12/24/12 review of book D.V. by Diana Vreeland

(Image: Left Bank Books New York)

This is my Twitter review of the book D.V., the memoirs of Diana Vreeland

This is one of my earlier Twitter reviews. I did it on December 24, 2012.

Unlike most of my Twitter reviews, this was not done as a thread. Instead, I posted each tweet separately.

The tweets are below for your convenience.

***

Tweet 1. Finished reading DV, the memoirs of Diana Vreeland, fashion icon, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue editor, and curator for the Met Museum.

T2. Vreeland's book is full of great stories. I had a hard time remembering them all. I love the stories of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. T3. I love Vreeland's stories of her meticulous work at the lingerie boutique. And the stories involving Coco Chanel. T4. The stories of Vreeland's experiences with speakeasy violence and The Night of the Long Knives are pretty wild.

T5. The book has a nice mix of autobiography and history. Often Vreeland's life is peripheral to the wild times and personalities around her. T6. Vreeland's book reminds me a lot of Russell's Portraits from Memory. And of Simone de Beauvoir's Au Revoir a Sartre.

T7. Interesting is Vreeland's sensibility of a fashion connection between France and Russia. Even Chanel was inspired by Russia.

T8. Vreeland laments the trend of large fashion shops like Saks. This trend is opposite the trend Alvin Topfler saw in his book Future Shock.

T9. I really like the part in the book where Vreeland philosophizes on color.

***

Here is the link to the HarperCollins page for D.V.

I checked this book out from the Jefferson County Public Library system in Colorado.

11/6/2012 review of book The Power of Style

This is my Twitter thread review of the book The Power of Style, by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins.

I wrote this review on November 6, 2012.

Unlike many of my Twitter reviews, this was not written in thread form. Instead, I posted each thread in the review separately.

So I have reproduced each tweet into this blog post for easier reading.

T1. Finished reading The Power of Style, by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins. The stories of fourteen fashionable women.

T2. Women from Power of Style who most interested me were Elsie de Wolfe, Diana Vreeland, Millicent Rogers, and Pauline de Rothschild.

T3. Also interesting to see how people like Cecil Beaton, Mainboucher, and Elsa Schiaparelli are part of the life stories in The Power of Style.

T4. Elsie de Wolfe was my favorite in The Power of Style. A career arc from actress/hostess to world-renowned interior designer -- and inventor!

I checked this book out from the Jefferson County Public Library system in Colorado.