A Manifesto for Dressing

By Diana Vreeland

In her foreword to Marisa Berenson’s 1984 advice book, Dressing Up: How to Look and Feel Absolutely Perfect for Any Social Occasion, Diana Vreeland lays out as close to her manifesto on dressing that I’ve ever seen in her writing. She succinctly states her beliefs on the reasons why one should dress up with a quick explanation of the basics of how.

“…dressing up is a thing that comes to you—you feel something and you go along with it. There's no pressure on you, you're not competing. You're dressed entirely the way you want.”

Only at the beginning (first paragraph) and end (second to last) does Vreeland bring in Berenson. While I adore Marisa—in my eyes, there is no one chicer or more beautiful—these lines feel very much like an afterthought; as if Vreeland got carried away with her message and then recalled the venue for her words. I struggled a bit with how to lay this out—whether to publish it below in the original to change boldness/italicize or to remove those sentences altogether. In the end, since they felt like an addendum, I made them into footnotes—allowing Vreeland’s words to stand on their own as a manifesto and, hopefully, some inspiration to dress up and enjoy your clothes.

Marisa Berenson with friend and mentor, Diana Vreeland (Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, 1962 – 1971), Photo James Karales

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Diana Vreeland’s Foreword for Dressing Up

I think dressing up is a physical act—absolutely. First of all, you've got to clean up. You've got to take a big bath. You've got to be excited because you're having a bath. You've got to be excited because you're drying yourself. You've got to be excited before you put on your scent.¹

Then you’ve got to be excited about what you're going to wear. And it takes a bit of time, all this planning . . . thinking of the earrings, the special parure, which translates to "your accessories” — the bracelets or whatever you're going to wear with everything else. You've got to put a lot of physical stuff into it—energy and lust and enthusiasm!