I'm just rereading this, having just bought another copy, finding a perfect used one for a few cents.
It may be the most fun autobiography ever, and I was just thinking it's perfect for someone who normally avoids non-fiction. Vreeland was first famous as a fashion editor (Harper's Bazaar and Vogue), and then as the founder of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she lived an amazing life. (She fell into her first job by accident: The famous editor Carmel Snow saw her out dancing one night and was so taken with her chic outfit that she called and offered Vreeland a job.) The book is clearly pieced together from interviews, so it's entirely conversational, chattily intimate, often funny.
She knew an astounding range of people: Coco Chanel, Elsie Mendl, Edward VIII, Cole Porter. I was thinking of Bennett's Uncommon Reader, where the fictional Queen Elizabeth thinks wistfully of others who might have had a bigger bite of the apple - that is, a broader, more fun existence. That's Diana Vreeland.
She herself implies that her stories may be exaggerated - but hugely fun. I can't imagine how many times I've re-read it, and I pick up extra copies in case I'm moved to present some lucky person with one.
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