Museo Fortuny

Fortuny Museum

SPRING AT PALAZZO FORTUNY. Diana Vreeland. After Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland was born into the Dalziel family in Paris in 1903 of an English father and American mother. While still young, she moved with her family to New York, but Paris, London and Europe generally would remain pivotal in the formation of her sensitivity. A sophisticated socialite, she became Mrs. T. Reed Vreeland in 1924. In 1936, she was discovered by Carmel Snow, who saw her dancing one evening at the St. Regis wearing Chanel. Thus began her work with Harper’s Bazaar”, of which she became fashion editor in 1939. Meticulous and visionary at the same time, she invented a profession, and it was fashion that followed her. In 1962, she moved to the US edition of “Vogue”, of which she became editor-in-chief the following year. She was fired from Vogue in 1971, but by the following year she had already been invited by Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, to work as Special Consultant at the Costume Institute. After the revolution at “Vogue” in the 1960s, her period at the Met was also marked indelibly by the style of her fashion exhibitions. She died in New York in 1989. At her memorial service, Richard Avedon said of her: “Diana lived for imagination ruled by discipline. No one has equaled her”.