Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel

It’s fun to imagine Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s debut officially beginning when she got engaged. “Marry me,” he whispered, “and make an unchallenging film about my late grandmother!” With couture-chronicle chic still apparently active in documentary circles, what chance did the new Mrs. Vreeland stand against kismet? The old Mrs. Vreeland, outlived by her reputation as “the empress of fashion,” already had bestowed the legacy of everything we think we know about modern glamour. Anyway, as a family-approved portrait of a bon vivant, this will suffice. It falters with actors overdoing performed transcripts of interviews between Vreeland and George Plimpton, who helped on her memoir, but scores with animated page flips through old issues of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, whose Vreeland-edited style spreads still seem remarkably new. Behold here young Mick Jagger, as if for the first time. It knows enough to have the exactly right title.