Thomas Jefferson, who had the decency to do many sensible things like write the Declaration of Independence, create the Library of Congress, found the University of Virginia (well okay, jury’s still out on this one) and –most importantly– grew up in my part of Virginia, is know affectionately as TJ all over his old stomping grounds, but on the University of Virginia campus he is know exclusively as Mister Jefferson. It is a sign of respect.

In that vein, please note we will refer to today’s Friday Fierceness, editrix and icon par excellence Diana Vreeland strictly as Mrs Vreeland.

I don’t think I can overstate how much I love Mrs Vreeland, so let me try to paint you a picture:

Whenever faced with a sticky situation, I have an imaginary dinner party in my head (because I am, as well we know, completely mad). I go around the table and listen to my five regular guests argue out their opinions.

Here’s the guest list:

Jesus –the free space on any ethical bingo card

Mister Jefferson — for that diplomatic polymath touch

Socrates –an ethicist who damned the torpedos

Sheriff Andy Taylor –for gentleness and the people’s touch

Mrs Vreeland –for wit, vision and a healthy sense of the ridiculous

It’s hard to say where to start with Mrs Vreeland, because my admiration runs so deep.

Yes, she was a great editor, the best Harper’s and American Vogue ever had.

Her influence in the publishing world is still felt through countless people she discovered, inspired or worked with, including the most powerful big girl in fashion, Andre Leon Talley, her protégé.

If you’re a fan of Audrey Hepburn movies you’ll probably know Kay Thompson did a note-perfect homage in Funny Face as Maggie Prescott, the larger-than-life editor of Quality magazine. “Think Pink” was doubtlessly inspired by Mrs Vreeland’s famed quote: “Pink is the navy blue of India”

After the entire scene is painted pink, Maggie Prescott is asked why she wasn’t wearing the new “it” color she championed, since everyone one else was. Her perfect Mrs Vreeland line was a dismissive “I wouldn’t be caught dead.”

Mrs Vreeland wasn’t pretty. With her enormous nose, tilted pelvis and mannish features she came down on the laide side of jolie-laide, which always makes for the most interesting beauty. I’ve always said Sarah Jessica Parker must have a copy of the editrix’s playbook somewhere, so it was no surprise when SJP posed as Mrs Vreeland for Harper’s in March.


Her memoir D.V. should be required reading for every man, woman and child with even a glimmer of intellect or style.

It’s a tremendous read that begins with a perfectly aged Mrs Vreeland applying a back plaster to young Jack Nicholson’s naked backside, slides through her relationship with Wallis Simpson, Jackie Kennedy, Balenciaga and hits every note along the way with pizzazz (a word she made famous but probably did not coin. She became editor of Harper’s in 1937 where the word first appeared in print, attributed to a Harvard Lampoon editor.)

Here, just read the first page:

(click image to enlarge)

How much of the story is true? Probably more than she gets credit for, but it doesn’t really matter. Memoirs aren’t autobiographies.

So what can big girls learn from the reed-thin Mrs Vreeland?

She knew how to occupy space.

We all occupy space, that’s science. Learning how to occupy space is an art. I don’t suggest adopting her trademark pelvis-tilting swan slouch, but learning how to hold your body with unapologetic grace and power –even if it’s not traditional grace– is, like diamonds and the herp, a gift that gives forever.

When she sat in a chair, she didn’t perch on it trying to take up as little space as possible, she was in that chair.

It all comes down to honesty of being.

Mrs Vreeland was honest. She wasn’t necessarily factual but she was honest. I was astounded after my interview with The Daily Beast went public because dozens of my beloved readers thought I was actually a team of gay men because Plumcake couldn’t possible be real.  I loathe dishonesty of personality, especially in publishing. That’s not how I roll. I am what I appear (although I am more than I appear, like the rest of us) and I have Mrs Vreeland to thank for that.

She liked what she liked, said what she thought, wore what she pleased –usually black with wild statement pieces, which might be from ancient Greece or the costume shop around the corner– and knew she was the most fabulous creature on earth.

She didn’t pretend to fit traditional beauty, and that was fine with her because her concern was elegance and elegance was something far broader than black sheaths and knowing what fork to use.

“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.”

She had a vocabulary of elegance. When describing her hunt of the perfect red:

“All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It’s exactly as if I’d said, “I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple”…About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in ANY Renaissance portrait.”

…and Mrs Vreeland did love her red. Her crimson nails and lips set against her kabuki white face and black lacquered hair, and of course her famed “Garden in Hell” living room.

I could go on and on, but I’ve been drinking tea since 8:00 this morning and there are tides in the affairs of men that reallyneedtogorightnowzomgow.

So have a fabulous weekend, have fun, be glorious and remember:

“I’m a great believer in vulgarity- if it’s got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste- it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.”

We are all deeply saddened to lose Patrick Swayze who died from pancreatic cancer –a particularly evil sort– this week at 57. Rest assured, the Monday Hotness WILL be Johnny Castle, who catapulted my entire female generation into puberty, but I truly believe his best role was Miss Vida Boheme, in what may actually be the single greatest film of all time, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Love, Julie Newmar.

“Well pumpkins, it comes down to that age-old decision: style… or… substance?”
“Internal combustion, the ultimate accessory.”
“A car? Mary Alice Louise, no. This is a land yacht.”

“I think tomorrow is a “Say Something” hat day.”
[referring to Diana Vreeland's memoir DV] “Read it? My dear child you should commit entire passages to memory!”

“Oh! No one say anything frivolous for the next few moments. I am having a significant experience.”

(I love how this outfit is a wink to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in the cross-dressing buddy film that started it all, Some Like It Hot)

“I want you to believe in yourself, imagine good things and moisturize, I cannot stress this enough.”

and most importantly, the last line has been my personal credo for years:

Larger than life is just the right size.

three I’m  under the table, four I’m under the host!

These immor(t)al lines were penned –as well you know– by the inimitable Dorothy Parker, today’s Friday Fierceness.

My great great grandfather was the chief engineer at the Hotel Algonquin during the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table and we have several postcards from those luminary lushes written to “Chief” so I’ve been fascinated with the Vicious Circle for ages and Dorothy Parker was the center of my world.

I don’t love Dorothy Parker as much as I used to although her short stories and poems are all worth reading. If you can get Lauren Bacall narrating “Big Blond” and “Horsie” (the former is more popular, the latter –which I prefer– more beautiful and pathetic) do so at any cost.

Dorothy Parker née Rothschild was dark. She drank too much, married more often than is generally considered ideal and one gets the feeling she would have been a suicide if she’d only plucked up the courage. Let’s be grateful she did not.

Although I don’t like her work as much as I used to, I empathize with her more as I get older. She hated being known as a “wisecracker” she preferred to be known as a “wit”.

“Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words”

When you’re a funny woman, folks want you to be nothing BUT funny. Maybe it’s because there are so few genuinely funny writers of either gender or maybe it’s because the evil They want to keep women in their tidy little pigeonholes, but I can understand Parker’s despair.

“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’ ”

“Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”

“Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”

“I’ve never been a millionaire but I just know I’d be darling at it.”

“It serves me right for keeping all my eggs in one bastard.”

“I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.”

“Ducking for apples – change one letter and it’s the story of my life.”

“Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

“I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn.”

“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”

“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common”

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think”

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”

and finally a quote I hope you’ll all forget so I can pass it off as my own in about two weeks:

“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”

According to Diana Vreeland, who is right up there next to Jesus and the guy who invented gin in my personal pantheon, Gertrude Stein was one of the best mannequins in the biz. “You just can’t take a picture of [that] old broad.”

I’m not going to spend time telling you about Stein because everyone in the whole world should go out and read her letters, writings and biography. I don’t necessarily agree with every single thing she’s ever written but she’s too important and influential to ignore.

“Let me listen to me and not to them.”

“It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger. ”

“Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.”

“A masterpiece… may be unwelcome but it is never dull.”
“A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.”
“A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables. ”

“An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.”
“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”
“I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed.”

“I know what Germans are. They are a funny people. They are always choosing someone to lead them in a direction which they do not want to go.”
“Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.”
“Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.”

“Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.”
“Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.”
“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.”

“I don’t envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not. ”
“Is it worse to be scared than to be bored, that is the question.”
“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. “

I’d wager if folks today recognize the name Lotte Lenya at all, it’s probably from Bobby Darin or Louis Armstrong singing “Mack the Knife” and maybe you’d remember her face as that of Rosa Klebb’s in “From Russia with Love” but there’s a whole generation to whom Lotte Lenya is just a name in an old song.

Born in Austria in 1898, Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer (hey, I’d change my name to Lotte, too) was an actress and singer who defined the role of Pirate Jenny in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. Harking back to an earlier Friday Fierceness, Nina Simone recorded a chilling live version of Pirate Jenny’s song that is well worth a listen. It gives me the creeps every time.

Lenya married Kurt Weill in 1926 and after her initial Pirate Jenny triumph continued to have enormous cabaret and stage success. Her English-language film career was limited, not just because of lingering sentiments from WWII but because she was what you’d call a handsome woman.

and okay, I’m just putting it out there, girlfriend looked like a muppet.

After marrying Kurt Weill (twice) and being widowed by him (once) she launched a brief but admirable career in marrying gay guys, most notably genius editor, Algonquin Round Table regular and big ole ‘mo; George Davis, who had a Very Special Relationship with poet W.H. Auden.

Towards the end of her career she found Hollywood fame in From Russia With Love and earned an Academy Award nomination for her turn as The Contessa –proprietress of an upscale stud farm for wealthy female expats looking for a little company– in the vastly underrated Tennessee Williams’ film, “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone“alongside Vivian Leigh and a 24-year old Warren Beatty.

Rrrowr.

If you’re not familiar with Miss Lotte Lenya, do yourself a favor and spend a rainy weekend listening to her cabaret, watching her films and of course singing along in your underwear to this:

and if you’d like to hear Lotte’s original here you go!

Shut up. I love her. I love her spider lashes and her sequined pantsuits and her gay husbands and her Fosse numbers and jazz hands (GOD do I love her jazz hands) and her total unwillingness to take herself seriously and become one of those terminally boring society matrons, so today (and every day) all our fierceness belong to Liza.

” I’m fine, and my hips are fine. My false knee is fine. My false hips are fine. Everything’s cooking.”

” I believe all drunks go to heaven, because they’ve been through hell on Earth. ”

” Dream on it. Let your mind take you to places you would like to go, and then think about it and plan it and celebrate the possibilities. And don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t know how to dream.”

” Reality is something you rise above.”

” What I’m saying is that I tried very hard to give them my reality and my reality is kind of interesting.“

A pal of mine who happens to be a big fan of the Friday Fierceness asked me if I was going to feature Zelda Fitzgerald today, seeing as it’s her birthday. I then, in my notoriously delicate and genteel way, asked him if he was drunk, which of course he wasn’t since he’s in recovery which meant I had to spend the next 10 minutes telling him he was pretty and trying to find jars for him to open because he’s so big and strong and guys like that sort of stuff although now I’ve got three jars of open chutney and I’m only sure there are so many ways I can get through them without seriously risking the ire of the Archbishop.

ANYHOODLE

I’m not a fan of Zelda. Any Southern girl can be crazy and drunk and slutty and glamorous and married to a guy who was clearly a big ‘mo. Hell, with the exception of the marriage part –which I’m sure I’ll get to eventually– I call that “Fall of 1998″. So happy birthday to Zelda but really, whatevs.

Today’s one true Friday Fierceness is Miss Amelia Earhart, also born on this day in 1897.

Meely was a chick after my own heart, while I probably have more in common with Lady Z by nature, I’d like to be Ms E (except for not dead) when I grow up. She is responsible for one of my all-time favorite quotes:

“I want to do it because I want to do it.”

Oh and let’s just put it out there, girlfriend wore a leather jacket better than anyone this side of Brando.

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.”

“There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls.”

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.”

“Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.”

and not for nothin’ but she was also a huge influence on Gaultier’s Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection for Hermès, vis:

Right? I don’t even WANT to know how much that outfit costs, but if I could wear trousers, I’d never take those things off my body.

How to do a big leather coat.

Love Coco Rocha in this, but it’s partially because Coco Rocha always makes me think of Ferrero Rocher, which makes me hungry.

and last but most certainly not least:

Okay, just kidding, this was from the Spring 2008 collection, but a Gaultier/Hermès gold lamé turban? No WAY I’m not posting that. This IS the Friday Fierceness after all.