D.V. IS READY FOR A CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL NOW...

Oh my goodness, love is in the air! The previous ASK D.V. was all recession, mid life crisis and anxiety. Now look my pretties, it's all crushes on boys, lovers, weddings and tutus. Does this mean things are looking up? As mentioned in the previous post, due to the importance of matters of the heart I have referred not only to D.V. by D.V. (quoted in bold) but also to Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight, which contains some of the bits of her life Diana omitted from her memoirs.

Emily said...
Many years ago a boy and I used to gaze at each other whenever our paths crossed. He gently tried but I was otherwise engaged. Almost ten years have passed since we locked eyes amongst friends on London Bridge, Dec. 31 1999, and ever since I haven't stopped thinking about him: v bad.
He's phenomenally gorgeous and gorgeously shy. I know he is presently unattached. Do I write, do I call?

Dear Emily

I cannot begin with D.V.'s advice without blurting out my own first. Please re-read your question and note: he tried but failed, you gazed at each other each time you met, you haven't stopped thinking about him for 10 years, he's gorgeous, unattached and you have a means of contacting him. (Imagine if you didn't know where he was now.) You have to call/email him and use any old excuse - i.e. I just found your phone number after all these years, have you got so and so's number, I'm writing a book about people's experiences of the Millennium -any old crap, if you feel too shy to make it obvious you lurve him. Then say oh by the way do you fancy catching up sometime?

As D.V. would say, "Nothing like a good push!"

Here's D.V. on her first meeting with Reed, her husband: He was the most beautiful man I've ever seen, very quiet, very elegant. I loved all that. I thought it was so beautiful to just watch him." I met him on the Fourth of July at a weekend party in Saratoga, in 1924. I believe in love at first sight because that's what it was. I knew the moment our eyes met that we would marry.

p.s. D.V. insists on knowing the outcome.

Life with Sofia, Gus and Jim said...
HELP...I'm getting married in five weeks...what can I do to look my best?

Well, first of all congratulations! D.V. says of her wedding dress: The bride of this period was the most vulgar bouffant creature, but my dress had a very strict line and a very high neckline, very moyen age. There was lace strapped around my head and face, and the train was all diamante and encrusted with pearls. I love that D.V. still remembers her dress with fondness, as her wedding was a bit of a disaster (story for another day), but she didn't care. She says, I just wanted to marry Reed Vreeland. Nothing could have spoiled my happiness.

If Jane said...
oh...ok i'll be the angel with a dirty face... ;)) what has she said about lovers...;)))

Flirtations are part of life, part of society - if one didn't have these little flings, where would one be?

Oh, but never lose sight of the fact that D.V. only tells us what she wants us to know, and most of that’s embellished! So she only ever mentions Reed, her true love, though he was thought to have had numerous affairs. There is the story of her travelling to Canada to confront a woman she thought she might lose him to. She apparently made her look in the mirror and said, “Look at you, you are young and beautiful and you have everything ahead of you, but I am getting older and I have only my wonderful husband.” This, of course does not come from The Oracle herself but from the biography Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight. Apparently Reed always sent his lovers gardenias floating in a bowl, so if D.V. went into a room and saw them, she knew.

Gaboushka said...
I'm going on a European backpacking holiday for 12 days next week. Can I take my little tutu from COS and my spotty satin Luella pencil skirt? I'm scared I'll be mocked by other travellers in their A-line's and Quicksilver.

This is how D.V. travelled around Europe: We travelled rather luxuriously in our glorious Bugatti with our marvelous chauffeur and my maid from London. They had an Hermes elk hide lined trunk for the boot of their car. So the idea of a backpack may be lost on her. But I do believe D.V. was all for being different en vacances. A story about her (from Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight) on the beach at Southampton: "At a time when women dressed in bathing suits with skirts, Diana startled everyone at the Beach Club by wearing a beige wool jersey one piece bathing suit and a charcoal grey "playsuit", her hair pulled back in a black snood. She paraded onto the sand from the entrance, swinging her legs at the hip, Reed slightly behind her. Teenage girls would giggle and gawk and go home to practice imitations of her."

Remember you can always ask D.V. by clicking on her photo in the sidebar. I leave you with one of my favourite quotes from herself:

I mean, a new dress doesn't get you anywhere; it's the life you're living in the dress, and the sort of life you lived before, and what you will do in it later.