Diana Taylor Rides The Bus, Doesn’t Mind Bloomberg’s Height

by Justin Fenner | 9:45 am, January 11th, 2011

For Diana Taylor, de facto first lady of New York, style is important. It’s just not everything. Because after getting up at 6 am to run various financial institutions and charity organizations (from Citigroup to Sotheby’s to Wolfensohn & Company), she’s hard at work being Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s girlfriend, a job that involves up to three society events a night. Harper’s Bazaar found out that Taylor’s wardrobe of tailored classics — and her fascinating ability to just do anything — helps her make it through. Another thing that helps? Public transportation!

In the magazine’s February issue, Taylor comes off as charming and resolute and effortlessly stylish — and by all accounts, with Taylor, what you see is what you get.

“She is serious and manages more than most with absolute grace,” says fellow philanthropist Christy Turlington Burns, “and she happens to be stunningly stylish to boot.” Taylor gravitates toward classics from Ralph Rucci, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, and Ralph Lauren that will last forever. (As she points out, the New York Post called her out for wearing the same dress to the Hampton Classic two years in a row. “If I have something I like, I wear it,” she says.)

And it doesn’t matter to her — or to the mayor, for that matter — that she stands taller than the mayor in the towering heels she prefers.

She doesn’t forgo the occasional showstopping heel, however. Bloomberg, she says, “doesn’t care” what height she wears. “If you look at every picture of us together, and there are a lot, he comes up to about here,” she says, smiling and gesturing at her shoulder.

But Taylor is no shrinking violet, and certainly not one to be described as another woman behind a powerful man. Even if her two cents on the city’s policies don’t always make the impact she would like them to.

“I tell him my opinion, but he nods sweetly and says, ‘That’s nice,’” she says. “He’s surrounded by a lot of really intelligent people, and I can yell and scream, but it’s just ‘Fine, thanks for the input.’”

Check out the rest of Taylor’s interview here.

DIANA TAYLOR: THE INTERVIEW [Harper's Bazaar]