FAMED FASHION EDITOR DIANA VREELAND DIES

Diana Vreeland, the most famous and arguably the most talented fashion editor in history, died of a heart attack yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She was admitted to the hospital Monday night for treatment of pneumonia. Mrs. Vreeland declined to disclose her age, but she very likely was close to 90. From 1939 to 1962 she was editor of Harper's Bazaar, and from 1962 until she was fired in 1971 she was editor of Vogue. In these roles she helped set styles that were as extravagant and exotic as they were beautiful. She chronicled a world of taste and money that strained the boundaries of glamour and make-believe. Having been dismissed from Vogue, she began an entirely new career as a consultant to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the years she played a leading role in mounting shows that have been a landmark in the history of fashion and clothes. They have ranged from a survey of what men and women have worn to dances over the centuries to a collection of Russian garments that included the enormous riding boots of Czar Peter the Great. In her own person, Mrs. Vreeland was as stylish and provocative as anything in the world of which she was a part. A striking rather than a beautiful figure, she had a prominent nose and a deep voice. She kept her hair black and her rouge red. She smoked incessantly. She was imperious, outrageous and arbitrary. She was witty and capable of spinning wonderful tales, the veracity of which she sometimes admitted could not stand up to close examination. Her approach to fashion was summed up in two remarks for which she was famous: "Bad taste is better than no taste at all" and "Pink is the navy blue of India." She wrote two books of memoirs, "Allure," which appeared in 1980, and "D.V.," which appeared in 1984. Both were full of stories, and so were her interviews, for which she had a talent. Sitting in the movies in Paris with Josephine Baker and Baker's pet cheetah. Meeting Legs Diamond at a party in New York in the 1930s. Watching the coronation of King George V in London in 1911. ("Thank God I saw it," she told Truman Capote in an interview in The Village Voice in 1977. "Oh, yes. Style is very glamorous. It's irresistible, you know.") At her death Mrs. Vreeland had lost her sight. She was accustomed to enormous parties, but she preferred small gatherings at her apartment in New York. She always had enjoyed having friends come and read to her. With the failure of her eyes this became an even more important pleasure. Diana Dalziel Vreeland was born in Paris. Her father was Frederick Y. Dalziel, a prosperous Scotsman. Her mother was Emily Key Hoffman. She grew up in Europe and the United States, but by her own account received little formal education, although at one time in New York she and her sister each had her own maid. In 1924, she married Thomas Reed Vreeland, an American banker. They lived in Paris and London until the mid-1930s, when they returned to New York. Although she counted some of the richest people in the world among her friends, Mrs. Vreeland herself was not wealthy. It was the need for money that drove her to begin her career at Harper's Bazaar, a Conde Nast publication. She began as a columnist and soon became fashion editor. It was during her years at Harper's Bazaar that Mrs. Vreeland came to personify the fashion editor. In the 1957 movie "Funny Face," Kay Thompson did a parody of her in which she sings: Banish the black, Burn the blue, Bury the beige, Think pink! In 1962 Mrs. Vreeland took over as editor-in-chief at Vogue, another Conde Nast publication. Under her guidance the magazine was full of aristocrats, society figures and movie stars. Goldie Hawn, Elizabeth Taylor and Cher were on the cover. Many of the editor's favorite models came from these ranks as well. Mrs. Vreeland's management style was to dictate the day's marching orders from her bath at 8 in the morning. She never appeared in her office -- scarlet in color with a black lacquer desk and an inner tube for a seat cushion -- until after noon. She used her assistants as run-through models. In the matter of photographs she insisted on seemingly endless reshoots. What caused her to be fired was that the magazine was failing. It was so avant-garde that some of the clothes it featured could not be found in stores, much less worn on the street. Fashion designers regarded it as unfriendly. Mrs. Vreeland had little time for the industry moguls of Seventh Avenue -- and they took their advertising elsewhere. Circulation was down to 400,000 -- under Grace Mirabella, Mrs. Vreeland's successor, it rose to 1.3 million. Andy Warhol offered this widely quoted reason for the change of management: "She was fired from Vogue in 1971 because Vogue wanted to go middle class." Mrs. Vreeland's husband died in 1966. Survivors include two sons, Thomas Reed Vreeland Jr. of Los Angeles and Frederick Vreeland of Rome, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In an interview with Jesse Kornbluth in New York magazine in 1982, Mrs. Vreeland was asked how she would like to appear in a pantheon of 20th century style. "I'd like to be very luxuriously dressed," she replied. "I'd like to have the most luxurious black cashmere sweater, the most luxuriously black satin pants, very beautiful stockings, very beautiful shoes -- marvelous shoes -- and whatever would be suitable around the neck." And what would be in the background? What else would be there? she was asked. "Why, it would just be me," she said. "Good God, young man, they're going to be looking at the greatest distillation of personal style in the entire century -- they're going to have Diana Vreeland! What more could they want?"