D.V. (16 page)

What these magazines gave was a point of view. Most people haven't got a point of view; they need to have it given to them—and what's more, they expect it from you. I had this most curious thing happen—it must have been about 1966 or '67. I published this big fashion slogan:
THIS IS THE YEAR OF DO-IT-YOURSELF
. Well, after that slogan appeared, every store in the country telephoned to say, “Look, you have to
tell
people. No one wants to do it themselves—they want direction and to follow a leader!” They were quite right. There was only one issue published with my slogan, but it certainly threw the country. After that, it was back to the more usual
slogans:
BEWARE OF PEARL GRAY WITH PINK
—that sort of thing. And then the next month:
PUT APRICOT WITH ORANGE
. There's not much serious planning in this sort of thing. It's rather like a woman's mind…you sort of feel it at the time. Carry on. Bash on. Keep 'em thinking. Keep 'em asking.

I couldn't take off for a few weeks to see, say, a bit of India. But I could send groups of photographers, editors, and models, and they'd be there the next day. If I wanted to send them to India, they'd be in India; if I wanted to send them to Japan, they'd be in Japan; if I wanted to send them to Tahiti….

Now I've never been to Tahiti, but I bet it's much plainer than people imagine. Gauguin was such a romantic. Perhaps he lived in Tahiti, but he could have made the whole thing up. I'll tell you why I say this. During the romantic years at
Vogue
, I organized a trip to photograph the models surrounded by what was there, and these were the orders: “Never mind the big girls who sit there with one flower in their hair. That you can't photograph, because Gauguin did a good job of painting them already. Our line of country is the most beautiful white horse with a long white tail on a pink beach—no little horse like a Gauguin, but a big romantic horse like the ones they have in a big way in Friesland in Northern
Holland—
all tail and mane. Go
all the way
!”

They always had their orders before they'd leave on these trips. Everyone thinks I'm getting ill natured in my old age, but I
was a terror then—just a
terror
. But everyone so beautifully understood. It wasn't what they
might
find, it was what they
had
to find.

And if they couldn't find it, fake it. Fake it. That's a big thing with me. Many years ago I was riding on the Twentieth Century to Chicago. I was just a little girl. On the train was a wonderful entertainer by the name of Frisco. Frisco was black. He had a bowler hat and the most exquisite shoes. He came and sat in the dining car for breakfast and cracked open his newspaper; he looked great. The waiter, who was black, came up to him and said, “Good morning, Mr. Frisco, suh. What will you have this morning?” To which Frisco answered, “Ice cream and applesauce. Make it snappy.”

The waiter was very upset; he stood there and said, “You know, suh, this is
breakfast
, suh, and we haven't got any ice cream or any applesauce.”

“Okay,
fake it
.”

That made a tremendous impression on me. It's the way I've done so many things in my life. I'll say, “Get comfortable, and tap the pillows under you there.” You'd say, “There are no pillows.” I'll say, “Well, fake it. You know, bundle up with the rugs or something.” I'm damned if I remember what the waiter brought him! I was too dazzled at having seen Frisco with his walking stick and his bowler. I remember the crack of his paper, his getting completely submerged in it, the waiter
interrupting
him…“Good morning, Mr. Frisco, suh.”

Well, Kenneth was the hairdresser on the Tahiti trip. Some of the great men are hairdressers, and he's the greatest of them. So I said to him, “The tail of a Tahitian horse may not be…enough. You may have to fake it. It may be too skimpy. Best to take along some synthetic hair.” Synthetic hair was better than real hair because you could get as much as you wanted.

So we had a horse's tail made of Dynel for Kenneth to take along just in case. I was in the middle of my Dynel period then—one of the happiest periods of my life, to tell you the truth, because I was
mad
about all the things you could do with Dynel hair. We
had the Dynel plaited with bows and bows and
bows—
these big fat taffeta bows, but
rows
of them…no Infantas ever had it so good! I was
mad
about what we'd done for our glorious tail. The bows were super, and the hair was thick with a sheen, very long, to the ground, like a train, just like a true horse's tail—sexy, attractive….

So they went to Tahiti, supplied with this Dynel tail, to look for a white horse. Then the pictures came back, and I went to look at them with Babs Simpson, the fashion editor. Now Babs was the most marvelous editor in the way of knowing how to turn the girls out correctly—by “correctly” I mean in the mood in which they were sent—but she's rather a somber girl.

“Well, I hope at least you've got the white horse on the beach,” I said.

“There are practically
no
horses,” she said. “There's hardly been a horse on the island for a hundred years, let alone a white horse.”

“Not
one
?”

“Well, there's one old stallion left.”

“Well,” I asked, “did they get hold of him?”

It appears they rounded up this ancient stallion at the end of three weeks of looking. He was indeed white, but his tail turned out to be sort of scrappy, and it was up to Kenneth to put the Dynel tail on him. Well, he approached the behind of this stallion, who hadn't ever seen a mare in his life—I mean, he was just about alone on this island, wandering around. Now, apparently, if you go near a certain part of the anatomy of a stallion…well, he took off! This old thing, who hadn't been out of a slow, draggy walk in years, let off this wild shriek—you know the way a horse
howls—
and
crashed
off through the mountains. He really took off. He went
all the way
. He was gone for five days.

Here's old Kenneth, terribly embarrassed by what he'd done, which was obviously going a bit too far—in any case, the
horse
took it as going too far. But you must realize, I only take
results
. I've worked all my life on
results
. I didn't give a good goddamn if there
were
no
horses in Tahiti—by God, we'd get some there, white ones, and get them outfitted with Dynel tails.

“But,” I said to Babs, “look at those pictures. They got him back, didn't they?”

They had. Somehow, he came around. He wore himself out, I suppose, on about seventeen mountains and valleys,
howling
and
screaming
at the
moon…
and he came around. They got the tail on. The horse probably came back because for the first time in his life he was getting some attention. And they got the picture, which is too delicious for words. They knew they couldn't come home to me without a picture of a white horse, and, sure enough, they came home with a horse and he was white.

Kenneth has a grand sense of humor. When he got back, he told me that one evening Jan and Mike Cowles happened to arrive in Tahiti. They were going to stay there a month. Mike Cowles, who, as you know, was the president of the Cowles empire,
Look
magazine and so forth, was apparently the most forlorn of creatures; he had been dragged around the entire Pacific. It was not really his intention to go there. Tahiti was not up his alley at
all
. He was there under sufferance. Not Jan, the romantic wife, of course—she was in paradise. A woman. She was seeing
Tahiti
.

So into the bar of the hotel came Kenneth. He went over to Mike Cowles, who knew him, of course, and he said: “Mike, I ought to put my arm around you. I want to thank you so much for asking me to come out here to Tahiti, all this way, to help Jan with her hair while you're both on the island!”

Mike almost fell down thinking he was paying for Kenneth to come all that way to fix his wife's hair. He almost died.

At
Vogue
we were always so busy. Ten years, two issues a month, and every article in it signed D.V. I'd read this and then I'd put: “Please cut out that second paragraph, I think it's terrible. Come down and see me about it.” And then I'd sign “D.V.” “D.V.?” Oh no, I was never called that. Always Mrs. Vreeland. Someone at the Museum, I think, calls me “D.V.” I can't think who it is. Rather nice.
Deo volente—
God willing—or
Dominus vobiscum—
God be with you. Popes sign that on their bulls, I believe, the way we write “best wishes” on our letters.

We always seemed to be working on the Christmas issue. I had a bridge table brought in with my lunch on it—a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich. And a shot of scotch. Never took anyone out to lunch. Never, ever. The business lunch destroys the work of the day. It's got to go. I never could have survived going out to lunch.

Besides, food is something I know nothing about. I'm the first to admit it. Reed had a marvelous knowledge of food—he always planned our menus. But though I'm totally ignorant of food, naturally I have my own tastes. I
adore
shepherd's pie. I could eat it forever. I love kedgeree—bubbling, spouting, and sizzling! I love rice pudding and cold birds with fruit. I love new potatoes, with their skins all taut
and shiny like Chinese ivories. When it comes to food, I'm really a very simple woman. I like corned beef hash with catsup on it. This is my common side.

I
loathe
native food. This comes as a surprise to some people. For some reason—having to do with aesthetics, I suppose—they expect me to adore raw fish, which I
detest
. There're a few places I've been in the world, like Hong Kong, Japan, and Russia, where my
every
meal has been boiled chicken and rice
—period
. With boiled chicken and rice, you're never wrong—you're always sustained, and it's very good. If ever there's anything native around, it's boiled chicken and rice for
me
.

Chutney is
marvelous—
I'm
mad
about it. To me, it's very imperial. It's very much the empire, Victoria, the maharajahs…the great days.

Lettuce is divine, although I'm not sure it's really food.

The consommé at
Maxim's
! That, to me, is
food
. It has
every
bone from
every
animal,
every
vegetable…it's the best nourishment in the world. In the seventies I was lunching at Maxim's, sitting there having a wonderful time, when a cockroach appeared on the
flute
of a cream pitcher.
La Cucaracha! La Cucaracha!
The service there, which tends to be quite grand, suddenly became about as fast as you can
get
.

The best meat, the best eggs, the best fruit, and the best vegetables are all found in the markets of Paris. St. Germain was once a boulevard with many places to shop for food, but now it's much more chic than it once was, which I don't like. Now it's filled with boutiques with one willow tree in the window, which I think is so tacky. What
I
like is to look at sixty-five thousand brown eggs.

Toast should be brown and
black
. Asparagus should be sexy and almost fluid….

Alligator pears can never be ripe enough—they should be
black
. What
you
throw in the garbage can,
I
eat!

The best raspberries, too, are the black ones, and they should be
tiny—
the tinier and the
blacker
, the better!

Strawberries should be
very
big and should have
very
long
stems attached so that you can pull them out easily. Yvonne, my maid, used to choose them individually for me at Fraser-Morris. Very splendid. God knows what they cost nowadays. Once I asked how much they were—apiece. Yvonne was shocked.

“
Ask
, madame?” she said.

“Listen, Yvonne!” I said. “
Everybody
asks.”

“But,
madame…
”

“So you mean to tell me, Yvonne,” I said, “that you'd walk into Harry Winston's to buy a tiara—and not
ask
? One
asks
!”

It had never occurred to her—although she herself, being French, saves every piece of string that comes into the apartment.

Truth is a
hell
of a big point with me.

Now just the other day my grandson said to me, “I listen to you and you
lie
so much. Take last week, take two weeks ago…I don't care
when
you take it…you're always telling the
goddamnedest
stories!”

Now I
exaggerate—
always. And, of course, I'm terrible on facts. But a good story…some of the
details…
are in the imagination. I don't call this lying.

I think there's nothing more unattractive than a true liar. I am a
maniac
about anyone who deliberately tells a lie. These people wither for me. I'm perfectly polite to them, shake their hands, smile at them…but to hell with 'em! They can disappear into the
ground
for all I care. Something dies inside of me. And I can spot 'em like
that
! Of course, in business, this can be a rather handy instinct.

But some people
really believe
the lies they tell. They say they spent the day in Albany. Flew up in David Rockefeller's plane. Had lunch with the Governor. And it was quite hot in Albany. And…et cetera. They
believe
it all as they speak. It
grows
as they speak.

That was an important lesson Alex Liberman taught me at
Vogue
. We were talking about one very bad liar in the office, who was a very important, old-fashioned, built-into-the-walls-of-
Vogue
kind of person I couldn't do anything about. “Diana,” Alec said. “you know plenty of liars,” and he named two or three people.

“Oh, I don't call
them
liars,” I said. “I call them romantic.”

“But don't you see,” he said, “it's when they don't believe what they're saying and are only trying to better themselves that you can't stand them. If they
believe
what they're saying—and
you
believe
them—
then you don't mind.”

“Right!” I said. “You've got a
point
.” I'd never seen it
quite
like that before. A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that's one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting—well, that's entirely different.

Now
social
lies are something else again. I don't mind if you say, “I can't dine tonight because I have a business dinner.” That's almost conventional, isn't it?

I once had a marvelous Irish temporary maid whom I was absolutely
impossible
to. I made her tell lies—social lies—on the telephone by the
hour
. “Madam has not returned from lunch….” “Madam is taking a nap and cannot be disturbed….” And if I
really
didn't want to talk to someone: “Madam is out of town.”

After six months she finally left me. And as she was walking out the door, she said, “Goodbye, madam. And now I'm going
straight
.”