Divine Diana

I don’t care much for fashion — ask anyone; I’ve even lately surrendered to the fleece — and don’t care for fashion magazines at all. They have nothing to say to my life. They’ve never even featured ‘top ten fleeces of the season’, as far as I know. But this isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the odd mischievous trip behind the scenes. I loved The Devil Wears Prada, starring my friend Meryl, with whom I have dined. I loved The September Issue, the fly-on-the-wall about American Vogue and Anna Wintour, although the only thing I can now remember is being fixated with Ms Wintour’s bob which, one day, will surely join under the chin, as if she’d grown her own snood.

And this film about Diana Vreeland, who presided over Harper’s and Vogue during the glory days of couture, when you had to have three fittings just for a nightie, is also fantastic fun. It’s full of energy and zing, just like its subject, although, just like its subject, it also feels less than truthful somehow. Then, again, she was such an extraordinary, outlandish woman perhaps it just doesn’t matter. Let’s not get all picky in our old age.

Made by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, the wife of one of Diana’s grandsons, this is a straight up and down documentary. Vintage footage. Vintage interviews with the subject herself. Talking heads. Plus the transcript of recorded interviews she gave to George Plimpton when he helped her write her biography, modestly called DV. These are read as a voiceover by an actress (Annette Miller) imitating Ms Vreeland’s raspy drawl and, I like to think, capturing her cadences, particularly when it comes to the most delicious words, like ‘pizzazz’ and ‘divine’, which are said as if they include their own exclamation marks.