Last night, editor of Harper’s Bazaar Justine Picardie and the author of The Empress of Fashion: A Life of Diana Vreeland Amanda Mackenzie Stuart discussed the fabulous life of the divine Diana Vreeland at a Women in Journalism event in London. Why don’t you take a glance at some of the life lessons we might glean from Ms V?

1. She was the definition of glass half full: ‘You know for years I am and always have been looking out for girls to look up to because they are perfect. Never have I discovered that girl or that woman. I shall be that girl.’

2. Reinvention is always a good thing: ‘I am going to make myself the most popular girl in the world,’ Vreeland wrote in her diary in January 1918. She accordingly changed her looks and made herself ‘more beautiful’.

3. DV loved London, but not in the way you think: ‘The great thing about London is that it’s so close to Paris.’

4. Style has little to do with money, Vreeland learned while she lived in Europe: ‘It’s all about the divine spark,’ apparently. What she said.

5. It’s good to be crazy. The celebrated photographer Richard Avedon described Harper’s Bazaar as a ‘family, with Diana as the crazy aunt’.

6. It’s your way or the high way. When Hearst refused to give Diana a pay rise after 25 years at Harper’s she took her creative vision to US Vogue, where she became famous for a shoot in 1966 that was rumoured to cost nearly $1 million.

7. Never believe your own hype. ‘The day you give a dinner in my honour, tell everyone, including me, it’s for someone else.’

8. The reader is always key. ‘Diana’s main interest,’ says Mackenzie Stuart, ‘was the woman flicking through the magazine – the gap between what the woman was and what she wanted to be’.

9. Most importantly, YOLO: ‘Life has its up and down trips. You must choose one. The down trip makes for a bad liver, bad digestion and fewer friends. The up trip is naturally delicious and never ceasing. I believe in people who are on the up trip.’

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.