“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Well, possums, it’s our penultimate Wednesday with the decorating wisdom of Diana Vreeland, and we certainly hope it has been valuable and useful for you.

And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* In a white room drape the enormous bay window with machine-embroidered broderie anglaise dyed bright green, and held here and there with black pailletted butterflies?

* Clutter, not pile, on a Chippendale butler’s tray table all the newest books, some flat, some on their ends, some like fans?

* Have your telephone-message pads, scratch pads, and menu cards all the same, such as white with red printing and initials or blue with navy blue?

* Put on the guest-bathroom shelf a set of medicine spoons and at least three glasses? One is never enough.

* Give a new note to your sitting-room by introducing a Victorian chair upholstered by Jansen in bright emerald green cotton, buttoned in white with little white chenille earrings on either side?

* Or place beside a low sofa Jansen’s little Victorian table of polished metal encrusted with a collection of precious shells?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

It's Wednesday.

It's Diana Vreeland's day.

What more can we say, possums?

And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* Trim the beige quilted satin petticoat of a dressing-table with two wide flounces of black lace, mounted with big flat jet beads?

* Line the shelves of your closets with old-fashioned sweet-smelling grass matting, as Herman Patrick Tappé has done in the closets of his shop?

* If you are tired of your pine farmhouse furniture, paint it white picked out with gold, and with red satin ribbons tie little cushions of leopard plush on the chair seats?

* If a guest arrives at your house after a long motor trip, have the bed turned down and lay out a white shantung dressing-gown tailored like a man’s and monogrammed with your own particular monogram on the sleeve, so that she may rest while she is being unpacked?

* Remember to put an eye-shade on your guest’s bedside table, as the chances are the sun will wake her up?

* Have your cigarettes stamped with a personal insignia, as a well-known explorer did with his penguin?

* When you are buying black in any material, see that it is very black?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Well, possums, Spring has sprung, and on Wednesday to boot, and in our own Rite of Spring, we turn, as ever, to earthy goddess Diana Vreeland for suggestions on better living through sheer fabulousness. In honor of Spring, today’s edition is dedicated to all things floral.

And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* use up a long ugly table by cutting the legs off short? Pickle it, put it against the windows and litter it with ten or twelve square glass vases of every size, filled with every kind of fresh garden flower.

* if you have a shining parquet floor, have potted cinerarias of every color of blue, banked around the sofa at one end of the room?

* pin edelweiss on your little white boater, as Suzy does?

* whitewash a pair of old linen-closet steps and use on a porch for finger bowls and jars full of flowers or as a child’s bedside table for a lamp, books, and pencils?

* wear a gold flower stuck with an infinitesimal watch?

* put gloxinia in beautiful white porcelain jardinières as Sirie Maugham does in her King’s Road house? They come in exquisite Aubusson colors and are superbly decorative.

* wear yellow diamond flowers in your ears, a flower clipped to the hole of one ear, another flower clipped to the top of the other?

* remember the beauty and smell of white stocks in the garden and in the house?

* consider for your beauty, the creams made by Brother Carolus of Salzburg, who is an apostle of the Apollonian Creed, which advocates bodily beauty as the first duty to God? The creams are made of Alpine herbs and flowers.

* look up the deep mauvish-pink rose which came out in Paris at the time of the devaluation, optimistically called “Better Times”?

* get from Floris their wonderful rose mouthwash?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Goodness, possums, how quickly Wednesdays come and go. Here we are, halfway through our season of Wednesdays, and, according to tonight's episodes, it's party time. Accordingly, this week's Super-Sized dose of the outré wit and wisdom of Diana Vreeland focuses on how to throw a good shindig, and how to be a good guest. And so, without further ado, Why Don't You...

* Build beside the sea, or in the center of your garden, a white summer dining-room shaped like a tent, draped with wooden swags, with walls of screen and Venetian blinds, so you will be safe from bugs and drafts?

* Use Battersea enamel saltcellars as ash-trays?

* Use a gigantic shell instead of a bucket to ice your champagne?

* Serve individual Pfirsich Bowle, which is peeled peach in a chilled glass with ice cold Moselle or Rhine wine poured in? Marvelous at tea time.

* Remember how delicious champagne cocktails are after tennis or golf? Indifferent champagne can be used for these.

* Consider your guests who diet and those who, through sheer curiosity, may want to know what is ahead of them, and have menu cards at the table?

* Realize that everyone really hankers for a toothpick after a good meal, so have blatantly on your table quill toothpicks as you would cigarettes?

* At a supper party, have each little table covered with round, floor-length table-cloths? Each cloth of three separate colors—Dresden blue, pink, and yellow, each flounced like a petticoat and each table quite a different combination of colors, with contrasting colored candles in high gilt candle-holders.

* Shop at Woolworth’s for little Scotch plaid arrangements called Hi-Jacs, made to slip on your cold drink glasses to keep the table from spotting?

* Sweep into the drawing-room on your first big night with an enormous red-fox muff of many skins?

* Go to a ball in a grey fox coat mounted on grey velvet?

* Carry a long diamond rose with a sponge in the heart of the petals to waft your scent as you go?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Possums, crushed as we are this Wednesday by the death of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the only real thing in our lives remains the work of Diana Vreeland. And so, without further ado, Why Don't You...

* Bring back from Central Europe a huge white baroque porcelain stove to stand in your front hall, reflected in the parquet?

* If you have a large studio room, put an enormous deep sofa at one end? Over this, drape high on the wall a tremendous canopy of yards and yards of material—copying your whole effect from the theatrical tapestries of Venice.

* Have your own intimate garden connected by an outside staircase to your bedroom, surrounded by pink brick walks so you can sunburn and read, be out of view, earshot, and the wind?

* Have a row of white pots on your window-sill with orange and brown nasturtiums trained into pyramids around the little cone-shaped trellis?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

No doubt you will be disappointed, possums, that this is a Wednesday without a new and disappointing episode of Top Design. However, we are committed to not disappointing you, and so, as ever, we bring you our weekly helping of Diana Vreeland’s tips for decorating your home and ornamenting your life. Without further ado, Why Don’t You…

In your home:

* Use those low bamboo Legomatic folding beach chairs in little pairs around your drawing-room? They are easy to move about and divinely comfortable. Cover the rubberized cushions in green satin with crimson buttons. [This one’s for Carisa Perez-Fuentes.]

* Consider using the yellow of a zinnia and the purple of a petunia in your decoration? [This one’s for Michael Adams and Jonathan Adler.]

* Keep your telephone wires from curling and driving you wild by using telephone coils? (At H. Morgan, 2 West 46th Street.)

* Do your closet shelves in immaculate white organdie, pleated, with Lubin’s scented pink flannels wrapped around your things? [This one’s for Matt Lorenz; drink a shot of tequila.]

And to make up for the fact that there’s no new episode tonight, we’ll throw in a few more, non-décor suggestions. So, Why Don’t You…

* Wear black breitschwanz† mules with red heels?

* Help litter the beaches with these three colors—capucine, pine green, and black?

* Give the wife of your favorite band leader an entire jazz-band made of tiny baguette diamonds and cabochon emeralds, in the form of a bracelet from Marcus?

* Own, as does one extremely smart woman, twelve diamond roses of all sizes? Wear one as a buttonhole on a tailor-made. Wear five for a necklace around the top of your dress. Wear them all at once one night, in the hair, on your bag, up and down your dress.

* Go serenely out in the snow in a court jester’s hood of cherry red cotton velvet?

† Breitschwanz, according to the International Fur Trade Federation, is “the pelt of a still-born Karakul lamb, where the mother has aborted naturally as a result of the harsh weather conditions, natural illness or pregnancy difficulties. Broadtail pelts are extremely rare and only account for a very small percentage of overall Karakul production. The broadtail pelt is flatter, softer and silkier than the traditional curly young lamb pelt.”

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

A passel of days, possums, and then, tout d'un coup, we are upon the most famous Wednesday of all, Ash Wednesday. But do not be afeared, as the Diana Vreeland aesthetic does not believe in sackcloth and ashes. And so, without further ado, Why Don't you...

* Work a set of dining-room chair seats—each set marked with a musical instrument: drums, fife, bagpipe, violin, et cetera—in brown wool on a natural-colored background and from each instrument a ribbon of a different color, fluttering as from mandolins of troubadours?

* Remember that Jansen of Paris has a shop in New York and go and see their gilt bronze palm trees dripping with Bristol drops and chains of beads—or order from them one of those lovely and not expensive needle-point rugs in fawn wool scattered with pinky brown ostrich feathers?

* If you paint a dark dining-room in a city apartment, stop trying to brighten it and paint it dark grape red and drape the windows in festoons of real Scotch tartan?

* If you have an awkward, impossible sitting-room, why don’t you give up all idea of a grand salon and make the whole thing as snug and compact as a little yacht, with walls lined with comfortable banquettes covered in sailcloth or bed-ticking?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Possums, can it really be that good ole mercredi is upon us again so quickly?

Indeed it is, and with it comes our favorite duty, scattering Diana Vreeland tips like so much gay confetti.

And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* Study closely the perfection of taste and amazing variety in the paneled boudoir of the Vicomtesse Charles de Noailles—buttoned brown satin, straw baskets and fruit, a Cranach, an engraving of Byron, a straw hat, and exquisite objets d’art?

* With black lacquer and pearl Victorian furniture put Kapa shell, a wall covering made of actual sea shells—Frank Haberl—and against that, dressmaker’s tinsel flowers framed in glass holding a mirror?

* Use pineapples for decoration? In your paneled room, low sofas, no flowers but pineapples piled in large bowls, on the floor, on low tables, wherever you can put them. When the fire is lit and guests arrive, the aroma from the fruit is wonderful.

* Use eggplants, complete with their green stalks, in a bright yellow room? The effect is very Chinese and delicious?

And because it’s Valentine’s Day, and we love you, possums, we’ll throw in a few more, totally unrelated to interior design.

* Why don’t you call up John Powers, the model agency, for a professional model just your size and measurements who will fit your clothes for you? The cost of a stand-in for fitting eight dresses, which would take about three hours, is $7.50.

* Why don’t you dress for the theatre, you and your escort? Think how much it means to others in the audience.

* Why don’t you get a little brown satin hemstitched cushion? It is pretty with pink sheets, and it shows off blond or grey hair to perfection.

* Hair-dressers! Install silent dryers in your beauty parlors as they have done in France.

* Telephone Company! Put in an S.V.P. service as they have in Paris. “S.V.P.” meaning s’il vous plait. You simply ring up the S.V.P. girl and she answers anything from the simplest to the most fantastic questions.

Beware the Stare: Everything We Know About Children We Learned from Diana Vreeland. (And Melanie Klein. And “Village of the Damned.”)

Possums, while we gather our thoughts in order to prepare our "first reaction" post about this episode, in which the contestants had to design a child's bedroom, we turn to what fairy godmother Diana Vreeland had to say on the subject of decorating children's rooms and child-rearing in general. (In fact, nowadays it's always our first reaction to anything: what would Diana Vreeland do?) And these suggestions are exactly what we would adopt if we were ever forced to adopt, or forced to play Mr. Belvedere.

And so, without further ado, in a special Thurday edition, why don’t you…

* rinse your blond child’s hair in dead champagne to keep its gold, as they do in France?

* have a jeune fille’s dressing table hung with a pale muslin petticoat with shaded boutonnieres of roses, violets, carnations, and cherries from Woolworth’s tacked on casually?

* paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys’ nursery so they won’t grow up with a provincial point of view?

* turn your child into an Infanta for a fancy-dress party?

* teach your little girl to sew and have her do a modern sampler, made up of addresses of all the houses and apartments she has lived in in her stormy young life?

* build in a bunk like Shirley Temple’s in “Captain January” with drawers underneath for clothes and toys?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Well, possums, the earth has completed seven revolutions on its axis, and once again, Hump Day is upon us. Yes, sirree, it’s Wednesday, and you all know what that means—time for more gracious-living tips from Pink Navy’s resident muse and fag-hag godmother extraordinaire, Diana Vreeland. And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* reconsider the hopeless of a room without a mantel, and put in a fake fireplace draped in flowered chintz and holding an urn of carnations? The mantelpiece is white and gold.

* have an ivory satin bedquilt embroidered with a sentimental poem in colored spangles and pearls, as did the Vicomtesse Charles de Noailles in Paris?

* have the gayest possible slipper chair done up in white broderie anglaise—ruffles like a petticoat, threaded through with pink satin ribbons?

* revive the old-fashioned hat tree—this time a white lacquer pole topped with ostrich feathers of carved wood, or a black and gold palm tree—most useful in a bathroom to hold your clothes?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Possums, Wotan’s Day is upon us once more, and it is once again time to put on your best Kay Thompson-in-Funny-Face accent to read aloud this week's “Why Don't You?” suggestions by Diana Vreeland.

Without further ado, Why Don't You…

* Practically empty your bedroom, leaving only a box-spring bed and over it an enormous bouquet of Mexican altar flowers of crimson striped carnations, japonica, roses, lilies? Decorations, Ltd., has these flowers.

* Consider building on the roof of your country house an outdoor room or terrace—and go up there at night as you would in Tunis to enjoy the night breezes?

* Have a white monkey-fur bedcover mounted on yellow velvet?

* If you have a greenhouse, raise Japanese cherry trees or white lilac trees and put them around your bed against brown Coromandel screens?

“Why Don't You?” Wednesdays

Alright, so it's Thursday, not Wednesday, but cut us a little slack, as things have been hotting up over at Amuse-Biatch, and not just in Padma Lakshmi's dressing room.

This is the first installment of a weekly feature bringing you the best of Diana Vreeland's home decorating and lifestyle tips from her 1936-1938 “Why Don't You?” columns in Harper's Bazaar, all of which, we hasten to add, we have implemented here at Withering Depths.

And so, without further ado, Why don’t you…

* go to Dazian, the theatrical material shop, and get fake leopard skin for your bathroom floor and fake beige fur for your slipper chair?

* start a topiary garden of box or yew, and clip the bushes into peacocks and poodles? They stay green all winter and, brought inside in tubs, look lovely in a formal hall.

* have Vertès of Paris paint you the gayest possible fire screen?

* have a private staircase from your bedroom to the library with needlework carpet with notes of music worked on each step—the whole spelling your favorite tune?

* in your drawing room have a mirror table like Miss Constance Collier’s, with a diamond pencil so that your guests can sign their names in the glass?

* find a miniature Georgian chafing dish? Dip it in gold and use it beside your bed for cigarettes.