Call it instinct, call it intuition, or some innate talent for defining beauty and style. Or just call it Vreeland.

Diana Vreeland, the fashion editor, society icon, and cultural arbiter, embodied confidence and cool. Her visionary approach to editing – Vreeland had her hands on the pages, and page design, at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue for five decades, beginning in the late 1930s – changed the course of both magazines, and inspired their readers. Readers who could afford the clothes and shoes and jewels, and the many, many more who could only dream.

Bringing dreams to life was what she was about.

Vreeland, who died in 1989 at 86, comes alive herself in the wonderfully illuminating documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel. With a lengthy interview session with her friend George Plimpton as the film’s narrative spine, Vreeland emerges not only as a woman who embraced couture and culture, but also as someone whose philosophy was built on independent thinking and a recognition of the transformative power of beauty and art.

Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland (a granddaughter-in-law), Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel also boasts interviews with designers (Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta), models (Veruschka, Polly Tree) and photographers (Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman). Ali MacGraw, who came straight out of college to be Vreeland’s assistant, recalls (amusingly) her boss’ rigorous working methods. And Vreeland’s knack for discovering new faces and trends is remembered; this is the woman who brought the 18-year-old model Lauren Bacall to the world, who counseled Jackie Kennedy on her wardrobe, who hired Twiggy, who hobnobbed with Warhol.

Her life, and her work, transcended what we think of as “fashion.” Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel celebrates a unique and uniquely determined woman.

This stylish, inspiring, and thoroughly entertaining documentary “The Eye Has to Travel” captures the pizzazz, passion, and personality of the trailblazing fashion editor Diana Vreeland.

Using her own words, those who knew her, and the images she created at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue (and later at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), it tells the story of the woman who changed fashion and our culture forever.

As her friend Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis observed, “To say Diana Vreeland has dealt only with fashion trivializes what she has done. She has commented on the times in a wise and witty manner. She has lived a life.”

From the Belle Époque as a child in Paris, to the Roaring Twenties in New York, the Swinging Sixties in London, and the new Gilded Age of the 1980s, Vreeland swam in all the great cultural waves that swept the West in the 20th century.

Vreeland’s singular voice (taken from conversations with George Plimpton) accompanies carefully researched archival footage as she drops some of her well-known witticisms, such as “The bikini is the biggest thing since the atom bomb.” She recounts selling nightgowns to Wallis Simpson: “My little lingerie shop brought down the throne.” Seeing Hitler at the Munich opera house, she says, “That mustache—it was just wrong!” And she explains her editorial philosophy, “Don’t give people what they want, give them what they don’t know they want yet!”

Vreeland’s life is rife with apparent paradoxes: the ugly-duckling little girl who came to define beauty, the empress of fashion who had no formal education, the child of the Belle Époque already in her 60s who promoted the youthquake of the 1960s to a wide audience.

By the time Vreeland took over as editor-in-chief of Vogue in 1962, the youth revolution was taking off—and Vreeland was on board, celebrating new music, art, and thought in the pages of her style bible. Vreeland was first to run a portrait of then-little-known Mick Jagger in the U.S., saying, “I don’t care who he is, but he looks great and we’ll publish it.”

She took her readers around the world for an adventure of new places, new looks, and new ideas. “The eye has to travel,” she said.

While some (wrongly) dismiss fashion as superficial, there was nothing superficial about what Diana Vreeland did. She acted on her conviction that vision has the power to transform, and encouraged everyone around her to do the same.

Vreeland not only reinvented herself and scores of people she worked with over the decades; she almost singlehandedly reinvented ”fashion” as we know it today. Before Vreeland, fashion magazines ran tips on cooking pies. She brought glamour to fashion and made it OK for women to be ambitious, as one of her many admirers in the film says.

Vreeland understood that fashion is a verb, not a noun. “A new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress,” she declares. She gave her readers a vision of life. Fashion is what you’re doing, not what you’re wearing.

She essentially saw the clothes and accessories as talismans having value and power that comes from the creative energy they’re charged with, the same energy that drives all life. This is a decidedly nonmaterialistic view, and it’s a lesson for us all—no matter what we wear.

Many people remember some of Diana Vreeland’s famous pronouncements (“I adore pink! It is the navy blue of India!”) but few remember actually hearing her speak.

The documentary “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel” (PG-13, opening Friday at the Esquire) takes care of that, bringing the voice of the “empress of fashion” to life as it airs bits of television interviews with the likes of Dick Cavett, Diane Sawyer and Jane Pauley, as well as conversations with George Plimpton.

Produced and directed by Vreeland’s granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, the film traces the life of the woman who was among the most influential forces in 20th century fashion. Vreeland spent 26 years as a columnist and fashion editor at Harper’s from 1936-62; went to Vogue as editor-in-chief for another decade, then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a special consultant to its costume exhibitions from 1972 until her death in 1989. But viewers need not be fashion aficionados to appreciate her influence.

Vreeland embraced both high and low culture; she championed denim as heartily as she did silk chiffon. Her pure exuberance — not to mention a fierce work ethic — was contagious. The film features endless photos of her with a broad smile and an ever-present cigarette dangling from her polished red fingernails.

Immordino Vreeland conducted more than 60 interviews with co-workers, models, photographers, designers and celebrities such Angelica Huston, Cher and Marisa Berenson for the project.

Fans of 1960s fashion will love seeing the then-and-now photos and interviews with models like Veruschka von Lehndorff and Penelope Tree. Photographer Richard Avedon called Vreeland his “brilliant, crazy aunt.” British photographer David Bailey was alternately amused, enlightened and baffled by his editor. He bursts out laughing when remembering that after one particularly difficult photo shoot, Vreeland found the pictures he shot of Tree fantastic, but refused to use them. “There’s no languor in the lips!” she told him.

Born to wealthy parents in Paris in 1903, Vreeland early on was aware that her mother found her unattractive. Indeed, Madame Dalziel referred to her daughter as an “ugly little monster.” It might have been the impetus young Diana needed to turn her unique looks into a signature rather than a liability and create a personality to match. (It also could be the reason why she later encouraged models to flaunt their imperfections.)

Conventional schooling didn’t suit Vreeland once the family moved to New York. But she found her passion in dance, which had to give her an appreciation for the grace and movement models and mannequins would express in the countless fashion layouts and museum exhibits she orchestrated.

She found another love in banker Reed Vreeland, who would become her best friend, confidante, husband and father to her two sons, Frederick and Tim. The sons confess at times to wishing they had a more conventional mother but the film pays limited attention to personal relationships, including Vreeland’s sorrow at Reed’s death in 1966. “Curiously enough, those things haven’t touched me much,” she tells an interviewer who asks her about grief.

She was much happier talking about her work: discovering “Betty” Bacall (who would soon be known as Lauren Bacall), and later, Twiggy; and overseeing the art-intensive December issues of which she says, “I’m more proud than anything else.”

Vreeland also shares such extraordinary — and embellished — life experiences as seeing the coronation of King George V. Having Nijinsky dance in the living room of her parent’s home in Paris. Riding horses with Buffalo Bill Cody during childhood summers in the Rocky Mountains. Seeing Charles Lindbergh’s plane fly over her house in New York.

“Fact or fiction?” she is asked.

“Faction,” she replies.

Pizzazz. Diana Vreeland used that word a lot discussing others — yet it aptly describes herself when words like “extraordinary” or “exasperating” don’t quite suffice.

The late, legendary fashion editor comes alive in “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” an awkwardly titled but engaging documentary.

First-time director Lisa Immordino Vreeland (married to DV’s grandson) has amassed an impressive collection of interview clips, but it’s her clever way of structuring the tale that adds real drama and emotional punch.

She starts with Vreeland’s silver-spoon youth in Paris, and a rhino-hunting mother who never let Vreeland forget she was unattractive. Despite mommy dearest, Vreeland grows into a strong, stylish woman, marries, has kids and a high-powered career (first as a fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, then running Vogue and consulting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

She attended coronations, rode with Buffalo Bill and watched Charles Lindbergh fly overhead from her home in Brewster, N.Y., on his historic trans-Atlantic flight.

At which point astute LIers may ask: How could Lindbergh, who took off from Roosevelt Field en route to Paris, wind up flying over . . . Putnam County? Turns out Vreeland fibbed. Occasionally. (She loved a good story.)

She also (for real) discovered Lauren Bacall, advised Jackie Kennedy and promoted the bikini. Her sons, friends, designers and some unexpected colleagues (Ali MacGraw, Anjelica Huston) offer memories of an inspiring woman who lived life on her own terms . . . till the director weaves in more troubling, poignant anecdotes, reminding us how such stylish living comes at a cost.

Yet Vreeland remained unapologetic.

“Style is everything,” she said. “It helps you get out of bed in the morning . . . down the stairs. It is everything. And I’m not talking about the clothes.”

For Vreeland, style was about more than wardrobe. Life was to be lived with, well, pizzazz — or it wasn’t worth living at all.

In an interview with writer Bob Colacello, fashion editor Diana Vreeland summed up what it means to be a visionary trendsetter: “You’re not supposed to give people what they want, you supposed to give them what they don’t know they want yet.”

As a columnist at Harpers Bazaar and later editor-in-chief of Vogue, her career in publishing spanned over 30 years. She discovered Lauren Bacall and acted as style consultant to First lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Her flamboyant life forms the basis of the new documentary, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.

First-time director Lisa Immordino Vreeland got to know her subject through “her family’s eyes. I’m a Vreeland through marriage and a Immordino at heart. I wanted to know Diana on my terms,” she told me during a phone conversation from London.

The film opens Friday exclusively at Landmark’s La Jolla Village.

Scott Marks: After writing her autobiography, Diana Vreeland joked: “I don’t give a damn what’s in it just so long as it sells.” How do you think that philosophy applied to her genius as a fashion editor?

Lisa Immordino Vreeland: She wanted to bring those pages to life and when she was made editor-in-chief at Vogue she finally got the ability to do that. (At Harper’s Bazaar she was just the fashion editor.) It was the ‘60’s and it was a magazine where she really had this kind of cool place to do what she wanted. She looked at Vogue as being much more than a fashion magazine. She recorded everything that was going on — social, political, and cultural changes — all these things she felt people would like and would interest and teach them. She gave it a sense of internationalism. It’s pretty incredible what they did.

Diana fabricated a lot of her personal backstory, most notably looking up and seeing Charles Lindbergh flying over Brewster when it wasn’t even on his route? One of the men you interview refers to it as “faction.” How did she react when people eventually called her on her on the inaccuracies?

People must have said, “Come on, Diana. That can’t be the real story,” but I don’t have any first-hand examples of it. I was having a conversation with biographer Hugo Vickers today and we were talking about these fabrications. I think all these stories are true, but they’re exaggerated. I don’t think Diaghilev and Nijinsky danced in the family living room in Paris. Do I think she went riding with Buffalo Bill a lot? No. She definitely met him, and maybe he took her and maybe he didn’t.

It’s not as if she outright lied. It’s like adding a beautiful veneer by taking something and making it look better to help us understand. This whole sense of fantasy of Lindbergh flying over helped to make the war look a little better. I don’t look at it as being something so horrible. She had this vision when my husband and his brother were growing up in Morocco. She had in her mind that they would go to school on camels. It wasn’t true, but it seemed so much better to her that way. Why change it?

My mother used to say, “If you’re not good looking the least you can do is look good.” Diana’s mother regularly reinforced her ugly duckling status. How do you think the constant belittling contributed to her prowess as an arbiter of beauty?

It built up her character a lot. It told her at a young age — and she wrote about it in her childhood diary — if she was to stand out, she needed to be an original. She gave it to herself as a mental assignment. You have to have some pretty specific qualities already inside of you. I don’t think at that young an age you can actually manipulate your life that much. She just had to pull herself together and say I am going to do something with myself. And that’s exactly what she did. You have got to have some great stamina.

She had a lot of little things that came up along the way. It wasn’t just her mother. Even on her wedding day, this story about an affair her mother was having with a hunter who she always traveled with to Africa came out in the society pages. It was totally scandalous at that time for a story like that to come out on her wedding day. It was always constant little things, but she always forged ahead. Perhaps that’s why she had this kind of coldness and wouldn’t show her true feelings. That was her protection method.

She was lampooned in a couple of movies, most notably Kay Thompson’s haughty characterization in Funny Face. And I must track down a copy of William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Magoo? Did Diana have a sense of humor about herself? Did she take the ribbing in stride or do you think she was she insulted by it?

In regards to Funny Face, she she saw it and when it was over, she got up and said, “I never want to talk about this again!” Clearly she was not happy with that portrayal. I don’t think she always took herself too seriously. When she was interviewed by George Plympton she kept saying, “What do I know? There are 36 hours of a tape and she kept repeating, “Oh, yeah. What do I know?” That’s not somebody who thinks that seriously about herself. And I’m not saying that I like that about her. I like the fact that perhaps she wasn’t aware of what she was building.

The Eye Has to Travel follows Valentino: The Last Emperor and The September Issue, two recent fashion documentaries. What is it about these powerhouses that makes for such fascinating documentaries?

There was a whole merging of art, life, and culture. There is so much that is not personal anymore. It’s great to be able to follow Valentino around. It goes behind closed doors to give us glimpses of these people’s personalities. Although Vreeland is not alive, we were able to tell her story well and she feels alive. It’s all about getting more information. That’s what society seems to be about.

If they were to produce a narrative biopic based on the life of Diana Vreeland, who do you think should be cast to play her?

Everybody says Anjelica Huston. I think Anjelica would do a great job. She doesn’t exactly look like her, but I think that she gets her so well. I’m not quite there yet as to how this can be done. If there was to be a feature it would have to focus on a certain period. The Vogue years would be a natural.

The film ends with a lovely bit of animated whimsy as we watch Diana fly off with Lindy in the Spirit of St. Louis. At what point in the filmmaking process did it dawn on you that it was the only way to end this picture?

I wanted the film to end with Diana and Lindbergh. The movie premiered here last night in London and somebody said, “Ugh! How can you put animation there?” How was I going to find a picture of Diana Vreeland posing with Charles Lindbergh? There was no other way. We had some difficulty with the animation. At one point she was standing on the plane, and then she was going to walk across the wings. At the end I did the most limited thing I could: I put her in the plane and we had her turn her head.

You are missing one vital detail.

What’s that?

The ever-present cigarette!

(Laughing) I know. It was very hard to get that right. The scene needed to be more fully animated. Originally we had a horse in the picture, but it was so un-elegant; it looked like a cartoon Budweiser horse.

Diana Vreeland and a Clydesdale? Perish the thought! Your instincts were right. Instead of Photoshopped heads, you went with the magic of movies.

Right? They did such a beautiful job of moving from live-action to animation. It’s a very hard thing to do, but since I’m a first-time director, I was like “Who cares? What rules? Let’s just do it!”

Long before there was icy Anna Wintour there was vibrant Diana Vreeland. The legendary editor and “Empress of Fashion” was a tastemaker of the highest caliber. She could make everything from celebrities (i.e. Twiggy) to decadent statements about the nature of fashion (“The bikini is the biggest thing since the atom bomb”). Yet unquestionably the greatest thing Diana Vreeland made was herself. Audiences unfamiliar with her career will marvel over her résumé — from editing Harper’s Bazaar to Vogue to her stint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where she helped popularize its historical collections (a legacy still resonating in those long lines to see Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty). The true allure of this excellent documentary is the infectious joie de vivre of its subject. Among all the famous faces interviewed about her is a wealth of archival footage of Vreeland herself — her eccentric, smiling visage wreathed in cigarette smoke which you could easily mistake for a cloud of pure grace.
WORD OF MOUTH: A glorious tribute and a must-see film for anyone into fashion.
Rating: 9 of 10.

by Jonathan Roche

Anyone who has lamented the difficulty of teaching old dogs new tricks could learn something from Diana Vreeland. Although she died in 1989, the fashion maven and iconoclast no doubt loved the idea of contradicting that trite old adage, as illustrated by the documentary “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.”

Paris-born Vreeland didn’t begin her career until her mid-30s, when she began working at Harper’s Bazaar, and one could argue that she really hit her stride in her 60s as editor of Vogue, filling its pages with fantastical photographs and fashion’s up-and-comers. After she put her indelible stamp on that magazine and was subsequently fired, she considered her next big ad¬ven¬ture. At age 70, retirement seemed a bit premature, so she went to work transforming the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute from an under-the-radar exhibit space to a venue fit for the annual Met Ball, a magnet for everyone who’s anyone in fashion.

The film, written and directed by Vreeland’s granddaughter-in-law, mainly rests on the strength of its subject. Fortunately for her, Lisa Immordino Vreeland doesn’t need much more in her first film outing. The documentary features numerous high-profile interview subjects, including Angelica Huston and photographer Richard Avedon. There also is archival footage of Vreeland keeping television interviewers on their toes and some voice-over from transcripts in which Vreeland and writer George Plimpton prepared material for her 1984 memoir, “D.V.”

The film pays close attention to Vreeland’s unpredictable nature. She appears to have been Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s inspiration for intimidation, referring to assistants (including actress Ali MacGraw) as “girl” and making them cry. Yet she had an expansive sense of humor and a taste for the lowbrow. She called her ostentatiously decorated living room “a garden in hell,” proclaimed herself naturally lazy and used her husband’s death as an excuse to buck convention, wearing white to the post-funeral gathering. Even as she was credited with spreading the popularity of bikinis and blue jeans, she also trumpeted Diane Von Furstenberg and Missoni.

What was perhaps most interesting about Vreeland was her aversion to anything that might be considered vanilla, and the film succeeds at demonstrating her taste for the outlandish. She very well may have been the first person to choose models with what others might call flaws. She put Barbra Streisand on the pages of Vogue, playing up her “Nefertiti nose,” and discovered Lauren Hutton and her gap-toothed smile. Called ugly by her mother as a child, Vreeland put a premium on personality over looks even while working in such a highly visual field.

The documentary mostly steers clear of Vreeland’s home life. Little attention is paid to her husband or her children, and that may be partly because Vreeland didn’t seem to have much time for them, according to interviews with her two sons. Still, with a director with so much access to Vreeland’s relatives, it would have been interesting to hear a few more stories about her home presence — or absence, as the case may have been.

Of course, Vreeland’s professional life offers more than enough fodder for a documentary, not to mention a valuable life lesson: There’s no such thing as too old.

Style-setter Diana Vreeland was mad about fashion. A woman in the right place at the right time, she lived a magical life, filled with complications and disappointments that only made her more determined to leave her mark.

All of this is outlined in the documentary, “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland. Married to Vreeland’s grandson, she has compiled an insightful, humorous and loving tribute to a woman whose fashion sense, as reflected in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue magazines, influenced generations.

A one-of-a-kind visionary, Vreeland (1903-1989) championed designers such as Chanel, Givenchy and Dior and executed fashion spreads so expensive, they created whole new worlds in far-off lands. But she also followed pop culture, declaring the bikini “the biggest thing since the atom bomb” and championing blue jeans as “the most beautiful thing since the gondola.”

The film is built around recorded interviews between journalist George Plimpton and Vreeland, as well as clips from an appearance on “The Dick Cavett Show.” She recounts the fashionista’s life beginning in Belle Epoque Paris: “I arranged to be born in Paris, and after that, everything followed naturally.” She was crazy about dance and watched Diaghilev and Nijinsky dancing in the family living room. Later, she would dance with Josephine Baker in 1920s Harlem, become friends with Coco Chanel, ride horses with Buffalo Bill, sell lingerie to Wallis Simpson and give fashion advice to first lady Jackie Kennedy.

Vreeland also respresented a lesson in resilience. Brushing off the ugly duckling status bestowed on her by her mother, she instead moved into the upper echelons of society and fashion.

After 25 years at Harper’s, she left with some disgust after she was passed over for a promotion. She landed at Vogue (1962-’71) where she quickly became editor-in-chief and turned the magazine into a fashion bible. After being forced out at Vogue (“They wanted a different sort of magazine”), she once again reinvented herself as a consultant for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she put its Costume Institute on the map with elaborate exhibits that brought the clothes to life.

Immordino Vreeland digs deep into the cast of characters that revolved around Vreeland, from assistants to photographers to models to editors. Among those offering commentary are photographer Richard Avedon, film director Joel Schumacher, actresses Lauren Hutton, Ali MacGraw, Anjelica Huston and designers Calvin Klein, Hubert de Givenchy, Anna Sui, Manolo Blahnik and Diane von Furstenberg.

With her affectionate manner and authoritarian personality, Vreeland left a firm and lasting imprint on 20th century fashion. She left a less memorable imprint on her two sons; both of whom talk candidly in the film about their often absent and distant mother. One son, Frederick, says he just wanted “a nice old mom like my friends had.”

By touching on all angles of Vreeland’s life, “The Eye Has to Travel” creates a highly entertaining and colorful portrait of a unique woman — the likes of which we may never see again.

All you want in a movie about the legendary fashion-magazine editor Diana Vreeland — it’s “Dee-AHN-ah,” by the way — is Vreeland herself. You want her coming at you and shooting through you until her wit, her kookiness, her ideas about fashion and style and what they have to do with everyday life are popping out of your pores. Going to the movies for that effect isn’t essential. Several books accomplish this, the best being “D.V.,” which is Vreeland, courtesy of George Plimpton, in her own very entertaining, very wise, very digressive words. There is a new movie, though — “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” a documentary profile that gets the job done, too. It’s by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, a fashion insider who married Diana’s grandson Alexander but never met Vreeland. The movie has a lot going for it.

In less than 90 minutes, it walks us through sketches of Vreeland’s private life and the formulation and decades-long execution of her philosophy in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. The energy here is a selling point. The prefatory opening-title design involves a wall of magazine covers and swings from one cover to the next, revealing someone like Lauren Hutton or Anjelica Huston, people who knew Vreeland and can speak about her as a tastemaker and a woman.

What immediately follows is one of those “uh-oh” decisions that can ruin a decent documentary. Immordino has hired actors to read Vreeland’s recorded conversations with Plimpton. The man doing Plimpton sounds overeager, and the woman doing Vreeland gets that cured, draggy rasp but emphasizes a Britishness that was never truly there. The actor is simultaneously going for Eartha Kitt and Judi Dench. Vreeland was born in Paris, and lived in London and New York, but, to me, the regal char in her voice was just like Weezie Jefferson’s.

Anyway, you don’t know why the movie is bothering since it also uses some great television-interview footage of Vreeland — of her talking to Dick Cavett and Jane Pauley and Diane Sawyer. But the reenactments become important, smartly inserted connective material. I wound up liking them. They’re as lively as the rest of the movie, as lively as Vreeland. What’s confirmed here is that Vreeland, who died in 1989, was one-of-a-kind, a woman who understood that she had a dubious sort of beauty and used it to her advantage. She came of age in the 1920s — the height of Surrealism — and spent a lot of time partying in Harlem, where she found herself drawn to the glamorous pizazz, to the showmanship, and to Josephine Baker, who, for Vreeland, was the embodiment of charisma.

Vreeland wanted to bring all of that to her work in the New York fashion-magazine world, which, until her revolution of it, was staid and insular. Vreeland detonated the staidness but could do only so much about the insularity. Fashion scares a lot people; and a lot of people who don’t fear it can’t afford it. But that was part of her point. Vreeland applied fantasy. She wasn’t pushing clothes, not really. She championed attitude and style and individuality — those were free.

The movie describes what hell she could be to work for. The actress Ali MacGraw tells stories about her time as an assistant that sound very “Devil Wears Prada.” (MacGraw still seems annoyed.) The ingenious slave-driving fashion-magazine editor was a Vreeland invention. But the difference between Vreeland and her progeny, namely Anna Wintour (if the gossip and romans-a-clef are to be believed), is that Vreeland was a spirited thinker. She committed her glee, disappointments, discoveries, and expectations to paper and, several times a day, distributed them as memos. Someone in the film rightly notes that she was actually doing a form of blogging. Wintour is a chillier, less colorful star, a taciturn Bergman to Vreeland’s quotable Fellini, Wednesday Addams to Vreeland’s wise Uncle Fester. To that end, Vreeland’s upside-down approach to life was what Little Edie Beale, the eccentric in “Grey Gardens,” might have aspired to. It’s just that Vreeland could function on the ceiling.

It’s nice to see vintage superstar models, great photographers, and important designers get enthusiastic about her. The best is the model China Machado, who offers a scary defense of Vreeland in a way that would make you afraid to work for her, too. It’s also nice to be reminded of Vreeland’s progressive, occasionally shocking taste. World War II had just ended, and she was putting bikinis in Bazaar. She was the first to put Mick Jagger and his amazing lips in Vogue. She loved photographing Veruschka and Streisand and Cher. She hired women with long necks, big eyes, freckles, and Lauren Hutton’s dental gap. It’s possible and entirely valid to leave this movie with the impression that clothes weren’t fashion to Vreeland. People were.

A key insight to the surreal talent of Diana Vreeland, the late American fashion magazine editor profiled in an insightful new documentary, may be the observation by a colleague who tells the camera, “She simply didn’t think like other people.”

Artistic geniuses don’t, or they’d be like the rest of us.

Her quirks, wit and warts are explored in “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel,” a captivating 86-minute film by Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who is married to one of Vreeland’s grandsons.

“You’ve got to have style,” the fashion editor famously said. “It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It’s a way of life. Without it, you’re nobody.”

This from someone regarded as homely, with no formal education (but who was raised in Paris), who worked for 25 years at Harper’s Bazaar, spent eight years at the helm of Vogue and at age 70 was a consultant for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Photos of her family life and stunning magazine spreads in the Japanese alps and the pyramids of Egypt are juxtaposed with TV interviews by Dick Cavett. The glue holding it all together is a voice-over by actors reading from a script from hours of taped chats between Vreeland and George Plimpton as they worked on her memoir, “D.V.,” published in 1984.

Former colleague Ali MacGraw talks about an imperious Vreeland, while photographer Richard Avedon recalls Vreeland telling him on one shoot: “Think of Cleopatra pacing the roof on a hot night with all these old people, and she’s this young beautiful girl pacing that roof!”

Her sons, Tim and Frecky, discuss their mother’s general indifference to their lives.
Vreeland’s gift was not mothering, but visual storytelling, laden with fantasy and artifice.

“Why all this naturalness?” she asks. “It’s bloody boring.”