5/21/2023 0 Comments D.V. by Diana VreelandIt would have been easy for Amanda Mackenzie Stuart to write a similarly pink book, one that is frothy and full of darling anecdotes about what DV, as she was mostly known, said or did next. Such as "Why don't you rinse your blond child's hair in dead champagne to keep it gold as they do in France?" Or embroider "enormous red lobsters on a pure heavy silk tablecloth"? Kay Thompson's pink shampoo was, by contrast, really rather pallid. Vreeland had become famous in the 1930s for writing her "Why Don't You" column, which issued a series of diktats disguised as rhetorical questions. And the "Think Pink!" number was more than a take-off of generic magazine silliness. Thompson's character was based on Diana Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar and American Vogue – and she really was a legend, complete with misty beginnings, contested moments and narrative loops. A cutaway shot suggests that, from now on, even shampoo should be rosy. From now on, she declares, women of the world must "Think Pink!" It's not just a question of frocks, but of repainting the entire feminine world. Then Thompson's gimlet eye alights on a piece of pink cloth and her face comes alive. Green is "obscene", blue is "through" and red is "dead". It's the question of colour that bugs her. T here's an early moment in Funny Face, the 1957 Stanley Donen musical, when Kay Thompson, playing a New York fashion editor, bursts into her chic monochrome office and declares herself devoid of inspiration for the new season.
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