simply divine Ms. Vreeland!

"Why don't you... wash your blond child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?"- Diana Vreeland

Harper's Bazaar 1937-1962Her publishing career began in 1937 as columnist for Harper's Bazaar. In 1937, the Vreelands moved from London to New York City. They found New York City to be extremely expensive. Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, was impressed with Vreeland's clothing style and asked her to work at the magazine. From 1937 until her resignation, Diana Vreeland ran a column for Harper's Bazaar called "Why Don't You?". One example is a suggestion she made in the column, "Why don't you.... Turn your child into an Infanta for a fancy-dress party?"  According to Vreeland, "The one that seemed to cause the most attention was **** "[Why Don't You] [w]ash your blond child's hair in dead champagne, as they do in France." Vreeland says that S.J. Perelman wrote a parody of it for the New Yorker magazine that outraged her then editor Carmel Snow

. Diana Vreeland "discovered" actress Lauren Bacall in the nineteen forties. A Harper's Bazaar cover from the early forties shows Lauren Bacall posing near a Red Cross office. Based on editor Vreeland's decision, "[t]here is an extraordinary photograph in which Bacall is leaning against the outside door of a Red Cross blood donor room. She wears a chic suit, gloves, a cloche hat with long waves of hair falling from it". Vreeland was noted for taking fashion seriously. She commented in 1946 that "[T]he bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb". Vreeland disliked the common approach to dressing that she saw in the United States in the forties. She detested "strappy high heel shoes" and the "crêpe de chine dresses" that women wore even in the heat of the summer in the country.
Poor, darling fellow - he died of food. He was killed by the dinner table.

 Until her resignation at Harper's Bazaar, she worked closely with Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Richard Avedon, Nancy White and Alexey Brodovitch. Diana Vreeland became Fashion Editor for the magazine. Richard Avedon said when he first met Diana Vreeland and worked for Harper's Bazaar, "Vreeland returned to her desk, looked up at me for the first time and said, 'Aberdeen, Aberdeen, doesn't it make you want to cry?' Well, it did. I went back to Carmel Snow and said, 'I can't work with that woman. She calls me Aberdeen.' And Carmel Snow said, 'You're going to work with her.' And I did, to my enormous benefit, for almost 40 years." Avedon said at the time of her death: '"She was and remains the only genius fashion editor."

 In 1955, the Vreelands moved to a new apartment which was decorated exclusively in red. Diana Vreeland had Billy Baldwin[disambiguation needed] decorate her apartment. She said, "I want this place to look like a garden, but a garden in hell."Regular attendees at the parties the Vreelands threw were socialite C.Z. Guest, composer Cole Porter and British photographer Cecil Beaton  In 1957's Paramount movie musical Funny Face, the character of Maggie Prescott (as portrayed by Kay Thompson) was based on Vreeland   

In 1960, John F. Kennedy became president and Diana Vreeland advised the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in matters of style. "Vreeland advised Jackie throughout the campaign and helped connect her with fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who became chief designer to the first lady." "I can remember Jackie Kennedy, right after she moved into the White House. It wasn't even like a country club, if you see what I mean-plain." Vreeland occasionally gave Mrs. Kennedy advice about clothing during her husband's administration, and small advice about what to wear on Inauguration Day in 1961.  

In spite of being extremely successful, Diana Vreeland made a small amount of money from the Hearst Corporation, which owned Harper's Bazaar. Vreeland says that she was paid eighteen thousand dollars a year from 1937 with a raise finally in 1959 of one thousand dollars. "San Simeon must have been where the Hearst money went, I certainly never saw any of it."  Vogue 1963-1971 and the Metropolitan Museum of ArtAccording to some sources, hurt that she was passed over for promotion at Harper's Bazaar in 1957, she joined Vogue in 1963. 

The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it. 

 She was editor-in-chief until 1971.Vreeland enjoyed the sixties enormously because she felt that uniqueness was being celebrated. "If you had a bump on your nose, it made no difference so long as you had a marvelous body and good carriage."    During her tenure at the magazine, she discovered the sixties "youthquake" star Edie Sedgwick. In 1984, Vreeland explained how she saw fashion magazines.

Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.

"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. It must have been 1966 or '67. I published this big fashion slogan: This is the year of do it yourself. E]very 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!'"

 Balenciaga did the most delicious evening clothes. Clothes aren't delicious any more.    

After she was fired from Vogue, she became consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1971. By 1984, according to Vreeland's account, she had organized twelve exhibitions.Artist Greer Lankton created a life size portrait doll of Vreeland that is on display at the museum.   Later years In 1984, Vreeland wrote her autobiography, D.V.. At age 86, she died in 1989.