Diana Vreeland and Marisa Berenson discuss the eighteenth century. What an odd accent Vreeland had.
And does she refer to the salons she remembers visiting in the eighteenth century?
Thursday 31 January 2008
It was FANTASTICALLY warm
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2 comments:
Ah - sounds like DV has a strong and classic "Seven Sisters" accent to me.
It's an upper class American accent common in the 7 women-only sister schools to the US Ivy League when the Ivy League admitted only men. The women's schools were Smith, Barnard, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, and Wellesley.
It's an accent that has almost disappeared in the US, and you only hear it very rarely now and never this strongly. Julia Child had one and Martha Stewart has a trace of it. Hilary Clinton, on the other hand, still has her flat Midwestern twang even though she attended Wellesley when it was still an all-girl because by the time she was there in the late 60's this accent was already disappearing as those schools changed and went coed in the 60's and 70's.
If you watch clips of Edie Sedgwick, she sounds like that. You still hear it a lot in certain circles in NYC.
Most (if not all) of the Seven Sisters had required speech/presentation classes, so that's probably where they picked it up. (My mom, a Holyoke alumna, always complains that those classes aren't part of the curriculum at my school (Barnard) anymore.)
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