VIOLET VELVET MITTENS WITH EVERYTHING

The life of fashion editor Diana Vreeland is explored in an imagined first-person voice.

This story of Vreeland’s rise to fame in the fashion industry begins with an anecdote from when she was 13. Her mother objects to her use of red fingernail polish, applied in an attempt to look like “an exotic princess.” (What precisely she meant by exotic is not explained.) Vreeland loves dressing up and dancing, and “things [a]ren’t always rosy” with her mother, a fact that’s fleshed out a bit more in the book’s backmatter. In an abrupt turn, readers learn that Vreeland becomes an “Empress of Fashion.” The narration continues, relating her preferences for eccentricity, “radiant colors” and their tones, and the color red; followed by her job at Harper’s Bazaar magazine; her Harper’s “Why Don’t You?” column; and her work at Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. The text captures Vreeland’s unique vision, though it’s not clear if the text includes invented dialogue or exact quotes or a combination. Every image of Vreeland in these pages depicts her with the same stylized grin, and the palette lacks spark for such a fashion iconoclast: A spread, for instance, devoted to Vreeland’s love of the “right green—a spring green” is dominated by a dull olive-green shade. Backmatter includes resources for further reading. Katstaller includes women of color as models and other background characters in this story of the White fashion icon.

Not quite “violet” enough.