this was before nylons—under these hideous strappy high heels. This is in the summer, you understand—in the country. It was unbelievable.

  For years in Europe I’d been bare-legged and thong-sandaled once the heat came on. I still have some of my original sandals I had made in Capri in 1935 when Reed and I were staying at the Fortino on the Marina Grande. The theory of the sandals was that the sandal strap went between the toes. The soles of these sandals were so beautiful. They were built up in layers thinner than my fingernail—layer upon layer. When you walked, it was like walking in satin. In Capri, we used to walk up through the hills, through the vineyards, and all the way out to Tiberius’s palace—that’s a hell of a walk. I can remember Coco Chanel and Visconti used to do it on donkeys. She’d wear her beret and her pullover and her white duck pants—and her pearls, naturally—and the donkey would carry her uphill over this steep, rocky road. Visconti was infatuated with her, and he’d follow her on his donkey. Capri—pagan and wonderful.

  Then the war came, and there was no more communication among any of us. But I had the sandals. And I gave them to a shoemaker from New Jersey called Mr. Maxwell and asked him to copy them. He’d never seen anything like them. So I told him the story of where I’d copied them from—the pornographic museum at Pompeii, which had originally been open only to men. Those were the days of boat trips on the Mediterranean, and these old maids would save up their money for years, get themselves men’s suits, and get into the museum, where they’d holler and yell and scream, and be found epileptic on the floor. It was unbelievable. The police would be brought in, these old maids would be carried out on stretchers, and eventually the museum had to be closed down entirely.

  Through a friend in the Mussolini government, I was able to get in. “Nothing could be easier to arrange,” he said.

  So I saw…. In Pompeii, everything that can happen in life was captured in the minute and a half a volcanic eruption takes. Women are having babies, dogs scratching their backs…held forever in eternity. And in the museum I saw a woman having an affair with her slave, who was wearing…

  I was telling all this to Mr. Maxwell, who, naturally, was absolutely horrified. He was the most charming, gentle soul—reeked of all the nicest Englewood, New Jersey, characteristics—but he’d never heard a woman discuss such things. But I went on….

  The slave was wearing link slave bracelets, which I recognized immediately, because everyone had worn slave bracelets exactly like them in the twenties. But then…instead of the very elaborate sandals of a grand seigneur or a warrior, or the sandals of a gentleman of the town or a tradesman, he wore the simplest sandal in the world. It had just one thong which went between the big toe and the one next to it, and one strap around the ankle attached to the heel. You ask why he was making love wearing his sandals? He probably wasn’t given the time. She probably jumped him and he didn’t have a chance to get those sandals off; and then, of course, Vesuvius knocked them both to the floor. This was the design I took to Capri, where they made the sandals up for me from my description.

  Eventually, Mr. Maxwell got over his shock. He copied the sandals. But no one could wear them. Apparently, there was something in the health regulations of New York City that said that no one could try on shoes unless she was wearing stockings. Obviously, the thong couldn’t go over a stocking and between the toes, and of course that was the whole point. Somehow or other, the law was changed. Don’t ask me how—I’ve never concerned myself with that sort of thing. But from then on there was a very nice business for Mr. Maxwell.

  That was the Birth of the Thonged Sandal. The fingernails came next.

  When I arrived in America, I had these very dark red nails which some people objected to, but then some people object to absolutely everything. The point is that they were absolutely clear and perfect. There was only one other woman in New York with perfect nails, and that was Mona Williams, who had a manicurist come to her every evening. In those days, you had your fingernails done at home for a very good reason—the varnish took forever to dry, and you couldn’t use your hands for hours and hours. I had mine done at home, but they dried almost instantly, and that’s what this story is about.

  In Paris I’d had a manicurist, a Venetian named Perrera, who’d been in the chicken-farm business with Catherine d’Erlanger—the one who lived in Lord Byron’s house at the end of Piccadilly. She also had a house outside of Venice, up the Brenta where there’re those strange canals and those wonderful sixteenth-century houses. Her house, Villa Malcontenta, ha
d Veronese walls and ceilings. Perrera was, I suppose, what you’d call a “peasant”—though I hate to use words which I don’t quite know the meaning of; I merely mean that he wasn’t a man of the aristocracy. He was in all kinds of businesses, but what he loved more than anything else in the world was women’s hands. When he came in the evening to my room in Paris, I don’t think he would have noticed if I’d been naked. I’m not sure he ever looked at my face.

  Certain men adore women for certain things and that becomes their life. Perrera’s life was being with women with beautiful hands. He worshiped Barbara Hutton, for instance, who had the most beautiful hands in the world. He talked about them endlessly. Perrera was far from being a rich man. I’m sure that when he left Barbara Hutton, he’d walk through the rain of Paris to the nearest Métro and come home to a very simple life. His price, you see, was almost nothing—he took care of women’s hands just for love.

  He’d come in…and he’d undo this beautiful gray suede fitted case and take out his instruments, which were all gold—they’d been given to him by Ena, the Queen of Spain, granddaughter of Victoria. He had this wonderful varnish—don’t ask me where he made it—that dried as he painted it on. You could have nails out to here, which I used to have, and they’d dry instantly.

  Do you want to know what the artist Bébé Bérard liked more than anything else in the world? He liked to watch Perrera paint fingernails with this varnish—the artistry of it. Bérard saw this being done to me once in my hotel room and couldn’t wait for the next time.

  I can remember the last time I saw Perrera right after war was declared. We said goodbye and au revoir and “It won’t be long” and “It isn’t really a war”…and I brought two big flacons of his varnish with me to New York. I gave them to my little manicurist, who was sort of a free swinger in that she didn’t work for a manicure parlor, but went from door to door. And one day the varnish ran out. Naturally, I was in a state.