Yesterday Rizzoli Publishing released a book about the legendary editor in chief, Diana Vreeland.

Diana Vreeland Memos: The Vogue Years gives us a look behind the scenes when Vreeland became editor in chief of Vogue in 1963, where she initiated a transformation and shaping the magazine into the dominant U.S. fashion publication.

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.

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.

Buy your own copy from rizzoliusa.com

Tags: Diana Vreeland, Rizzoli New York

Diana Vreeland defrocked fashion, stripping magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar of their haughty stiffness and making way for a more loose limbed era of elegance.

Now in its final days, Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland, traces the legendarily aphoristic editor’s obsession with two seemingly disparate loves, the colour green and Venice.

Housed in the city’s Palazzo Fortuny, the exhibition is a snapshot of a life dedicate to taste and style. Pieces by Yves Saint Laurent, Missoni, Emilio Pucci, Chanel, Irene Galitzine, Valentino, and Paco Rabanne,  culled from both Vreeland’s own closet and private collections, display her love of emerald. Meanwhile books and magazines from the editor’s library remind us of her ability to embrace youth and new ideas.

With its grand setting, Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland seeks to infuse the viewer with the spirit of a lost fashion jewel, so much so that the perfumer Frédéric Malle has even created a sandalwood fragrance to be sprayed at the Fortuny museum — a reference to the editor’s passion for scents.

If you aren’t in Venice this weekend, then no fear – Vreeland mania is set to hit in September when the fantastically amusing documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel goes on general release. Twenty-three years after her death, Vreeland remains an incomparable wit and eye.

Diana Vreeland After Diana Vreeland is at the Palazzo Fortuny until 26 June.

dianavreeland.com

Tags: Diana Vreeland, Diana Vreeland After Vreeland, Federic Malle, Palazzo Fortuny, Venise