D.v. [Paperback]

Diana Vreeland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 1997

Diana Vreeland’s best-selling autobiography takes us with her around the globe in the company of royalty, actors, artists, and designers. Throughout, her vivacious conversation is peppered with glittering stories and outrageous pronouncements, displaying fully the talent for perception and persuasion that made her the empress of chic. Here she tells how Buffalo Bill taught her to ride, describes how she redefined the standards of attractiveness with the quirky models she brought to Vogue in the sixties, disparages her own looks, relates her search for “the perfect red,” and discourses on the nature of elegance. Whatever her subject, from backaches to nostalgia, from Paris to New York, from marriage to dinner parties, from Clark Gable to Swifty Lazar, you never want her to stop. For D.V. is unique among memories: a conversation as pleasurable as a perfect wardrobe.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Louise Wilson is the star and co-author of the theatrical hit Full Gallop, a one-woman play about Vreeland. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306807769
• ISBN-13: 978-0306807763
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,247,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SUPER FABULOUS DIVINE FIERCE!!!, October 11, 2003

By 

Duke Marine (Newbury Park, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: D.V. (Paperback)

Ok, so, I picked up this book because it was mentioned in the movie To Wong Foo and I thought, "Well this better be fabulous!"

Boi was fabulous an understatement! Why can't I give this book 6 stars?!?!

This is one of the few books where I can agree with all of the fluffy praise quotes peppering the cover LOL

A simply gorgeous work, Diana Vreeland is a fabulous, fabulous woman! Such taste! Such elegance! Such style! This is a MUST READ for everyone that wants an example of a true lady!

D.V. isn't just about clothes and decorating. While admittingly not a feminist, Mrs. Vreeland is obviously an independent, determined, disciplined woman who is, if not a role model, an inspiration to all!

God, I can't even put into words the qualities of this book that are just overwhelmingly fabulous! Its like anything full of good taste (although, as Diana points out, alittle bad taste is needed sometimes, its NO taste that's truly revolting) and true elegance, it leaves one feeling better about themselves and the world around them.

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eureka!, January 20, 2000

By 

BoyWonder19 - See all my reviews

This review is from: D.v. (Paperback)

After years of work, scientists have finally discovered the cause of homosexuality. It's not your genes, it's not your parents, it's not your hypothalamus...it's this book. The first paragraph hooks you, and the rest of the book takes care of the rest. If you're not shrieking and yearning to redecorate by the time you reach lines like "Pink is the navy blue of India," then you're either illiterate or John Wayne. Plimpton's oral history style gives the book a wonderful rambling spontaneity. A brilliant account of the brilliant life of one of the century's towering cultural figures and fabulists.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the tale of a couture creation in a pret-a-porter world, December 16, 2002

By 

Dickson Miller (South Beach) - See all my reviews

This review is from: D V by Diana Vreeland (Hardcover)

Ms. Vreeland shares her life story using a collection ( not a SERIES--there is no organization to her tales and it WORKS !)of anecdotes and observations that make you rethink your perspective on the world around us. Along the way you begin to piece the fractured bits together and find a stained-glass mural that shows the rich colors and attention to detail that form the rose-colored glasses she, so conspicuously, chooses to accesorize her view of life. The joy she finds from things that strike out at conventional tastes is almost evangelical..Before the third chapter you begin to wonder what ever happened to men who tipped their fedoras to a passing lady or the custom of DRESSING for dinner. You also discover that, beneath the veneer of a trend-hopping fashionista, you are discovering a woman who savors even the smallest details of life as if they were beluga roe or the breezes near the jasmine hedges on the clifftop gardens of the Mediterranean. You will laugh out loud and you'll catch yourself in a nostalgia for a more glamorous era when being on a "best-dressed" list meant you had more than just a lot of money to throw at the salespeople on Madison Avenue. She tells of fitting sessions ( FOR HER NIGHTGOWNS !) and the spring collections between her tangents that lament the demise of "fringe". Some may call her shallow and ungrounded but I think she is " a bit of 'all right' ".I have a first edition hardback that I use to escape the modern world when I have seen too many baseball caps worn backwards that day. The book was the basis for the off-Broadway play "Full Gallop" and is essential for anyone who forgets that fashion, beauty, glamour, and enormous style are the four basic food groups of living "out loud". Pay attention and read every word because the text is peppered with phrases that will become part of your lexicon if you know the difference between 'taupe' and 'beige'.