"Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel" Documents Fashion Designer's Gifts for Dramatic Presentation

Comments (0) By Melissa Anderson Thursday, Nov 8 2012

Horst P. Horst, 1979, Copyright Estate of Horst P. Horst - Art + Commerce

Portrait of Diana Vreeland by Horst P. Horst.

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Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel

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Raconteuse, epigrammatist, and mythomaniac, peerless fashion editor Diana Vreeland (1903 – 89) might have loved words as much as she loved Balenciaga. As Harold Koda of the Met's Costume Institute, for which Vreeland served as a special consultant from 1973 until her death, memorably says in this often-charming nonfiction bauble, "I don't think she had the average person's relationship to the English language." At its best, this first film by Lisa Immordino Vreeland showcases D.V.'s spectacular gifts for dramatic presentation and proclamation, as evident in her various TV interviews throughout the decades and present-day remembrances by those who worked with her. At its worst, the documentary further indulges its own nepotism: The director gratuitously films her young daughter reading aloud from her great-grandmother's outré "Why Don't You?" column from Harper's Bazaar. But the outsized ideas, creativity, and spirit of this birdlike, unconventional-looking woman — called "my ugly little monster" by her mother, Vreeland resembles John Hurt in a jet-black wig — still dominate a project occasionally lacking the same attributes.