A look behind the scenes at Diana Vreeland’s Vogue, showing the legendary editor in chief in her own inimitable words. When Diana Vreeland became editor in chief of Vogue in 1963, she initiated a transformation, shaping the magazine into the dominant U.S. fashion publication. Vreeland’s Vogue was as entertaining and innovative as it was serious about fashion, art, travel, beauty, and culture. Vreeland rarely held meetings and communicated with her staff and photographers through memos dictated from her office or Park Avenue apartment. This extraordinary compilation of more than 250 pieces of Vreeland’s personal correspondence—most published here for the first time—includes letters to Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Norman Parkinson, Veruschka, and Cristobal Balenciaga and memos that show the direction of some of Vogue’s most legendary stories. These display Vreeland’s irreverence and her characteristically over-the-top pronouncements and reveal her sharpness about the Vogue woman and what the magazine should be. Photographs from the magazine illustrate the memos, showing her imagination, prescience, and exactitude. Each chapter is introduced by commentary from Vogue editors who worked with her, giving readers a truly inside look at how Diana Vreeland directed the course of the magazine and fashion world.

Personalità carismatica, eccessiva e indiscutibilmente geniale, Diana Vreeland racconta in queste pagine, con straordinaria verve e bruciante ironia, la sua incredibile vicenda umana e professionale. Diana ha sempre reinventato se stessa, e lo fa anche nella sua autobiografia, arditamente in bilico tra realtà e finzione. Dalle sontuose dimore londinesi alla Parigi degli anni trenta, dal jet-set newyorchese alle ribalte più esclusive del mondo, si susseguono gustosi aneddoti e incredibili situazioni condivise con la sua eclettica cerchia di amici: da Coco Chanel a Jack Nicholson, da Andy Warhol a Josephine Baker. Dalla boutique di lingerie di cui era proprietaria, grazie al suo gusto innato per gli abiti e le stoffe, Diana si ritrova a pieno titolo nella redazione di "Harper's Bazaar". E sarà un esordio folgorante: la rubrica Why Don 't You?, da lei stessa ideata nel 1936, riscuote un successo immediato. Ai lettori Diana dispensa sapientemente consigli pratici insieme a idee del tutto strambe, in un mélange originalissimo di estro e ingegno. Nel 1962, Diana Vreeland passa saldamente al timone di "Vogue", dove riesce a dare libero spazio alla sua inesauribile creatività e a dettare lo stile di un'intera epoca. Lo farà fino al 1971, quando la rivista decide di voltare pagina. Da allora fino alla sua scomparsa, nel 1989, è stata la regina incontrastata dell'alta moda mondiale, e la sua vita è diventata leggenda.

Brilliant, funny, charming, imperious, Diana Vreeland?the fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue?was a woman whose passion and genius for style helped define the world of high fashion for fifty years. Among her eclectic circle of friends were some of the most renowned and famous figures of the twentieth century?artists and princes, movie stars and international legends, including Chanel, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Isak Dinesen, Clark Gable, and Swifty Lazar.

Moving from English palaces to the nightclubs of 1930s Paris, the wilds of Wyoming to the exclusive venues of New York high society, D.V. takes readers into this iconic woman's dazzling life, evoking the luxury and brio of an era that encompassed Josephine Baker, England's Queen Mary, Buffalo Bill, and Diaghilev.

Vibrant with the vivid, irresistible voice that elevated every tÊte-À-tÊte and dinner party, D.V. brings this renowned and uninhibited raconteur alive, whether recalling herself as a young girl, her search for the perfect red, her piquant observations about her world, or her abhorrence for nostalgia. Like her legacy, Vreeland's story, told in her own words, is a classic to be celebrated by both loyal admirers and a new generation of culture mavens and style savants.

Legendary fashion maven Diana Vreeland at the urging of her editor Jackie O authored a classic volume in the 1980s on the quality of "allure" in fashion and in life. Now back in print, this new edition features a foreword from the incomparable fashion designer Marc Jacobs. Throughout Allure, Vreeland lends her famous knack for turning a phrase to an astonishing array of fashion, celebrity, and fine art photographs. Featuring images of such luminaries as Maria Callas, Gertrude Stein, and Marilyn Monroe shot by superstar photographers such as Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, and Richard Avedon Allure is poised to deliver Vreeland's unparalleled point of view to a whole new generation.