Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel

Plot synopsis:
The film features recorded audio and filmed interviews of Vreeland, as well as interviews with colleagues, family, and friends of Vreeland. Beginning with an exploration of Vreeland’s childhood, the film offers a glimpse of fashionable Paris during the Belle Époque, a time when Vreeland had access to exciting and influential friends of her parents, such as ballet dancer Sergei Diaghilev. She even claimed to have ridden with Buffalo Bill Cody, though the documentary makes it clear that Vreeland would occasionally exaggerate for the sake of storytelling.
The film then focuses on Diana’s move to New York City in the 1920s, where she was inspired by the dancing, jazz, and new fashions of the time, and her subsequent move to London with her husband, Reed Vreeland. Here she opened a lingerie shop, thus beginning her career in fashion. Shortly after moving back to New York when war broke out in Europe, Vreeland was asked to do a column in Harper’s Bazaar called “Why Don’t You…?” She quickly became the magazine’s fashion editor and, as such, revolutionized fashion by doing such acts as popularizing the blue jean and the bikini.
Much of the documentary looks at Vreeland’s time at Vogue, where she began working after nearly two-and-a-half decades at Harper’s Bazaar. Vreeland quickly became the editor-in-chief at Vogue, making the magazine into a much-loved artistic publication. The documentary features several accounts from people who worked with Vreeland during this time, including models, photographers, and fellow editors, discussing Vreeland’s drive and her vision for the magazine.
The film ends with Vreeland’s time as a consultant for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which she became after being asked to leave Vogue in 1971, and final recollections of Vreeland and her fashion legacy.

Tags: romantic, philosophical, storytelling, home movie

Review:
An audacious lady who became the First Name of Fashion in "Modern Times ". Her first name Diana is pronounced "Deeanna). Unsure if that was to sound better with Vreeland or was the original pronunciation. It would surprise me not one whit if she suddenly changed it because it went better - that is the audaciousness of who she was.To view this very well done documentary is a sheer delight and an amazing time capsule of women's fashions and a very intimate and up close documentary of the woman who has had the biggest impact of anyone on the planet on women's fashions.You will be highly entertained, laugh often at this most audacious lady who says "Live the life you know you want, make it your own". Who's statements of fact become what she terms "faction" a better story than telling it like it actually was.It is rare to meet someone who so lived their life at full throttle. A fascinating in-depth documentary that includes conversation with Diana, those who worked with her, celebrities, musicians, etc.You cannot help but be mesmerized and riveted. Loads of pictures, covers of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and notable people.Her impact on fashion, photography, creating an experience on the pages of these fashion magazines that challenged, entertained and gave snippets of geography, history and knowledge to the reader was and still is unmeasurable.I am so happy that I enjoyed the full movie experience to this bigger than life Grand Dame. A definite buy when available on DVD - but I do encourage you to see it in the theater.. A feast for the eye. This is an art history of the twentieth century as seen through fashion, its most glittering art form. Weaving together video footage, magazine layouts, and first-hand accounts, the filmmakers trace the life of DV, one of fashion's all-time most imaginative thinkers.Born rich ('but ugly', as her mother would have said) in Paris at the turn of the century, she partied her way to New York. When Carmel Snow noticed her chic outfit in a nightclub, she offered her a job at Harper's Bazaar. Thus began a fabulous self-created career, first at HB through the thirties forties and fifties, and then at Vogue in the sixties. There, she launched photographers like Richard Avedon and David Bailey, and put designers like Yves St Laurent on the map. She discovered an endless succession of models like Verushka and Iman, who turned notions of beauty inside out. And she originated idea of celebrities as models, studding Vogue with wonderful shots of Cher, Mick Jagger, and Jacqueline Kennedy. She also spent staggering amounts of Vogue's money pursuing fashionable subjects around the globe; they she fired her in 1972. She was not idle for long- soon the Metropolitan Museum persuaded her to help launch the Costume Institute. There, she was able to bring her extravagant sense of fashion to a wide audience, and, not incidentally, throw some great parties.The best thing a documentary can do is pick a fascinating subject, and clearly, DV was a LOT of fun. A Who's Who of actors, artists, writers, and fashion luminaries signed on to supply their recollections, both then and now. Her interviews with George Plimpton, Jack Paar, and Dick Cavett are lavishly excerpted, as well as material from her sons and grandchildren. (Her granddaughter's reading aloud from a vintage issue of Vogue is definitely a high point!) The wealth of material here is stunning- and the filmmakers' skill in handling it is a triumph.. enjoyable but annoying. Diana Vreeland: The Eye has to Travel, was an interesting film but a few jarring issues made it hard for me to really enjoy it. Firstly, the decision by the film maker (who I assume is a relative of the subject) to leave unchallenged Ms Vreeland's assertion that she was "not rich". How can anyone how has their clothes tailor-made by Coco Chanel be anything else! Not rich compared to whom, the Vanderbilts? Also the decision not to name any of the talking heads was infuriating. I note one of the other reviewers claims that the child reading from a magazine column was a grandchild of the subject. How did they know that? The print I saw did not identify a single soul. Finally, several of these nameless heads spoke in languages other than English, and none of what they said was translated. Mystifying! Maybe I saw a dodgy version, and all the captions and subtitles left off... Or maybe I am too much of a pleb to be included in the target audience for this film (who are trilingual and have an intimate inside knowledge of the fashion industry and an encyclopeadic knowledge of the physical appearance of dozens of designers, photographers, models and, I assume, hangers on of the fashion world). Bah humbug.. Fascinating Documentary of a Unique Personality. I found this documentary of the life and career of Diana Vreeland to be very fascinating. The journey of her life is conveyed through recorded interviews she game to writer George Plimpton , who was writing her autobiography "D.V.", as well as clips from interviews she gave to Diane Sawyer, Jane Pauley, and Dick Cavett, among others. Additionally, there's interviews with many people that worked with her over the years such as designers, models, photographers, film stars, assistants, and her family. There's many wondrous film clips of the eras and people of her time.The movie covers her personal life and personality to some degree as well. She had a pampered childhood growing up in Europe, but suffered, it seemed, verbal abuse at the hands of her mother who referred to her as her "ugly little monster" and "ugly duckling". Eventually she met her husband Reed Vreeland and entered a marriage that lasted nearly a half century. Before, WWII, she moved to America, and eventually began working for the famed Harper's Bazaar magazine. She quickly rose to become fashion editor, but was notorious for her demanding and rude ways with her assistants, one of which surprisingly was the future movie actress Ali MacGraw.At Harper's, Vreeland displayed many of the characteristics that made her so unique. She was an amazing visionary with seemingly impeccable instincts for fashion and how to transform that onto the pages of the mag. She also had an amazing eye for beauty in the models that were photographed and knew how to accentuate those features of the models that no one else could. Such notables as Lauren Bacall, Cher, Lauren Hutton, Twiggy, Marisa Berenson, Penelope, and Veruschka, all thrived under her watch at Harper's and later Vogue magazine.After many years at Harper's, Vreeland was lured to Vogue to become Editor-In-Chief. It was the 1960's and the freedom and revolutionary spirit of the time were perfect for her. She thrived there as well and added to her legend. In her seventies, she became a lead consultant for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and their Costume Institute, where she staged fantastic exhibitions for the museum.All in all, I was quite fascinated by this detailed documentary on the genius, and the "warts", of a very unique personality who added so much to the eras she lived through.