Read Online D.V. by Diana Vreeland - Free Book Online Page A

dying for twenty years of syphilis.
    One snowy Saturday afternoon, the bell rang. I went to answer the door, and there she was standing like a woodsman with a big bunch of bright scarlet gladiolas slung on her shoulder—in the middle of winter, with snow up to your hip. Roaring with laughter, she said, “I brought you some red flowers for a red room,” and she threw them at me as if to say, “Good God, I’m glad to get rid of these!”

CHAPTER SIX
    I was always fascinated by the absurdities and the luxuries and the snobbism of the world that the fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone. Very few people had ever breathed the pantry air of a house of a woman who wore the kind of dress Vogue used to show when I was young. But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazine business but for years before, because I was always of that world—at least in my imagination.
    Condé Nast was a very extraordinary man, of such a standard. He had a vision. He decided to raise the commercial standards of the American woman. Why, he decided, shouldn’t they have the best-looking clothes? He gave them Vogue . The best-looking houses? House & Garden . And don’t forget Vanity Fair ! Why, Condé decided, shouldn’t American women know about writers, entertainers, painters—that Picasso was painting extraordinary paintings, that a man named Proust was writing an extraordinary book? Why shouldn’t they know…about Josephine Baker ?
    I knew about Josephine Baker. I’d seen her in Harlem. I was never out of Harlem in the early twenties. The music was so great, and Josephine was simply the only girl you saw in the chorus line. Her eyes were the softest brown velvet, loving, caressing, embracing—all you could feel was something good coming from her. But her eyes were full of laughter, too. She had that …thing— that’s all.
    One night I was invited to a Condé Nast party. Everybody who was invited to a Condé Nast party stood for something. He was the man who created the kind of social world that was then called Café Society: a carefully chosen mélange—no such thing as an overcrowded room, mind you—mingling people who up to that time would never have been seen at the same social gathering. Condé picked his guests for their talent, whatever it was—literature, the theatre, big business. Sharp, chic society. Why was I asked? I was young, well dressed, and could dance.
    This was the Night of the Three Bakers. First, there walked into Condé’s party Mrs. George Baker, the wife of the great banker, who was the best-dressed, most attractive woman in New York and a great hostess. Then… we had Edythe Baker, who was the cutest thing in town. She came from Missouri, was rather small, and had an absolutely sublime gift for the piano. In the Cochran Revue in London she had played a huge piano which seemed literally the length of the entire stage. At the keyboard was this little doll, her fingers running up and down as she played and sang “The Birth of the Blues.” That was Edythe.
    Then , into our midst walked …Josephine Baker. Now that was historic: we have a black in the house. Her hair had been done by Antoine, the famous hairdresser of Paris, like a Greek boy’s—these small, flat curls against her skull—and she was wearing a white Vionnet dress, cut on the bias with four points, like a handkerchief. It had no opening, no closing—you just put it over your head and it came to you and moved with the ease and the fluidity of the body. And did Josephine move ! These long black legs, these long black arms, this long black throat…and pressed into her flat black curls were white silk butterflies. She had the chic of Gay Paree.
    I was so thrilled to be asked. There was no living with me for days. The Night of the Three Bakers!
    One night in Paris, after I was married, a friend