Living in the shadow of a legend isn’t easy, especially when the legend in question—Diana Vreeland, the high-octane editor in chief of Vogue from 1963 to 1971—is a family member. Treading carefully and respectfully might be the best approach. But writer, director, and producer Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who is married to one of Vreeland’s grandsons, spent three years investigating every nook and cranny of the wacky, wise, and occasionally tragic world that might be called Vreelandia. Her 2011 literary salute to the clan’s matriarch, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (Abrams, $55), was an instant sensation in style circles, and her documentary of the same name opens today in select theaters across the country.

Created by Immordino Vreeland, with codirectors and cowriters Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng, the 86-minute film explores the life of Diana Vreeland (née Dalziel, 1903–89), an eccentric but soignée society matron who brought her passions for art, fashion, travel, literature, and history first to Harper’s Bazaar and then to Vogue. Mixing period interviews, revelations from private papers, and intimate conversations with family, friends, and colleagues—as well as a peppy musical score—Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel is not only an intimate look at one of America’s greatest tastemakers but also a crash course in overcoming adversity with high style.

AD talks with Immordino Vreeland about her own projects, her insights, and why the world needs Diana Vreeland now and forever.

Architectural Digest: There have been at least four books written about your husband’s grandmother, not including yours, and another biography is coming out in December. Now you’ve made a documentary. Is it possible to have too much Diana Vreeland?

Lisa Immordino Vreeland: People are looking for inspiration now more than ever before, and she provided it back then and is still providing it today. Her inspirational quality was a big motivating factor for me when I was working on the book and the movie.

AD: She looms large not just for a certain style-obsessed segment of the public, but also in the Vreeland family. What did you learn about her roles as a mother and a wife that surprised or disturbed you?

LIV: That in her pursuit of and passion for the world, along the way she neglected her sons. You can see that in the interviews with my father-in-law and his brother, Tim. People have said, “What a horrible mother!” Come on! It was a different time. People now are involved in every aspect of their children’s lives. There are no boundaries—even my ten-year-old daughter has access to everything on my computer. But back then children were sent to boarding school when they were very young. Also, she was a traditional society woman, very present as a wife but married to a man who had affairs, and she just closed her eyes to them. He was the love of her life, and she didn’t want to go down that road, so she hid her true emotions.

AD: What did she bring to the world of publishing that is absent today?

LIV: Freedom—she got away with a lot of stuff at Vogue that would be impossible today. But it was the 1960s, and Condé Nast was lucky to find a woman of her background who understood both high and low culture and could capture the Zeitgeist of that era. When she was editor in chief, Vogue wasn’t really a fashion magazine; it was about the world. There’s not that level of taste now in the magazine world. It’s more important to feature celebrities and reality-show stars. How interesting is that?

AD: Vreeland gained early notoriety in the ’30s for the bizarre style maxims she contributed to Harper’s Bazaar, such as, “Why don’t you wash your blond child’s hair in dead Champagne as they do in France?” Was she just being wacky or was that column evidence of something deeper? What do you think she was trying to convey to the magazine’s readers?

LIV: One of the why-don’t-you maxims we use in the movie is, “Why don’t you 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?” There’s nothing wacky in that—that’s something written by someone who has her feet planted firmly on the ground, despite the extravagant craziness. She was always teaching, in a fun way, in an approachable way.

AD: So many people admire her famous red garden-in-hell living room in Manhattan, but I’m entranced by the cavernous shocking-pink living room at her country house in Brewster, New York. In a world where safe decorating still rules, her taste was, frankly, bracing.

LIV: We still have some things of hers, like the great [Syrie Maugham] sleigh bed from her New York City apartment. Our property on Long Island has two houses, one of which was rented by [fashion photographers] Inez and Vinoodh for a number of years; they slept on that bed. Now it’s at our own house. We also have one of her enormous couches. Her couches always had killer measurements.

AD: Vreeland once said she didn’t lie, she embroidered. As a filmmaker and a writer, did you find her somewhat creative relationship with facts a challenge or an inspiration?

LIV: I love how she made a story better with a Vreeland veneer. I don’t think it was lying; she was painting a picture. When my husband and his brother lived in Morocco as children—their father was the U.S. ambassador—she loved the idea that the boys would go to school on camels. Of course they didn’t, but that’s how she felt it should have been.

AD: What do you think is her legacy?

LIV: The number of careers she helped launch, among them the shoe designer Manolo Blahnik. The fact that she had her hand in so many people’s professional lives counts for something. She had the vision to see something within all those people and to encourage them. People don’t necessarily think that way now.

Tour Diana Vreeland’s New York apartment, which appeared in our September/October 1975 issue.