As Diana Vreeland once said, “the eye has to travel” and indeed it does. I have lately been feeling like I need an escape, and not just a physical one, but an escape into imagination and fantasy. I want to be captivated by something, to feel and think and see differently. For a couple of hours this past week, I did finally escape into another world, that of Diana Vreeland, the epic editor of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for a collective 40 years. In a documentary that explored her life, raucous and without reservation, I found inspiration in the immense creativity and joie de vivre with which Diana lived her life. The woman had verve and sass, and she sought beauty and welcomed what life brought her.
Anything but a classic beauty, she elevated what she was given to exude style and elegance. It was truly fascinating to witness and think about the great historical changes she witnessed as a child born at the turn of the century to an old firecracker partying at Studio 54. What I loved most, though, was her idiosyncratic, often nonsensical wit and incredible enthusiasm for imagery and fantasy. I suppose one needs to have a sense of reality, but fantasy is necessary to give reality context. It’s vital to dream and seek out things beyond the colloquial.
And speaking of everyday versus elevated perception, who was sitting near us in the theater but Giovanna Battaglia, street style star! For all of you fashion neophytes, just know this woman knows about style, and the entire time I kept thinking, I’m watching all of these designers speak and engage in the spectacle of fashion, and this woman lives it! My eyes really did travel that night.
{Images above are from coffee table tome about DV, The Eye Has to Travel, also the title of the film; I also want to read Allure, her legendary memoir!}
