Wallis

Before Vogue, before Harper’s Bazaar, there was Hanover Square. At the small lingerie boutique that Diana Vreeland opened in London with her husband, Reed, some of the city’s most elegant women would gather. Among them was Wallis Simpson. The Vreeland family always joked that the shop had “brought down the British Empire”: legend has it that Wallis was wearing one of its nightgowns the weekend she won over King Edward VIII. Silks, velvets, and shelves filled with little wonders. Long before she became an icon, Diana already knew how to discover beauty where others saw only fabric.