← Return to David Yeagley’s Interests

A seemingly eccentric interest, fashion has nevertheless been a conscious factor in Yeagley’s thinking from childhood. His mother was an Indian, of course, from a small community in southwestern, rural Oklahoma. This would not create the expectation that Yeagley would grow up with an interest in haute monde. However, Yeagley’s mother was intensely fashion conscious from her youth, and was determined to make something of herself. Yeagley therefore grew up in a family where taste and social class was something to be concerned about.

“I can remember,” says Yeagley, “as a crawling, toddling infant, I used to see my mother’s fashion magazines on the floor, and I would literally sit on them, or craw on them. I can remember Bazaar and Vogue when they were about two feet wide and two feet long.” In the earlier days, these magazines were larger than today’s W. So Yeagley got some early impressions of women. “I thought a woman is supposed to look affected, somehow,” says Yeagley, “as something strange, different, or unique.” Even so early, Yeagley experienced the truth of Francis Bacon observations of the late 16th century, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”

In Atlanta, in the late ‘70’s, Yeagley conceived a special kind of literary participation in fashion. He invented a “Fashion Photography Critique,” in which he brought to bear on fashion the rigors of academic criticism. “I thought fashion photography was a fine art, and it deserved the kind of careful consideration of the other fine arts.” He was never able to sell the idea of a critique column to any major fashion magazine, but his first critique, on the work of Firooz Zahedi (in Town & Country, May 2000) was published in Persian Heritage (Fall 2001).

In the early ‘80’s, in New Haven, CT, Yeagley discovered a special value inherent in beauty itself, and that was the healing power, the emotional restorative power, of beauty. He recognized it in a 1982 advertisement photograph of Diane Von Furstenberg. From that time, Yeagley corresponded with Diane, and eventually met her, and finally created his own portraits of her, one of which, in 1991, hung in her New York studio. “That 1982 shot of her, and her first fragrance, “Tatiana,” was unforgettable,” Yeagley says. “She really filled the bill on facial beauty. Her eyes were most worthy of the name Diane, the Roman goddess of the moon. They were so distant, and cold, yet irresistible and inflaming. They seemed sacred.”

Yeagley also became acquainted with Grace Mirabella. “Mirabella represents an authentic Italian humanist, like in the days of the Renaissance,” Yeagley explains. “She brought common sense into the picture.” In this sense, Mirabella is where the people are. Whereas Diane’s eyes take the heart whithersoever it may wonder, Mirabella tries to map out road of some kind. In fact, Diane herself, in her famous “wrap-around” dress, showed the same practicality, combined with a Freudian exoticism.

But Yeagley’s favorite objet d’art was Farah Diba Pahlavi, Her Imperial Majesty, The Shahbanou of Iran. “I fell in love with her life,” he says, “and I didn’t even know what she looked like! It was just the architecture of her personal life story that was so fascinating.” Yeagley later created two portraits of Her Majesty, which are presently in Her possession.

← Return to David Yeagley’s Interests

Posted by David Yeagley · January 14, 2009 · 12:57 pm CT ·