Style;   VREELAND'S TOUCHES
LEAD: If, as the art historian Mario Praz wrote, 'the surroundings become a museum of the soul,' then a glimpse at Diana Vreeland's Park Avenue apartment is a reflection of the style and personality of one of this century's legendary taste makers. It wasn't a big apartment - life centered on a well-proportioned living room and small dining area - but it exuded bigness.
If, as the art historian Mario Praz wrote, 'the surroundings become a museum of the soul,' then a glimpse at Diana Vreeland's Park Avenue apartment is a reflection of the style and personality of one of this century's legendary taste makers. It wasn't a big apartment - life centered on a well-proportioned living room and small dining area - but it exuded bigness. Many of the pieces that made it that way will be auctioned at an estate sale at Sotheby's on April 19.
Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor who died last year, was not a timid person about anything, including color. 'I like almost every color,' she wrote in 'D.V.,' her memoir. But red was her favorite. 'It makes all other colors beautiful. I can't imagine becoming bored with red - it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.' When she told her friend and decorator Billy Baldwin that she wanted her living room to 'be a garden, but a garden in hell,' he scoured fabric houses both here and abroad until he found a red Persian chintz at Colefax & Fowler in London. 'It made sense that Mrs. Vreeland loved red,' says Katell le Bourhis, associate curator for special projects at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vreeland's researcher for many years. 'Red is passion, it's fire, it's blood. And she was a deeply passionate person. It was as though she were part Latin. She loved dancing, especially the tango. She loved nights with no end.'
Yet her home was almost Victorian in it's careful clutter. Every corner was filled with a quirky collection of objects, souvenirs of Vreeland's life: horn snuffboxes from Scotland, giant seashells, photographs of friends like Marella Agnelli, a pair of Christian Berard portraits of Vreeland, a Dufy watercolor of a Venetian canal, Staffordshire dogs, a myriad of needlepoint pillows, bronze fish and Venetian blackamoors. 'Diana was enormously visual about decoration,' recalls Kenneth Jay Lane, the jewelry designer:. 'She could fiddle with objects for hours until they were just the way she wanted them.'
And then nothing changed. The apartment remained the same for more than three decades. 'She wanted it to seem as though hers was a home of leisure - the flowers, pillows, scents, objects - but in fact everything was obsessively organized,' le Bourhis says. Everything was arranged with a place and purpose, right down to the yellow pad, green pen and freshly sharpened pencils, placed as though they were a still life by her telephone. Her Georgian cigarette case was always refilled with the same number of cigarettes and could always be found in the same place. Her stacks of books were always arranged in a specific order. 'In another life, she must have been in the army,' le Bourhis observes. 'It was imperative she had a set frame, something to hold on to so she could let her imagination run free.'
Another constant in her home was an array of interesting scents. Candles or incense were always burning. And she adored flowers. According to her longtime friend C. Z. Guest, Vreeland always had an arrangement of whatever flowers happened to be in bloom. 'There were wonderful lilies and hyacinths and poppies and anemones,' Guest says. 'Every season, I'd send her orchids from my greenhouse in Palm Beach.'
'Everything was arranged with great taste,' says Kitty D'Alessio, vice-chairman of Chanel. 'Nothing was overdone and nothing was ever old-fashioned. Diana stepped into the future faster than anyone I knew.'
While at first glance her apartment gave the appearance of great luxury, there was little of real value. It was, in fact, filled with an assortment of curios of special significance only to their owner. Unlike today, when taste is too often associated with money, Vreeland can be seen as a classic example of true style. 'Lack of funds can work to one's advantage,' Lane points out. 'Diana could make do on her great imagination.' The fashion designer Bill Blass remembers that Vreeland's apartment had 'a great stamp of her personality because she had so much confidence.' As a result, her home became a place where interesting people loved to gather. 'Going there to dinner was an event - you never knew who you would see,' says Blass.
'All the famous people of the 50's, 60's and 70's passed through her doors, from Greta Garbo and Cecil Beaton to Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol,' adds Guest. 'Everyone in New York wanted an invitation. Her style of entertaining was always simple. Whether she was serving a banquet or a hot dog, it would always be terrific. There was an air of sophistication about everything. For example, she always served coffee in black demitasse cups. I'd never seen black demitasse cups before.'
Many liken her home to Coco Chanel's in its strength and unique character. 'It was really Diana's own stage set,' says D'Alessio. 'After she died, I went back. The lights had gone out. Something was missing.'