Remembering the inimitable Diana Vreeland, jewelry icon and fashion legend.
Fashion was the language Diana Vreeland dreamt, dressed, and dwelled in. But jewelry was something more akin to a pulse; a maximalist devotion to gold and glass and the gloriously fake and ridiculously real, worn as a badge of honor.
Diana Vreeland was fashion’s great high priestess of the impractical ~ the editor who reigned over Harper’s Bazaar and then Vogue, later dreaming up the Met’s famed Costume Institute exhibitions as we know them. She believed in pink, in exaggeration, in the totally unreasonable, and she was almost always right, with her fabulous “Why Don’t You,” columns. She is one of the best examples of maximalist muses who lived by the rule of high-low, seamlessly mixing custom commissioned high jewelry from the world’s finest jewelers with icons of the costume jewelry world like Kenneth Jay Lane. And! Much like the best style icons of all time (think: Iris Apfel) she didn’t care if it was expensive, affordable, new or old, so long as it was interesting, over-the-top, unusual, and statement-making. She mixed her Yves Saint Laurent with Verdura and her Chanel with Borbonese, Miriam Haskell and antique ivory. Her personal collection was top-tier. Her jewelry creed at its most simple was: go red, go wild, go big or go home.
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