Katharine Hepburn, standing with her fists against her temples
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The countdown to the 82nd annual Academy Awards has begun, bringing with it an abundance of Oscar hype. With more than 36 million viewers expected to watch the attendees walk the red carpet into the Kodak Theatre, in full glamour and glitz, it is hard to believe that the first Oscars ceremony ever – held on May 16, 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel – was a relatively small, unpublicized affair with an audience of 250. Fifteen awards were presented by the Academy’s then-president, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. The following year, the ceremony was broadcast on public radio, and in 1953, the program was televised for the first time. read more…
Three women in the latest dinner-dancing hats
Models in pirate-inspired black picot hat, "Le Corsaire" by Rose Valois (left) and deeply crowned hat, "3393" by Talbot (right).
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A hatbox with a Rue de la Paix address on the label was the last word in chic in the days of hat-wearing prior to World War II. According to Vogue, a French hat was every fashionable woman’s dream. It was considered the utmost in elegance to be ushered into a millinery salon in Paris, outfitted in luxurious cream-colored carpeting; to sit in front of a three-way mirror, and have a felt hat cut and sculpted to one’s head by a top French milliner.
"Millinery number of VOGUE," featuring woman trying on hats in a shop
Debutante Brenda Frazier in strapless velvet dress, modeling an upswept hairdo
The 1930s marked the rise of Glamour Girls – young women famous for their fame, a novel concept at the time. Throughout the 1930s, the undisputed queen of the Glamour Girls was the debutante Brenda Diana Duff Frazier. About a month before her debutante ball, her jet-black hair and porcelain skin appeared on the cover of Life. Weeks later she made her first appearance in Vogue. The old guard of Vogue was less than impressed with this newest sensation, but their hands were tied. Condé Nast in particular was incensed at her appearance in the magazine, and questioned the reasons for featuring her in the pages of Vogue. After all, what had she done in her short life to deserve it? But her fame and her society credentials were undeniable, and there was little he could do to stop it. Brenda Frazier was already a household name from her Life cover, and ignoring her simply would have been bad for business. read more…
Plaster female figure draped in silk jersey, designed to resemble classical Greek peplumed dress, for the 1939 World's Fair
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Watching the red carpet during this year’s Golden Globes coverage, it was hard not to notice that many female celebrities are opting for classical, Grecian-style gowns – gowns that feature elemental geometric forms draped softly from the shoulders and around the body’s natural contour. Most are densely pleated around the torso and manipulated to shape the woman’s natural form. Some are simple panels of the finest luxury fabric, cut on the bias and left to hang effortlessly from one shoulder or two. When actresses like Debra Messing, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jennifer Aniston, already supernovas of our society, arrive at the Emmys or the Golden Globes dressed in these classical confections, they take on additional personas of mythic beauties and love goddesses. read more…
Columbia University football coach Lou Little, seen from below, holding a football
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After the crowning of the Super Bowl champions and the end of the 2009/2010 football season, the National Football League and American Football League teams will move forward to the draft and next year’s season with new athletic talent and lots of hard work.
Football has its roots in the British game of rugby, but it has certainly become an American phenomenon. Football was one of the first outdoor sports to attract a huge audience – bringing together, for instance, 80,000 men and women, in all kinds of weather, to the New Haven “Bowl” to watch the Yale-Harvard match. The game was first played on a collegiate level, with many of the most popular bowl games, such as the Rose Bowl, crowning the best college teams. read more…
French cabaret singer Yvonne George
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As a company, Condé Nast has a long history of attracting leading photographic talents. Nast himself was a firm believer in the importance of having the best editorial photographers on staff, and his outrageous and, at the time, record-breaking offer of one hundred dollars a week, guaranteed to Baron Adolphe de Meyer in 1913, showed that he wasn’t afraid to pay top dollar for top talent.
In the 1920s and ‘30s, the Hungarian-born American photographer Nickolas Muray was one of the most important photographers in the business, and for a few years he was the world’s highest-paid photographer. According to one commonly repeated statistic, he made more than 10,000 portraits between 1920 and 1940. read more…
Self-portrait of Vogue photographer Cecil Beaton in Haiti
Cecil Beaton was a workaholic before the term existed. He also was an inveterate globe-trekker and fashionable houseguest, a winning combination if there ever was one. Many an upper-crust vacationer – whether on Long Island, in Biarritz, or on one of the Greek Isles – arrived at the breakfast table to find Beaton at work. Often he was simply sketching his surroundings, but just as frequently, he was writing a journal entry, an article for Vogue, or a letter (making arrangements for his next stop, no doubt).
Beaton was not a particularly good photographer from a technical standpoint. He used cheap cameras and film, didn’t care for printing, and certainly didn’t know how to develop film. When he first began shooting for Condé Nast, the publisher had to order him to learn how to use an 8 x 10 plate camera, instead of his cheap Kodak, so his photos would be sharp enough to publish. Before Beaton had the Condé Nast studio staff at his disposal, his maid was developing his film in the bathtub!
What made Beaton great was his knack for choosing desirable locations, many of which were off the beaten path, at least for the time. In 1935, one of his stops was the island nation of Haiti. He became enamored with the island and its people and chronicled the trip with a long article and series of photographs in Vogue.
Reproductions of his photographs from the story are now available as prints on the Condé Nast Store, with 50%* of the sale price of each image benefiting the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund and its ongoing relief efforts after the recent earthquakes. Click here to see them. You can also read more about the story from Vogue’s perspective here.
*Proceeds of sales in AL, IL, MA, ME, and SC will NOT be donated to the Red Cross. The American Red Cross name and emblem are used with its permission, which in no way constitutes an endorsement, express or implied, of any product, service, company, opinion or political position. The American Red Cross logo is a registered trademark owned by the American Red Cross.
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Actress Miriam Hopkins, leaning against convertible
Vogue has a long history of depicting women and their cars. Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Peugeots, Pierce-Arrows, Chevrolets, Fords, and Pontiacs, both foreign and domestic vehicles, have all been photographed in Vogue.
The "Automobiling" issue of 1902.
One of the first automobiles to appear in the magazine is illustrated on the January 2, 1902 cover. It shows two women driving an early steam powered Locomobile for the “Automobiling” issue. read more…
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Illustration of Vogue title with letters denoting spring and birds forming Dalí's face in the air
About a decade after its emergence on the French art scene, surrealist art had become a sensational topic for American newspapers and was adopted by fashionable publications, especially Vogue. For America, the timing – when the world lay at the brink of war – was just right for new ideas such as surrealism. Although Vanity Fair was among the first American publications to publish the highly experimental surreal photographs of Man Ray, the grandfather of the art movement here in the U.S., Vogue waited until January 15, 1936 to make its first reference to a Dalínian dream landscape, described as putting “the atmosphere of dreams on canvas.” read more…
Model wearing "pyramid" hairstyle, by Robert at Ricci Burns of London
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“On the eve of the ‘AngloMania’ opening [at the 2006 Costume Institute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York], I took Linda Evangelista around the exhibition,” remembers curator Andrew Bolton. “Once we arrived at the end, she said, ‘Yes, very interesting, but the show’s really about the wigs, isn’t it?’”
— from Sarah Mower’s “The Magic Maker,” Vogue, March 2009
This quote, about the famed “couturier of hair” Julien d’Ys, struck me with the thought: hair is powerful. Hair communicates; its impact on our eyes is immediate. It can draw stares completely away from the body to the head. The latest fashions, and an individual’s character and attitude, are made complete, even enhanced, with an ideal head of hair. read more…
