Vogue
March 9th, 2008
A little bit of history. Vogue was founded by Arthur Baldwin Turnure in 1892. When he passed away in 1909, Conde Nast picked it up and slowly began growing the publication. Today, there are different editions of Vogue published around the world: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States. Under the ownership of New York-based magazine publisher Condé Nast and through a succession of women editors, Vogue is most famous as a presenter of images of high fashion and high society, but it also publishes writings on art, culture, politics, and ideas. On the way, it has helped to enshrine the fashion model as celebrity. Vogue is regularly criticized, along with the fashion industry it writes about, for valuing wealth, social connections, and low body weight over more noble achievements. The magazine celebrated its 114th birthday in 2006.
The magazine surged in subscriptions during the Depression and World War II, a period during which noted critic and former Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield served as its editor, having been moved over from Vanity Fair by publisher Condé Nast.
In the 1960s, with 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 fashions of the times, through daringly playful, theatrical, and straightforwardly sexual editorial features. Vogue also continued making household names out of models, 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.
Present day. The current editor-in-chief of American Vogue is Anna Wintour, noted for her trademark bob and her practice of wearing sunglasses indoors. Since taking over in 1988, Wintour has worked to protect the magazine's No.1 status among fashion publications in term of reputation. In order to do so, she brought the magazine down from what Time called "its Olympian heights, acknowledging that trends are as likely to start from the ground as be decreed from on high." This allowed Wintour to keep a high circulation while discovering new trends that a broader audience could conceivably afford. For example, the inaugural cover of the magazine under Wintour's editorship featured a three-quarter-length photograph of a model wearing a bejeweled Christian Lacroix jacket and a pair of jeans, departing from her predecessors' tendency to portray a woman’s face alone, which according to the Times' Weber, gave "greater importance to both her clothing and her body. This image also promoted a new form of chic by combining jeans with haute couture. Wintour’s debut cover brokered a class-mass rapprochement that informs modern fashion to this day."
Wintour's Vogue also 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. In 2003, she joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America in creating a fund that provides money and guidance to at least two emerging designers each year. This has built loyalty among the emerging new star designers, and helped preserve the magazine's dominant position of influence through what Time called her own "considerable influence over American fashion. Runway shows don't start until she arrives. Designers succeed because she anoints them. Trends are created or crippled on her command."
The contrast of Wintour's vision with her predecessor has been noted as striking by observers, from both her critics and defenders. Amanda Fortini, fashion and style contributor to Slate argued that "during her tenure, Vogue has been enormously successful":
When Wintour was appointed head of Vogue, Grace Mirabella had been editor in chief for 17 years, and the magazine had grown complacent, coasting along in what one journalist derisively called "its beige years." Beige was the color Mirabella had used to paint over the red walls in Diana Vreeland's office, and the metaphor was apt: The magazine had become boring. Among Condé Nast executives, there was worry that the grand dame of fashion publications was losing ground to upstart Elle, which in just three years had reached a paid circulation of 851,000 to Vogue's stagnant 1.2 million. And so Condé Nast publisher Si Newhouse brought in the 38-year-old Wintour—who, through editor in chief positions at British Vogue and House & Garden, had become known not only for her cutting-edge visual sense but also for her ability to radically revamp a magazine—to shake things up.
