THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL...

It's been rather a long time since we talked about Diana Vreeland here, hmmm? In fact this year has been quite DV intensive for me, as Lisa Immordino Vreeland (who is married to DV's grandson Alexander - who I met! Wonderful suit, excellent shoes, lovely man) has been rolling out her project on DV: The Eye Has to Travel. First, I missed a screening of the film back in February, then I went to Venice to see the exhibition at the Fortuny museum. I then, through being away or unavailable missed a whole load of further screenings, bought the book, perused it, missed another couple of screenings, went to a talk on DV hosted by Alexander Vreeland and the wonderful Justine Picardie; who it would be announced just days later is the new Editor-in-Chief of UK Harper's Bazaar, which is amazing, thrilling news that DV would approve of greatly I'm sure. A very apt appointment indeed. (It is now amusing to recollect myself that evening going, "So what have you been up to lately Justine? Are you working on anything interesting?" when the epic news was about to be announced. She was the soul of discretion!)

But the film. Never has a film screening so eluded me - it was like a sick joke. Every time I was away, or I missed the email, or I couldn't go - until a few days ago I squeezed into one of the final press screenings prior to the release of the film next week.

If you're reading this blog then the chances are that you're more than familiar with the world of DV. The film tells her story, charmingly, and if you're a DV freak comme moi and have heard a lot of those stories before, it's lovely to hear them straight from the horse's mouth - like the languor in the lips story from David Bailey and Penelope Tree, both still giggling and wide eyed with disbelief/frustration/awe in the recollection of it. What I find fantastic is that for people who were not previously DV freaks this will all be new - it will, to paraphrase DV, "knock them in the eyeballs, give them what they don't know they want yet." Finally, everyone will get what/who I've been going on about for the past twenty years! (Dies happy.)

Lisa Immordino Vreeland has said that in researching the book, she realised that DV's particularly visual story needed a three-dimensional visual platform to be properly conveyed. As the film begins there is a fabulous montage, kind of a tumbr-esque sketchbook collage with pages of her work mixed with snippets of interview, which is very effective. The film is pieced together from the recordings of DV talking to George Plimpton when compiling her memoir DV, which are available to watch online, but in very bad quality. There are some parts that are DV, others taken from the memoir are voiced by actress Annette Miller, who does a pretty good job. There is archive footage of DV mixed with recollections from family, friends and former employees. There is a tantalising snippet of early home video taken at the family's upstate NY home in Brewster. I would have loved to see more of that, but it probably doesn't exist.

I'm glad that the second generation has taken this on. The impression I have is that it was not easy to be the sons of an icon, but as Alexander Vreeland said, it was fun to be her grandson, so the distance of a generation makes it a very different film perhaps. But you get a hint of the strong underlying emotions when DV's son Frederick (Frecky) talks about her never acknowledging his success in his military career. Totally reminding me of Granny Dragon there, maybe that's why I picked up on it. The English stiff upper lip (DV has said she received a very British upbringing from her much adored father - no outward emotion) has a lot to answer for. But back to work: watching the film there is no denying DV's major influence on fashion, on media, on culture, on how we digest and consume creative content in general. The film shows this very well, actually just lays it out like a fact. There's no need to shout about it: There. You have all the pages with Lauren Bacall, Anjelica Houston, Veruschka, Penelope Tree, the first photo of Mick Jagger that UK Vogue turned down first, the Irving Penn flowers, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood... She saw it coming: the twenties, the sixties, the cultural revolution - and she was able to channel the times for the public to understand and be inspired by.

Woven through all this is DV as self-creation. Of taking what was an unlikely start and through sheer creative force and imagination, making of herself something unique and irreplaceable.

One DV quote from the film I had never heard before. It's from the George Plimpton interviews but I hadn't remembered it. She says,

"There's only one very good life, and that's the life that you know you want and you make it yourself."

{The Eye Has to Travel is released in the UK next Friday 21 September. Here's the trailer. If you're in London there's a premiere screening at Curzon Mayfair on Wednesday 19 September, plus a Q&A with the director Lisa Immordino Vreeland}

Bonus! In honour of the release of The Eye Has to Travel I'm conducting a special, once in a blue moon edition of Ask DV. If you need to be reminded of how it works, see here. Get your questions in to The Oracle now!

VREELAND IN VENICE...

I'm two weeks behind and still have loads to show from Venice. But it's about time I got to the point.

This year, as it sometimes does, my birthday fell on Mothers' Day. (In the U.K. but not the rest of Europe.) All props to mums but I don't have one and I'm not one - so trying to celebrate your birthday when everyone around you is celebrating mum-ness can be a little... grim?

So this year I took positive action. I'd wanted to try and go to Venice in March to see the Diana Vreeland exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny anyway. Throw in my birthday and some good friends and an escape plan was hatched.
I got on a plane on the morning of my birthday, was met at the airport in Venice by sweet friends and an hour later we were at the DV exhibition.

If you've ever been to Palazzo Fortuny you'll know that the main room is beautiful and atmospheric - hung on all sides with heavy draperies, with low lighting and glimmering pieces of art; even if it was empty it would strike you as special. But this time it had Diana Vreeland's clothes and personal memorabilia displayed in cabinets: all her shoes (always the same style made by Dal Co. in Rome) lined up neatly side by side on a tooo higgghhh shelf, the originals of family photographs and portraits of her I've seen reproduced in books a million times, a huge glass case filled with Harper's Bazaars and Vogues from her time working there. It was almost a shock to see how modern some of the covers from the thirties or fifties looked. The exhibition is intentionally staged not in chronological order but as a narrative, perhaps to place the importance on imagination first and foremost, rather than as a straight up retrospective.

The second floor is more to do with curation than with Diana Vreeland somehow. It was the curators' interpretation of what she represents, is the best way I can describe it. In any case I got the feeling they'd had free reign with this floor, and while it was interesting, sometimes the connection with DV was a little tenuous - though I'm never going to complain about seeing beautiful clothes. Every decade she influenced is represented in some way. Another possibility is that this floor relates to DV's work at the Metropolitan Costume Institute, where she freed up the way exhibitions could be curated and displayed: on entering the room you're greeted by a large white calico covered horse {here} placed with some 1960s Pucci and Missoni - a triple reference by the curators Judith Clark and Maria Luisa Frisa: one, to the infamous Tahiti shoot where DV sent photographer Norman Parkinson in 1965 with strict orders to shoot a picture of a beautiful white horse with a long tail, plaited to the ground using pounds of fake Dynel hair she gave him (DV's favourite prop in the '60s). Upon arriving in Tahiti the crew discovered there wasn't a single white horse on the island. The second reference is to her Costume Institute exhibitions where she would always place a huge prop at the entrance, to set the scene. For her Balenciaga exhibit she used a 17th century white horse, but here the horse is Italian (apparently!). And thirdly, choosing Pucci and Missoni clothes from the sixties to remind us that the exhibition we're seeing is in Italy. (I'm not sure the casual visitor would have picked up on all that!)

At the end of the exhibition (right about the time I overheard two guards discussing 'that girl who keeps snapping away with her cellphone, I've told her time and again not to take pictures' - sorry guards, but you didn't threaten to kick me out!) was the most beautiful display against the stripped, layered, mottled wall of the palazzo: two Fortuny delphos gowns in silvery gold, a Schiaparelli cape from Judith Clark's personal archive and this shimmering soft gold Chanel tailleur from the twenties.

All in all, a fantastic birthday treat!

{Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland is on at Palazzo Fortuny, Venice until 25 June (closed Tuesdays).}

D.V. RETURNS...

First of all, apologies for taking so long to get back to you. D.V. was on an extended sojourn at the Paris Crillon; something to do with The Collections, or Fittings, or Appointments with her vendeuse at Chanel. Something terribly important anyway. But she’s here now, rouged to the hilt and weighted with jewels, ready to answer some questions.

Has anyone seen the newly published re-edition of Allure? (The only book related to D.V. I do not yet possess - I've been holding out for a first edition.) It’s much smaller than the original book, with a foreword by Marc Jacobs. I thought M.J. was a very strange choice to write the foreword, though I suppose they were looking at it from the ‘Andy Warhol of our time’ angle. I only flipped through the book in the Claire de Rouen shop in Charing Cross Road the other day, but I found myself agreeing with what M.J. was saying - that what he and D.V. share is a love of unconventional beauty and character; of feeling that something is more interesting and maybe even more beautiful for that. I think that’s why I like D.V. so much too.

So, ready? For anyone not familiar, the Ask D.V. feature is where I use Diana Vreeland’s memoirs to answer readers’ questions.

Mia's sister said...
Dear D.V., I'm getting tired of following new fashions, as most of them are already a dejà vu to me, I saw them already and now I think they do nothing at all for me. As I am not getting any younger, can I just stick to what I really like and ignore fashion?

 Mia's sister

Funny you should say that Mia’s sister, as D.V. herself says (about the thirties and revival of), “It’s always dejà vu to me, but then a lot of things are. The point is that it was dejà vu to me then.”
D.V. herself dressed in a kind of uniform during the Vogue years when she was older.: very minimalist, the same pieces in beige or black, and her Verdura cuffs.

D.V. also said, “The only real elegance is in the mind. If you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.”

HOW COULD I...

Forget about D.V.? She's been languishing on that crimson sofa for weeks, elaborately maquillaged and primed to hold forth. She is not going to be amused about this.

Of course I have been tirelessly searching through her memoirs for the answers all this time. Leave any more questions in the comments and nuggets of wisdom will be dispensed shortly - after I've been firmly berated from the afterlife.

MADAME VREELAND WILL SEE YOU NOW...

D.V. hasn't visited us for ages, I know. Truthfully this is because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to look up the answers to your questions in my well thumbed copy of her memoirs. But since I have lost my voice completely, it seems a perfect time to commune with the lacquered one. If I can't speak, she certainly can. And I hope she's in a good mood with me since I asked English Heritage to put a blue plaque on her house in London. {No, it cannot be red. It would probably be the wrong sort of red anyway.}

For the uninitiated, here's how it works. You ask D.V. a question you would like to have answered. It can be anything, because she knows everything. (See previous ones here.) I will then scurry away and leaf diligently through D.V.'s memoirs until I find the answer to your question.
{Questions left on previous posts will be answered now.}

ONWARD!

{photo credit: I can't find a credit but the image is called DianaAndy so it's probably Andy Warhol}

D.V., 17 HANOVER TERRACE...

Yesterday afternoon I was in Marylebone and had a bit of time to kill. It was the perfect opportunity to walk through Regent's Park and after all this time, have a look at the house Diana Vreeland lived in between 1929 and 1937.

The only people I saw in Hanover Terrace were workmen and chauffeurs, who were milling around outside some of the other houses. I got a few looks as there's no reason to walk up the terrace unless you live there or are visiting someone. Luckily they were all at the other end of the terrace, which is made up of 20 houses facing the park. I counted at least three blue plaques on houses marking notable people who had lived there: H.G. Wells was one, but there was no plaque to be seen on D.V.'s house. Maybe I should start a campaign to get her one. It would have to be red though, and that probably wouldn't fly with English Heritage.

The house and the whole terrace looked unoccupied as those extremely wealthy areas of London often do - I'm sure the owners are off on their superyachts somewhere or at one of their other properties. When I got to number 17 I stood and stared for a while, imagining how it was when D.V. lived there. (I didn't have my camera, so had to Hipstamatic it for posterity.)

D.V. and her husband left England in 1937 but there is a story in her memoirs about revisiting the house late at night in 1978 with Jack Nicholson and David Bailey, as you do. She talks about the house in detail, but it's too long to post here, and of course I only saw the outside. All the houses in the terrace are identical but when she lived there she put a topiary bear on either side of the front door. The front door was "pickled, every surface removed and then polished." The little hand door knocker she bought from someone whose door it was on in St. Malo. Orange trees were at the windows, which overlook the park and the ducks, and they would hear the lions roar in the zoo at night...

{Update: I went ahead and proposed a blue plaque for D.V. to English Heritage!}

D.V....

D.V. is back with answers to your questions. For those not familiar with it, Ask D.V. is where you can ask D.V. a question and I will consult her memoirs so she can in turn, impart some of her considerable wisdom to you.

You can click on the link to the left any time to leave her a question. Here are the latest...

Anonymous said...

Dear DV,
I see you have a lot of work with the elements of the East, can you explain to me the oriental influence in your work and how you combine elements of Eastern and western culture?

D.V. read and re-read The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book. She said; "Some people have their Proust; I have my Pillow Book." She speaks of having had a very strong Kabuki streak, which is obvious in her appearance. She says of her first visit to Kyoto; "Under the pine trees there I felt an element of the centuries as I'd never felt anywhere before in my life.[...]What's extraordinary is the way everything modern fits in with everything old. It's all a matter of combining. There's no beginning or end, only continuity."


Dear DV
I have a question and a wish.

Question: I am working on a very important project with a guy, whom I am very much attracted to; but, he has a girlfriend. What do I do? And how do I know if he likes me?
Wish: I want him to become my boyfriend.
Thanks, signed, Michelle (Sitting and Waiting)

D.V. says...."I believe in love at first sight because that's what it was (when she met her husband Reed). I knew the moment we met that we would marry. I simply assumed that - and I was right. We became friends, as they say."


Bombay Beauty said...

So many questions I want answered. But here's what's on my mind now. How does one maintain serenity when traveling? I love to travel, but find myself easily frazzled by silly things (having to carry an extra bag, or check in when I didn't want to), although I'm completely unperturbed by semi-disastrous events (canceled flight? bad weather? crowds? long queues? all competitive sports and chances to excel...)

Amongst D.V.'s travel disruptions were: Her hotel, the Vier Jahreszeiten, being the location of 14 murders, 3 floors above hers during the Night of the Long Knives (allegedly), the exile of the entire court of Spain to the hotel she was staying at and the outbreak of WWII causing her to cut short her couture fittings in Paris at Chanel and take the last passenger boat out of Europe. None of this seemed to put her off much - she apparently pushed past the Nazis at the Vier Jahretzeiten saying, "Excuse me, excuse me, I've got to get to my bath."

Emily said...

A question and a wish as well;

Will the sadness that I was filled with last year come back when I start school again?
I wish that I will be able to fulfill my self properly creatively and stop this routine of the physical and mental tiredness that school creates within me.

D.V. on school: "It's the one time in my life I've always regretted - fighting my way through the place...And those goddamn gongs! Everyone knew where to go when the gong went off except me, but I didn't know whom to ask. I didn't know anybody, I didn't know anything - I couldn't speak." She stayed for three months and then left for dance school, where she thrived. I find it comforting to know that even the great D.V. went through that.


anna said...

Dear Miss V.
Will I ever finish my PhD?
That is my only wish.

Oh, Anna, this is a hard one. So much so that I had to resort to opening the book at random and seeing what phrase jumped out. Which was; "She was irresistible. Absolutely."


{left photo is the cover of the Sotheby's brochure for the sale of some of her estate, the other credit I don't know.}

READY?..

Someone gave me a good, thoughtful question for D.V. recently. If anyone has any more, leave a comment here. I prefer to do a few at a time - an audience with The Oracle happens rarely - and sometimes she sends me away; something about the champagne I proffer being inferior.

I know, you can ask her about your wishes...

{photo - Harry Benson (thank you N)}

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.

D.V....

D.V. will be fashionably late in responding to your tellement juicy questions. We had a little glitch with celestial communication yesterday (i.e. a powercut in the 'hood meant D.V.'s humble transcriber was unable to retrieve your questions). Also, owing to the nature of the questions mostly regarding matters of the heart, I have had to bring in/out?! the big guns: not only am I referring to D.V.'s memoirs, but to Eleanor Dwight's tome on D.V. and Diana Vreeland, Bazaar Years by John Esten.

See you this afternoon for tea in the drawing room.

SHE'S BACK...

I think it's that time again. Yes, I've just had word from her maid, Yvonne. Joseph the masseur has been, she's spent five hours in her bathroom and has had a few preparatory champagne cocktails. The cheeks and ears are rouged to perfection, the blue black hair lacquered into an unmoving helmet; the Verdura cuffs and other jewels are in place, the cigarette ready to be held aloft in blood red nailed hands. The cushions have been arranged on the red floral sofa for maximum comfort and the air is scented with Rigaud candles.

Yes, Madame Vreeland will receive you now.

Ask her (almost) anything and she will answer because she is the font of all wisdom. {For previous Ask D.V.s and rules of engagement look here.}

{photo credit unknown}

D.V. SPEAKS...

Some very juicy questions for D.V.! Bloody hell: recession, pre-mid-life crisis, boy trouble, work/life balance...let’s consult The Oracle and see what she comes up with.

{All quotes in the answers are not the result of a candlelit seance but are from the book D.V. by Diana Vreeland, published by Da Capo Press - and well worth buying by the way}


Bombay Beauty said...

Dear DV,

I think I'm in the midst of a pre-mid-life crisis. To wit, I feel generally anxious at most times, don't want to get out of bed, and none of my usual remedies seems to work. How do I cure it?

BB

D.V. says: “All my life I’ve never gone out before lunch.[...]"This started as a form of laziness, but now I believe totally in metabolism." And; “A good massage - that’s what I believe in! It’s all we need. We’d live forever! My dear, it’s the ABC’s.”


Anonymous said...

Dear DV,

Sorry to bother you with such a huge question, but how do I manage my anxiety about impending recession?

Mia

D.V. describes the thirties - the period between the start of the Depression and the outbreak of WWII: “Everything was weakening...I knew that we were heading towards rien.” Funnily enough that period also seems to have been the most exciting for her. She talks about loving her clothes from Chanel and Schiaparelli, travelling all over Europe, and in the US going out to illicit speakeasies every night, where you’d find everyone from high society to gangsters and their molls downing pints and pints of gin.
D.V. says, of The Abbaye, a favourite speakeasy she frequented in 1931, during the Great Depression and before prohibition was repealed; “It was after the Crash, but it was still a very opulent time in New York.” But since boozing isn’t your thing:

She also says; “Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.”


Anonymous said...

Dear DV,

I am absolutely smitten by this one boy...but sometimes it takes him forever to reply to my sms's...and then I panic...
How do I stop myself from panicking??

nb

Oh dear, D.V. has taken quite a while to respond - don’t take it the wrong way! Hmm. I think D.V. would find “social lying” perfectly acceptable - and not responding to texts for ages is a subtle manipulative form of that. Or a sign of laziness, which also gets the D.V. seal of approval I’m afraid. But she did have her own made up form of yoga. Try it when panic sets in:
“Relax your arms and your legs. [Ed note: switch off your phone!] Close one nostril with your hand and breathe in. Release it. Now close the other nostril and breathe in...and repeat about 20 times....What you’re getting is circulation in your head...One minute can change the whole body.”


mes petits secrets said...

Dear DV,

How do you balance your personal life and work? I fear becoming one of those ageing bitter magazine editors who always put her job first and now has no friends or companions, just a bitchy reputation.

MC

D.V. says: “I think people forget that I have a family.” [D.V. had two sons - Timmy and Frecky.] “In London people never thought of me as having any children. They thought I was only involved with clothes - and I was. But the family was very close. On lunchtimes at Vogue: “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.” Then, "I have wonderful friends of my generation, but I've never made a fetish of it."

Oh, D.V.'s transcriber is feeling very tired now and hopes that wasn't all an insanely confusing muddle. Please leave any further questions for D.V. in the comments...

ASK D.V....

I'm going to forgive you for not picking up on the new Ask D.V. feature, because I buried news of it at the end of a rambling post which began by telling you not to read it, then got busy and forgot about it for a bit.

So anyway: relaunch!

I've re-read La Vreeland's memoirs D.V. so many times that it's now firmly lodged in my subconscious. It's so full of snippets of fabulous wisdom that I feel I could summon her advice on any given subject at all.

So the idea is that you leave a comment - at any time, on any post - only remember to put "I'd like to ask D.V." or "Dear D.V." or whatever so I don't get confused. Then ask her about whatever troubles you; I will consult the oracle and respond. Like this from Rose*:

Rose said...

Fun! Dear DV- How can I cure the sore throat I seem to have developed from excessive weekend drinking and only sleeping during the day?

Lola Is Beauty said...

This is all straight from the horse's mouth (D.V.'s memoirs): D.V. says: "There's no drink that kills, except the drink you didn't want to take, and there's no hour that kills except the hour you stayed after you wanted to go home."

And, "All my life I've never gone out before 12 noon." So you're OK there.

She also recommends Tiger Balm and Ginseng Tea for your throat, but the most amazing hangover cure is this: "Soak a sponge in ice cold water and press it against your gallbladder [to reduce swelling after overindulging]. Never lose sight of your gallbladder!"

See? She is the oracle. I'm afraid she doesn't say how to locate your gallbladder...

You can ask D.V. about anything you like, not just fashion - after all as well as pretty much inventing fashion as we now know it, she lived through two world wars, the Great Depression and the invention of polyester.

*{Thank you Rose - hope you don't mind me re-printing your comment}

Red photo: unknown source
Other photo: Bob Colacello

CATCHING UP...

I'm always aware that I mention things here that I'm going to do and then I get busy and - poof, they're gone, never to be spoken of again. So this post is a collection of such things; call it a rainy day clear out before moving on (and feel free to not bother reading it)...

* The tagline: You see, it's not there anymore. I still can't decide, I need more cake and pondering time. But don't worry the old one is stored away safely.

*Bed re-upholstery: The Josef Frank fabric I wanted is £100 per meter and I need about five meters. Then I went and bought a half derelict building which needs complete renovation so the bed and all other home projects have to wait. Forever probably.

*The cool old lady in the cafe: After I mentioned her and people encouraged me to speak to her I did.not.see.her for over a month. I was convinced she'd died after asking around and no one had seen her either. How's that for a lesson on seizing the day? It turns out she is not dead. She must have spent August at her country house or something because she's back in her autumn uniform of tweed suits, chunky boots and cool hats - but I'm still too scared to speak to her. I smiled at her yesterday and she scowled back briefly. I think it's progress.

{Here are some pictures I forgot to post in case you're getting bored of reading}

*The Rivoli Ballroom: We finally went there last weekend and it was amazing! I wanted to show it to Anna so first of all we just popped in to say hello, then planned to go back for one drink and ended up staying until the end. Anna took some cool pictures. It was Salsa night - very entertaining to see all sorts: fat, thin, young, old, black, white, professional dancers, two left footers, fully dressed up or in jeans - not caring in the least about who they ended up dancing with. It made for some amusing combinations sometimes but that was all part of the attitude free atmosphere. It's so beautiful there. The plan now is to go there all the time while it still exists.

*The rue Charlot gossip (as someone guessed) was that the entire area is up in arms because the French version of X-Factor/Pop Idol/whatever, Star Academy has set up office in rue Charlot, thus dramatically lowering the tone and causing mass consternation amongst art gallery and trendy boutique owners. I was told about this before arrival (apparently there was to be some kind of emergency meeting while I was there about it). Then, while I was there, everyone I spoke to mentioned it in hushed, disapproving tones.

Ah, that feels better. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, martini nights have commenced chez moi, except mine are totally lethal, thus tricky on week nights. I leave you with a quote from Diana Vreeland; who I feel can be relied upon for a quote about pretty much anything - hence her new status as The Oracle of the sidebar. Ask her advice in the comments and she will respond.

D.V. says: "It was the martini era. In those days people would get out of the car to see you home, and they'd weave around a bit and fall down on the sidewalk; and inevitably the chauffeur or taxi driver would come after them. It was so appalling, the martini of the twenties. If I gave you some gin with a drop of vermouth that wouldn't cover the head of a pin, that would be the martini. The people who drank them were carried home, usually unconscious." {source: D.V.}