Style Maven: Diana Vreeland and the Met (Part 6)

Diana Vreeland

As I said in Part 1 of this Style Maven series featuring Diana Vreeland, my quest on #IMFblog has been to examine where trends and social behavior originated as it pertains to fashion and style. I aim to find what fashion was, and what we are turning it into day by day going forward. Diana Vreeland having served as Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at a time when fashion became a powerful tool of expression for women helped her to convey to America a concept of beauty that was aspirational and liberating for all women to follow. Diana Vreeland’s aura is still riddled in the excitement associated with the fashion industry, and the way that we think about fashion is a product of the mind of this visionary figure. That is why this month and next month I choose to delve into her work at the Costume Institute which is another arena of fashion where she brought her inimitable influence setting a standard that we still aim to achieve not just for fashion, but in the field of costume curating. I want to examine what we can learn from DV about style and fashion through her curatorial work. I figure, in light of this year’s exhibition opening, doing so will give us an eye into the difficulty of producing an exhibition, and Vreeland’s thoughts on how to create drama in presentation. In my fashion, one who has style has a recognizable character, and those who understand the character they play in life have the power to produce a life’s story that teaches others what it means to live a fulfilling life. (Photos and text come from the following books: ‘The Empress of Fashion’ by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel’ by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and ‘Diana Vreeland’ by Eleanor Dwight)

The Glory of
Russian Costume
 Exhibition Catalog

The Glory of Russian Costume Exhibition (1977): The Glory of Russian Costume, which would break all box-office records , took place against the background of détente with the Soviet Union. It was one of a series of cultural exchanges arranged by Hoving and an “exuberantly corrupt” undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture on the Russian side. The exhibition could never have happened, wrote Hoving, without the involvement of Dian and the recently widowed Jacqueline Onassis, who had taken an editorial job at Viking Press. Diana, Fred Hughes, and Hoving went to Russia to discuss the show early in 1975. Diana told George Plimpton that her reaction to her new surroundings was love at first sight: "When I'd been in Russia for only forty-eight hours, I thought to myself: of all the countries I've known, if it were my country not to be able to come back to this one would be the most terrible." Her enthusiastic reaction paid dividends. A meeting was arranged with Russian officials far too early for Diana, at nin o'clock in the morning the day after they arrived. She told Hoving to talk to them about "museumy" details like shipping and promised to appear at eleven o'clock. Tension mounted as Hoving managed to extend the "museumy" conversation to a full two hours. But Diana did not let them down. "A minute before eleven the door to the conference room opened and in she swept, radiant in crimson and shiny black, her hair pulled back so tightly it looked like a painted surface, neck arched." Hoving knew she could see very little without her glasses, but realized she had taken them off for her grand entrance. "The Russians blinked first. 'Ah, Mrs. Vreeland, what do you think of the Soviet Union?' It was a kind of Last Judgement moment. Diana breathed deeply. 'Ah marvelous! God! marvelous!' she said. "I have been up walking since dawn, ab-so-lute-ly revelling in the vast beauty of this city. God, the women are so beautiful. I mean these complexions! The land is so vast. So...awe-in-spir-ing! So grand. The women are so gorgeous!'" 

She spent hours patiently sifting through hundreds of drawers, and thousands of costumes immaculately folded away in acid-free paper, impressing Hoving once again with her powers of concentration and her capacity for sheer hard work. "She would praise lavishly - and, in time, would criticize, very gently but with needle-like effect..."

While Hoving choked quietly in the corner at the idea of Diana on an early-morning walk, the Russians fell for her completely. After her peroration Diana was given everything she asked for. She was determined to find a peasant costume that she believed had been the inspiration for the Chanel suit during Chanel's affair with Grand Duke Dmitri. "The item was triumphanlty displayed for her. Diana had been right. There was the garnment Chanel had clearly adapted for 'her' classic design," said Hoving."...By the time Diana Vreeland left the Soviet Union, she had become legends there, too."

Vreeland was enraptured by Russia, a reaction that she used to flatter the Russians and expressed repeatedly upon her return home. "Russia is a land of splendor!" she wrote late in an article for Vogue. "It has a high - enormous sky - it has beautiful houses - it is immaculately clean. They are terribly strong - if you want one word that describes the Russian people, it's strength. They can take their winters and they can take their history - and they have survived it all.:.."

The spirit of detente was rather less in eveidence when the costumes finally arrived in New York, however, accompained by several KGB agents and three Russian curators...If Diana "butted heads" with Stella Blum, she locked horns with her Russian counterparts...In the event the nemused Russian curators gave way, though not without great misgivings, shared by Stella Blum.

The red velvet sleigh with the
green velvet gold-embroidered  robe.

Diana was not greatly interested in the vernacular peasant clothes provided by the Russians...Ironically it was the embroidery, the ribbons, the vivid reds, the pearl detail, and the layering of these clothes that had the greatest impact on American designers, influencing the New York collections a short time later. For this exhibition Diana persuaded the house of Chanel to revive an old perfume, Cuir de Russie (Russian Leather), and went to work on a tape of Mussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky. What the Russians made of Diana's decision to throw furs around to give the idea of savagery not recorded. But once again the exhibition was a blockbuster success, exceeding even the Hollywood show in terms of numbers, And a truce was finally achieved with the Russians curators once the exhibition opened.

The exhibition would display the dress of three classes of Russian society - the peasants; the so-called "rich-peasants," who owned their land and were craftsmen and merchants; and the aristocracy and monarchy during the two centuries before the Revolution. 

The committee for the Party of the Year that accompanied the Russian exhibition was led by Pat (Mrs. William) Buckley and included a shifting cast of social luminaries such as Leonore Annenberg, Lee Radziwill, and Gianni Agnelli. Once Jacqueline Onassis agreed to become president of the committee, the party swelled again in size and social importance: "the biggest one of these things the museum has ever had," according to Warhol, who went with Halston's party in a fleet of limousines. 

Style Watch: Punk: Chaos to Couture

As I study Diana Vreeland, and her contributions to the Metropolitian Museum of Art's Costume Institute, I am constantly consumed with the thought of what it would have been like to have experienced the spectacles she created when in the context of what came before, there were no other exhibitions quite as grandiose as hers. In my fashion, studying history in general is like reading a play. Each era, each decade, each social movement has a story, with men and women as the players (some more dramatic than others), and fashion is what distinguishes on story from the next. Even though historical events are based on factual occurrences in time, our imagination of what it would have been like to have been around then, inspires how we will live today. Fashion IS theater because everyday you are living on this planet is your chance to create your own historical story for future generations to take inspiration from. Would you be part of a story that is worthy of a Met Gala presentation? I think its fascinating to think that we are creating history as we are living, and clothes speak volumes about your role in the play of life. 

With that being said, Vogue has taken a look into the Mets' most recent exhibition, 'Punk: Chaos to Couture', and what is the concept behind the presentation the exhibition. Their debut video series, Voguepedia, looked in depth at how the exhibition and gala was constructed.   Andrew Bolton, Curator of the exhibition, explains above the four manifestations of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) aesthetic explored in the exhibition, and how designers have incorporated the punk aesthetic in their designs throughout the years: 

There is the use of hardware (use of studs, safety pins, zippers) as a symbol of cruelty, anarchy, and chaos. Bricolage, which is how punks would co-op everyday objects, and incorporate them into their clothes as a critique of consumer society, showing how designers today continue to recycle everyday objects and give them new meaning. The use of graffiti is explored and how punks would use it as a vehicle for propaganda to critique on economic stagnation and poverty, using words and statements on clothes to explore political positions. The last manifestation is the concept of destroy, where deconstructionism, ripping and tearing of clothes, was an aesthetic of poverty, and how it has been elevated through the years into high fashion designs.  

Here, highly acclaimed make-up artist, Pat McGrath explains how punk essentially means rebellion and that make-up was used as a sort of war paint. Pat McGrath is the most influential make-up artist in fashion, and was in charge of creating 50 unique punk looks for the ushers if the Met Gala. She describes how she "slipped" into the industry, and what were inspirations for the looks of the evening. 

Guido Palau is one of the most renowned hair stylist in the world and was responsible for creating head treatments for the exhibition. Guido describes punks in the 70s as "the noble dandies of another era". For him moving from Barmouth, England to London, and buying his first pair of bondage trousers, was a time when he realized that the Punks in the city really represented everything that fashion tries to convey to people. He realizes how every international designer has taken a punk aesthetic and used it. 

Style Maven: Diana Vreeland and the Met (Part 5)

As I said in Part 1 of this Style Maven series featuring Diana Vreeland, my quest on #IMFblog has been to examine where trends and social behavior originated as it pertains to fashion and style. I aim to find what fashion was, and what we are turning it into day by day going forward. Diana Vreeland having served as Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at a time when fashion became a powerful tool of expression for women helped her to convey to America a concept of beauty that was aspirational and liberating for all women to follow. Diana Vreeland’s aura is still riddled in the excitement associated with the fashion industry, and the way that we think about fashion is a product of the mind of this visionary figure. That is why this month and next month I choose to delve into her work at the Costume Institute which is another arena of fashion where she brought her inimitable influence setting a standard that we still aim to achieve not just for fashion, but in the field of costume curating. I want to examine what we can learn from DV about style and fashion through her curatorial work. I figure, in light of this year’s exhibition opening, doing so will give us an eye into the difficulty of producing an exhibition, and Vreeland’s thoughts on how to create drama in presentation. In my fashion, one who has style has a recognizable character, and those who understand the character they play in life have the power to produce a life’s story that teaches others what it means to live a fulfilling life. (Photos and text come from the following books: ‘The Empress of Fashion’ by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel’ by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and ‘Diana Vreeland’ by Eleanor Dwight)

American Women of Style Exhibition (1976): After the Hollywood exhibition Diana returned to another subject close to her heart. American Women of Style, which coincided with the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, was an exhibition of the great stylists who had animated and created fashion before the Second World War. André Leon Talley thought that it was her masterwork, “a true expression of her own personal tastes.” He particularly liked the fact that she included Josephine Baker in the show. “This was an important moment; no African-American woman had ever, until then, been placed in the same stylistic league as say, Isodora Duncan.” As well as Duncan and Baker, the women in the exhibition included Rita Lydig, Elsie de Wolfe, Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, and Millicent Rogers. 

Andre Leon Talley helped to get backing from Ebony Magazine to help finance the borrowing of Josephine Baker's costumes, the grandiose Folies-Bergere costumes with their butterfly wings studded with brilliants and trimmed with white plumes, headdresses of ostrich feathers, and outfits in vibrant pink, coral, turquoise, purple and orange. 

They all “created themselves,” said Diana. In one way or another, all the women included had inspired her. They met, said Stella Blum, “on the common ground of excellence,” and all of them “had an inordinate aesthetic sensitivity—a strong creative drive that looked for a perfect expression for their highly charged motivations.” American Women of Style was another box-office success, attracting numbers comparable to The Tens, Twenties, and Thirties.

Vreeland's ten women were not all show; they were also models of strength. Almost all were involved in women's suffrage movements, and although Diana Vreeland resembled some more than others, she undoubtedly saw a bit of herself in each one - the performer, trendsetter, the aristocrat, the carefree socialite, the art patron, and finally the foremost pillar of style. 

Style Maven: Diana Vreeland and the Met (Part 4)

Diana Vreeland

As I said in Part 1 of this Style Maven series featuring Diana Vreeland, my quest on #IMFblog has been to examine where trends and social behavior originated as it pertains to fashion and style. I aim to find what fashion was, and what we are turning it into day by day going forward. Diana Vreeland having served as Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at a time when fashion became a powerful tool of expression for women helped her to convey to America a concept of beauty that was aspirational and liberating for all women to follow. Diana Vreeland’s aura is still riddled in the excitement associated with the fashion industry, and the way that we think about fashion is a product of the mind of this visionary figure. That is why this month and next month I choose to delve into her work at the Costume Institute which is another arena of fashion where she brought her inimitable influence setting a standard that we still aim to achieve not just for fashion, but in the field of costume curating. I want to examine what we can learn from DV about style and fashion through her curatorial work. I figure, in light of this year’s exhibition opening, doing so will give us an eye into the difficulty of producing an exhibition, and Vreeland’s thoughts on how to create drama in presentation. In my fashion, one who has style has a recognizable character, and those who understand the character they play in life have the power to produce a life’s story that teaches others what it means to live a fulfilling life. (Photos and text come from the following books: ‘The Empress of Fashion’ by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel’ by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and ‘Diana Vreeland’ by Eleanor Dwight)

Romantic and Glamourous
Hollywood Design
Exhibition Catalog

Romantic and Glamourous Hollywood Design Exhibition (1975): Once Hoving came around to the idea, Diana went to Los Angeles and embarked on a major search, assisted by costume designer, Robert La Vine. This time, the chief difficulty she encountered was Hollywood’s lack of respect for its own past. Costumes were cut up and reused, and many studios did not keep or catalog them. The people who preserved Hollywood costumes were all too often obsessive private collectors who refused to let Diana over the doorstep, let alone borrow the clothes.

She eventually broke through. Paramount and Warner Brothers had kept their more significant items. The Family of David O. Selznick had preserved the costumes of “Gone With the Wind”. Mary Pickford had somehow managed to hold on to the costumes from all her films and allowed Diana to explore the attic of her house... Mary Pickford had not been quite so successful in hanging on to her curls, which Diana found in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, along with Mae Murray's costume from "The Merry Widow". She was stunned by the the quality of the workmanship. Carmel Snow (Ex-Editor-in-Chief of Harper's Bazzar) and Diana had given the designer Adrian very little support when he moved hrom Hollywood to Seventh Avenue, but Diana raved about him as a costume designer, along with Travis Banton, Wlater Plinkett, and a host of less known names. "The basis was perfect designing and incredible workmanship - the cut of décolletage, the embroidery, the mounting of a skirt, and miles and miles of bugle beads," she wrote. In Diana's view the best Hollywood costumes were as good as anything produced by the couture.

As Eleanor Lambert found out, Diana's method in putting together the Hollywood
show perfectly articulated the essence of an industry that "created a world that never was, that opened a new universe for millions....No woman ever crossed the desert in those chiffons Marlene Dietrich wore in
"The Garden of Allah - but what a way to dream of crossing the desert!"

On her travels around Hollywood Diana met a fanatical collector of movie stills. He allowed her to search through thousands of images until she found costumes she remembered from her youth that had disappeared from view. This resulted in one of the most controversial aspects of the exhibition - Diana'a audacity in commissioning replicas when she was unable to find the original, or where the piece in question was too damaged to have any impact.

Designers who helped with replicas of Hollywood costumes for the exhibition included Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Arnold Scaasi, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo, and Stan Herman. They were fully acknowledged, and every copy was faithfully spelled out in the accompanying catalog (above). But there was a feeling in the curatorial world that it was not done to mix up replicas with originals in this way; that when it came to the point of the difference was not made sufficiently clear; and that it was somehow misleading for uninformed visitors who might not bother to read the small print.

The uniformed visitors did not seem to mind one bit, as they lost themselves in a shimmering world of tinsel and marquee lights. They found Marilyn Monroe on an elephant loaned by Andy Warhol. They saw her skirt catching the breeze in "The Seven Year Itch". They encountered Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and Gretta Garbo. They gazed at Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" with it through galleries scented with "Femme" by Parfumes Rochas to soundtracks from "Top Hat to Dr. Zhivago". Judy Garland sang "Get Happy." "That's the best advice anyone can have ," Diana on the audio guide. Movies were the big trip of the twentieth century and put magic in our lives." They took people to worlds of which they could only dream. "It is about the dreams, the grandeur of Hollywood. It 's Travis Banton taking you across the Sahara in flowing chiffon. It's Queen Christina dressed historically, romantically, the way you'd prefer history to be. That's the idea of Hollywood. Do it Big. Do it Right. Give it Class."

Since Diana herself had a rich imaginative life, she was convinced that American moviegoers did as well. When they went into the dark theaters, they became the characters in the celluloid stories...According to Vreeland, extending fantasies and horizons beyond our wildest dreams was important to Americans, "who could not make it out of their small towns, off the back porch in Kansas."

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"Gianni Versace is his own man. He is not afraid to change. Dreary and safe are not words in his vocabulary. Gianni innovates while others wallow in their beige world." - 'Rock and Royalty: The ever-changing look of Versace's couture, as seen—and modeled—by the kings, queens, mega-models, and jokers of rock & roll'

Style Maven: Diana Vreeland and the Met (Part 3)

Diana Vreeland

As I said in Part 1 of this Style Maven series featuring Diana Vreeland, my quest on #IMFblog has been to examine where trends and social behavior originated as it pertains to fashion and style. I aim to find what fashion was, and what we are turning it into day by day going forward. Diana Vreeland having served as Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at a time when fashion became a powerful tool of expression for women helped her to convey to America a concept of beauty that was aspirational and liberating for all women to follow. Diana Vreeland’s aura is still riddled in the excitement associated with the fashion industry, and the way that we think about fashion is a product of the mind of this visionary figure. That is why this month and next month I choose to delve into her work at the Costume Institute which is another arena of fashion where she brought her inimitable influence setting a standard that we still aim to achieve not just for fashion, but in the field of costume curating. I want to examine what we can learn from DV about style and fashion through her curatorial work. I figure, in light of this year’s exhibition opening, doing so will give us an eye into the difficulty of producing an exhibition, and Vreeland’s thoughts on how to create drama in presentation. In my fashion, one who has style has a recognizable character, and those who understand the character they play in life have the power to produce a life’s story that teaches others what it means to live a fulfilling life. (Photos and text come from the following books: ‘The Empress of Fashion’ by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel’ by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and ‘Diana Vreeland’ by Eleanor Dwight)

The Tens, Twenties,
and Thirties: Inventive
Clothes 1909-1939
Exhibition Catalog 

The Tens, Twenties, and Thirties: Inventive Clothes 1909-1939 Exhibition (1974): The exhibition was called The Tens, Twenties, and Thirties: Inventive Clothes 1909-1939. The real stars of the show were the clothes themselves, chosen by Diana not just for their beauty but for the extent to which they exemplified new ideas: the new freedoms heralded by Poiret; the simple relaxed suits of Chanel, and her embrace of male fashion for the lives of modern women; the craftsmanship and inventiveness of Vionnet, the first to cut fabric on the bias so that it moved with the female body; the wit, artistry, and surrealism of Schiaparelli; the romantic fantasies in lace of the Callot Soeurs; and the Orientalism and the colors of the Fauves and Ballet Russes. Each design represented experiments in length and line that would play themselves out over and over again throughout the twentieth century. There were pieces in the exhibition that Diana remembered well from Europe in the 1930s, lent by other collections at the urging of donors such as Mona Bismarck and Millicent Rogers. Once again Diana called for assistance from every direction, and battled to ensure that each exhibit was beautifully staged and lit. Exhibition visitors wandered through the galleries to the strains of Gershwin, Eric Satie, Stravinsky, and Duke Ellington. Chanel perfume was sprayed in the galleries twice a day. Contemporary paintings, by Guy Pène du Bois and Kees van Dongen among others, helped set the scene.

The importance of this second exhibition was that it showed the clothes that had inaugurated the line of the century, clothes of fantastic workmanship and style interpreted by someone who had worn them herself. 

This time, the reaction was unequivocal. The press called it a “dazzler,” and the designers were enthralled. Apart from remarking that it was the best costume exhibition he had ever seen, Bill Blass was convinced it would have “the most shattering effect on fashion.” 

Valentino, who was closer to French couture than most of those present, was stunned by the Vionnet dresses at close range. The show had such an impact on Issey Miyake that he arranged for it to go to Japan, believing that it would open the eyes of Japanese designers. 

This fashion revolution had liberated women, changed what they wore, how they wore, how they looked and how they felt about themselves. For centuries women had been corseted and covered with long skirts, their legs completely hidden. As Vreeland put it before this time a woman "was a confection of leg-o-bustles into which a body had been squeezed, with a head attached. The dress entered the room, not the woman."

Harold Kota and Richard Martin later wrote: "The foremost accomplishments of Halston in the mid- and late- 1970s seem so clearly predicated on his interpretative engagement with this show." The exhibition was credited with introducing a new generation of New York's designers to the possibilities of the bias cut; and it revealed Diana as a connoisseur as well as  catalyst of fashion. 

It also inspired Irving Penn to shoot a photographic essay (examples shown above): he greatly preferred photographing clothes on uncomplaining Schlappi mannequins to working with temperamental models. The exhibition and and its staging caught the imagination of the public too. 

Actress and interior designer, Elise de Wolfe, was one of Diana's idols, who was more appreciated
for her costumes than her acting in the early 1900s. Above she wears her Schiaparelli cape with Jean Cocteau's design
before she gave it to the Costume Institute.

The Balenciaga show had been a commercial success, with more than 150,000 visitors. This one broke records. Almost 400,000 people went through the galleries, vindicating Diana's perspective, her showmanship, and her taste, and ensuring that there was no further question about her position at the Met.  

Style Maven: Diana Vreeland and the Met (Part 2)

Diana Vreeland

As I said in Part 1 of this Style Maven series featuring Diana Vreeland, my quest on #IMFblog has been to examine where trends and social behavior originated as it pertains to fashion and style. I aim to find what fashion was, and what we are turning it into day by day going forward. Diana Vreeland having served as Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief at a time when fashion became a powerful tool of expression for women helped her to convey to America a concept of beauty that was aspirational and liberating for all women to follow. Diana Vreeland’s aura is still riddled in the excitement associated with the fashion industry, and the way that we think about fashion is a product of the mind of this visionary figure. That is why this month and next month I choose to delve into her work at the Costume Institute which is another arena of fashion where she brought her inimitable influence setting a standard that we still aim to achieve not just for fashion, but in the field of costume curating. I want to examine what we can learn from DV about style and fashion through her curatorial work. I figure, in light of this year’s exhibition opening, doing so will give us an eye into the difficulty of producing an exhibition, and Vreeland’s thoughts on how to create drama in presentation. In my fashion, one who has style has a recognizable character, and those who understand the character they play in life have the power to produce a life’s story that teaches others what it means to live a fulfilling life. (Photos and text come from the following books: ‘The Empress of Fashion’ by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel’ by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, and ‘Diana Vreeland’ by Eleanor Dwight) 

The World of Balenciaga
Exhibition Catalogue

The World of Balenciaga Exhibition (1973): Spanish couturier, Balenciaga, had died on March 23, 1972…After her split from Vogue, curating exhibitions was a great change from Vogue, where Diana had only to pick up the phone to get what she wanted…it had started to look as if she failed her very first test for there was no one on hand to advise her and she had to feel her way…What proved unexpectedly hard, however, was the task that should have been the easiest: persuading friends in Europe who owned Balenciagas to loan them to the Metropolitan Museum…It soon turned out that locating the right sort of Balenciaga from the important moments in his career was only half the battle with Diana only having 6 months till the exhibition opening since having secured her position…As she went through that process for the first time, Diana discovered an enormous amount of unexpected and invisible work, not to mention an aptitude for hustling. She had to talk many people into providing everything for nothing. She and her secretary handled a multitude of details, from clearing permissions, checking the spelling of names, keeping in touch with every donor to the exhibition in the United States and Europe, acknowledging the clothes as they arrived, and finding the right accessories for every outfit not to mention editing, mounting, and grouping the displays.

"After Diana's death in 1989, the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, claimed that "until the spring of 1973, it could be said that the field of costume had been a sleepy and rarefied one...An aura of antiquarianism seemed to enshroud every costume display, and they had, for all intents and purposes, no audience beyond a few specialists." Then Diana Vreeland appeared at the Costume Institute and an entire field was transformed, with "an uncanny sense for drama and style."

…Diana often saw what people thought of as street fashion for the first time in Balenciaga…In the center of the Balenciaga show was "the armour of Charles I on a huge white horse - flamenco music plays faintly and one hears heels and castanets clicking." The designer's perfume enveloped the galleries, which were painted in the master's favorite colors - acid green, magenta and Spanish yellow...To make the exhibit arresting enough to Diana’s standards, Diana hated the Costume Institute's mannequins, maintaining that they were too lifelike, gave her the creeps, and make the museum's costume exhibitions look like a display in Saks. She battled to use mannequins made by the Swiss manufacturer Schlappi, which were taller than the average person, were produced in different finished, and had an abstract quality about them that Diana greatly preferred. Furthermore, she insisted they be as close to the visitors as possible, and behind glass, and should be grouped together above head height for maximum drama. 

The Balenciaga exhibition attracted more than 150,000 visitors and showed just how capable she was; and she had also made a case that benefited them all, for the courtier as artist…In this same year, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) became a benefactor of the Costume Institute, and the ‘Party of the Year’ changed with the focus of its attendees turning towards circles where fashion and high society intersected…This was a most welcome development, not just because the ‘Party of the Year’ brought glamour, and social distinction, but because the strategy was such a success that revenue from par

EDITOR'S LETTER: June 2013

Finally! Consistently WARM weather, at last! In my fashion, after this past Memorial Day, I would say summer has arrived. This past month, there were still days of which I felt it was still a little chilly for one to enjoy the outdoors, but if this past week was any indication, from here on out I think its safe to say that we will soon be lamenting the scorching waves of the sun, itching for cooler weather again to relieve us of suffering from visible sweat stains; but, I digress.

In my fashion, life is a play with no rehearsal. 

I for one will be one person who will make an effort not to complain about the pending hot weather, because in my fashion, I was thoroughly over having to wear more than one layer of clothing before I left the house. Now that summer is a coming, this is the time of year we can literally wake up, throw on a light shirt, some shorts, and your most striking shoes and look fabulous everyday. I personally love going outdoors, and winter makes it so hard for one to do so. I love the green from the trees that offset the beautiful baby blue sky, and pillowy clouds. I adore seeing people enjoying life, and expressing it through their clothes. People are much more bright and inventive with their clothes, and the feel of summer invites all sort of activities where we can play with fashion. 

Four different attitudes, One look: 1) Optimistic 2) Smooth 3) Menacing 4) Haughty 

Keeping with last month's theme, Fashion is Theater, we will continue to explore how to project that innate character that we are to play in life. In my fashion, as Janelle Monae said in her new single, Q.U.E.E.N., "Life is a play with no rehearsal." Today, with social media, we are all documenting our lives, and putting on a show for the internet community. Summer is the perfect time to get outside, take photos, and show off how one enjoys life through your clothes! My love, Dwight (@KenDutchess), always harps on my low social media interaction, and that I can do better to beef up my Instagram interactions and photos, so this month I am going to take his advise, and increase my presence on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. Get ready to see more innovative outfits from myself, and voyeristically experience fashion through #IMFblog, a vision for the future of fashion! Anything that I can do to bring attention to the world of fashion, and change perspectives on what we classify as beauty is the my goal for my social media platforms, so this month I will be itching to hear more from my friends, family, and audience as I present fashion's most singular pieces, looks, historical facts, and sartorial experiences. Just like Vogue's International Editor-at-large, Hamish Bowels says in his series, 'Vintage Bowles', one must be most inventive in their strategy of how to find things, and the 'fashion hunt' is what #IMFblog is all about!

In my fashion, style determines the  character one plays in life. Playing your role well, starts with the look. 

As you know, from my previous Style Maven post, Diana Vreeland is the focus of the theme, Fashion is Theater. A few days ago, I introduced Ms. Vreeland, and all this month I intend on elaborating on her individual Met Gala exhibitions when she served as the Costume Institute's Special Consultant. I was actually shocked when I was doing my research on her to find that there is very little information on the internet regarding specifics about Vreeland's exhibitions, so hopefully the following Style Maven series this month, will educate one about the fantastic vision that Vreeland brought to fashion, and how she emphasized drama is fashion, for drama is entertainment and is what makes fashion most fun and intriguing for all of us.

Bit-O-Inspiro 36

In my fashion this fashion book, 'Rock and Royalty: The ever-changing look of Versace's couture, as seen—and modeled—by the kings, queens, mega-models, and jokers of rock & roll' is too inspiring. Then photos of Kristen McMenamy are my favorite! This book was published in 1997, so its a great walk down memory lane of the 90's.