A fearless innovator who inspired designers, models, photographers, and artists, Diana Vreeland, the famed editor of Vogue, reinvented the way we think about style. In this first full-length biography, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart tells the story of Vreeland's childhood on New York's Upper East Side, her first job at Harper's Bazaar, her renowned post at Vogue, and her role as special consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Empress of Fashion is an intimate and surprising look at an icon who made a lasting mark on the world of couture.

Described by an admirer as 'the High Druidess of fashion, the Supreme Pontiff, Perpetual Curate and Archpresbyter of elegance, the Vicaress of Style', Diana Vreeland is the cloth from which 21st-century fashion editors are cut. Diana joined Harper's Bazaar in 1936, where her pizzazz and singular point of view quickly made her a major creative force in fashion. During her time at Harper's Bazaar and later as the editor-in-chief of Vogue, the self-styled 'Empress of fashion' launched Twiggy's career, advised Jackie Kennedy, and enjoyed the full swing of sixties' London. In Diana's Vogue, women were encouraged to resist fashion orders from on high, and to use their own imaginations in re-creating themselves - much as Vreeland spent her own life doing. In this book, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart portrays a visionary: a fearless innovator who inspired designers, models, photographers and artists. Diana Vreeland reinvented the way we think about style and where we go to find it. As an editor, curator and wit, she made a lasting mark and remains an icon for generations of fashion lovers.

When Consuelo Vanderbilt's grandfather died, he was the richest man in America. Her father soon started to spend the family fortune, enthusiastically supported by Consuelo's mother, Alva, who was determined to take the family to the top of New York society--forcing a heartbroken Consuelo into a marriage she did not want with the underfunded Duke of Marlborough. But the story of Consuelo and Alva is more than a tale of enterprising social ambition, Gilded Age glamour, and the emptiness of wealth. It is a fascinating account of two extraordinary women who struggled to break free from the world into which they were born--a world of materialistic concerns and shallow elitism in which females were voiceless and powerless--and of their lifelong dedication to noble and dangerous causes and the battle for women's rights.

A fabulously wealthy New York beauty marries a cold-hearted British aristocrat at the behest of her Machiavellian mother - then leaves him to become a prominent Suffragette. Consuelo Vanderbilt was one of the greatest heiresses of the late 19th-century, a glittering prize for suitors on both sides of the Atlantic. When she married, a crowd of over 2,000 onlookers gathered, and newspapers frenziedly reported every detail of the event, right down to the bridal underwear. Even by the standards of the day the glamorous, eighteen-year-old had made an outstanding match: she had ensnared the twenty-four-year-old Duke of Marlborough, the most eligible peer in Great Britain. Yet the bride's swollen face, barely hidden under the veil, presaged the unhappiness that lay in the couple's painful twelve-year future. It was not Consuelo, but her domineering mother who had forced the marriage through. This captivating biography tells of the lives of mother and daughter: the story of the fairytale wedding and its nightmarish aftermath, and an account of how both women went on to dedicate their lives to the dramatic fight for women's rights, in the light of their own suffering.

As an editor, curator and wit, Diana Vreeland made a lasting mark and remains an icon for generations of fashion lovers. During her fifty-year reign as the `Empress of Fashion’, she launched Twiggy, advised Jackie O and coined some of fashion’s most eloquent proverbs, such as `the bikini is the biggest thing since the atom bomb.’ She aimed to `instruct where possible, to delight, to give pleasure, to bring to the reader what interests her.’ In this book, the first full-length biography of Vreeland, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart portrays a visionary: a fearless innovator who inspired designers, models, photographers and artists, and who reinvented the way we think about style and where we go to think about it.