Vogue (magazine)

For other meanings, see vogue.

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine published in several countries around the world. It is widely considered one of the most influential fashion magazines in the world.

Vogue is published by Condé Nast Publications, headquartered in London, United Kingdom. In the United States, the magazine is produced at Condé Nast's U.S. headquarters at 4 Times Square in New York, NY.

History

Today, nine different editions of Vogue are published around the world, in Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. An edition for China was announced in 2005. What began as a small society magazine at the end of the 19th Century became one of the most influential periodicals of the 20th Century and a driving force in fashion and culture.

Under the ownership of New York-based magazine publisher Condé Nast and through a succession of strong visionary women editors, Vogue has carved out a niche for itself as a cutting-edge presenter of not only the images of high fashion and high society for which it is most famous, but also for intelligent writing on art, culture, politics, and ideas. On the way, it has helped to enshrine the model as celebrity. Its success and influence have not been universally lauded, and Vogue is regularly criticized, along with the fashion industry it represents, for valuing wealth, social connections, and low body weight over more noble achievements. Yet for all the anxiety its superficiality may cause some readers, Vogue has consistently published high-quality serious journalism alongside its fashion and beauty editorial, assuming an intellectual sophistication of its audience that many other women's magazines do not.

Vogue has long found success in bringing an idea of a cultured, beautiful, luxurious lifestyle to an audience that longs to live it. Whereas other women's magazines of the day might counsel the harried housewife on how to get the roast on the table, Vogue let her daydream of being the type of woman who was more worried about getting the latest Dior around her waist. The magazine surged in subscriptions during the Depression and World War II, when it brought sophistication and glamor to subscribers whose lives were anything but. Its photography at the time reflected the imagery of contemporaneous Hollywood films, staged and luxurious.

One of Lisa Fonssagrives' more than 200 covers on Vogue

The historic relationship between Vogue and supermodels began with model Lisa Fonssagrives who appeared on over 200 of their covers. As shown on the cover to the right, Fonssagrives at the height of her career could be both sophisticated and yet a cook which every American woman could identify. Her name recognition from her presence in nearly every fashion magazine from the 1930s to the 1950s, from Town and Country, Life, Vogue, and the original Vanity Fair to the cover of Time magazine helped to build the importance of Vogue magazine in establishing a model to reach supermodel status.

But Vogue truly hit its stride under the leadership of editor-in-chief Jessica Daves and art director Alexander Liberman, when it began to publish the work of photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. Penn and Avedon broke decisively with the stuffy conventions of previous fashion photography: Penn by a stripped-down minimalism that left his subjects in bare studios against stark empty backgrounds; Avedon by breaking out of the confines of dispassionate, static studio tableaux and shooting dynamic pictures of models at the height of emotion and in the middle of action. The influence of both approaches to fashion photography can still be seen in the pages of every fashion magazine today.

In the 1960s, with famed editor-in-chief and personality Diana Vreeland in charge, the magazine rose to the occasion of this candy-colored, youth-oriented decade of sexual revolution by focusing more on the exciting fashions of the times, through daringly playful, theatrical, and straightforwardly sexual editorial features. Vogue also continued making household names out of pretty faces, a practice that continued with Suzy Parker, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, and others.

Under the tenure of editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella through the 1970s and 1980s, the bimonthly magazine became a monthly, and the revolutionary air of the sixties gave way to more practical clothing. The magazine's female audience was no longer in the kitchen dreaming of a better life. It was heading out every morning for work, and editorial changes reflected this new reality.

The current editor-in-chief of American Vogue is Anna Wintour, noted for her trademark bob and her practice of wearing sunglasses indoors. Wintour's Vogue aggressively nurtures new design talent, and her presence at fashion shows is often taken as an indicator of the designer's profile within the industry. Wintour's notoriously demanding personality at Vogue was the subject of a roman à clef titled The Devil Wears Prada, which has also been made into a film.

One sign of Vogue's continuing success is the number of advertising pages it manages to sell, which contributes to its reputation as the fashionista's doorstop: as one reviewer on Amazon.com points out, the September issue, which covers fall fashion, can weigh in at over 700 pages.

Other Editions

In 2005, Condé Nast launched Men's Vogue.

Condé Nast Publications also publishes Teen Vogue, a version of the magazine for a younger girls in the United States. Australia has a Vogue Girl magazine.

Until 1961, Vogue was also the publisher of Vogue Patterns, a home sewing pattern company. It was sold to Butterick Publishing which also licensed the Vogue name.

Vogue (magazine): Encyclopedia BETA

Contents

Vogue (magazine)

History

Other Editions

Editors-in-Chief

References

External links