Portrait of Vanity Fair and Vogue illustrator A.H. Fish, circa 1915

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On the wall of my dining room hangs a framed print of the December 1927 Vanity Fair cover. Lines radiating like rays of the sun outline Jazz Age flappers and the dandies who loved them, pressed cheek to cheek and engrossed in the tango. The illustration is lively, bright, and colorful and perfectly captures the spirit of the 1920s. The artist, known simply as Fish, first began appearing in the pages of Vanity Fair and The Tatler in 1914. Who was this Fish person, and why the funny name?

Lines of couples dancing

It turns out that Fish was Miss Fish, specifically Anne Harriet Fish, later Sefton, born in Bristol, England in 1890. In her nearly 15-year career at Condé Nast, she was credited with more than 30 covers and hundreds of inside and spot illustrations. At her best when depicting members of high society (no wonder Vanity Fair came calling), Fish used her natural artistic talent to document beau monde types with a pointed innocence that her contemporaries avoided.

Two men in jackets and top hats, watching a similarly dressed woman putting on makeup

Four theatergoers in neighboring boxes, two of whom are stealing a kiss

In 1920, G. P. Putnam and Sons published a book entitled High Society: Advice as to Social Campaigning, and Hints on the Management of Dowagers, Dinners, Debutantes, Dances, and the Thousand and One Diversions of Persons of Quality. (Did they know how to come up with a title back then or what?!) The book is an anthology of society features from Vanity Fair and pairs drawings by Fish with text culled from articles by Dorothy Parker, George S. Chappell, and Frank Crowninshield. In an opening essay about the artist, signed “THE EDITOR,” the world of characters created by Fish is described thus:

It is a world populated by young-old matrons, astoundingly mature young girls, Victorian lady remnants, resplendent captains of industry, pussy-footing English butlers, amorous nursemaids, race touts, yearning young lovers, swanking soldiers, blank and vapid bores, bridge-playing parsons, and middle-class millionaires.

Ballroom full of elegantly dressed dancers

Two bathers perched under an umbrella, floating in the ocean

The essay, and the book, is very rare and difficult to find in print. Fortunately, it is available online through Google Books. You can even download a printable PDF of the entire book. It’s a really fun read – just be sure the printer is well stocked with paper and your boss isn’t looking.

It seems Fish’s work has now come full circle. While reading the April 2010 issue of Vanity Fair, this photograph of socialite Hayley Bloomingdale caught my eye. Actually, it was more the Carolina Herrera dress she is wearing that captured my attention – the dancers framed on my dining room wall are tangoing all over it. As vintage has come back to popular culture and fashion in full force, Fish may have captured the spirit of the 2010s as well.

Bloomingdale models a Carolina Herrera dress patterned with A.H. Fish dancers

See more A.H. Fish illustrations

Katharine Hepburn, standing with her fists against her temples

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The countdown to the 82^nd 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.

While the location has changed numerous times over the years, and categories have been added and subtracted, the appeal of this event to everyday people has only grown. For one night, as we take in the lavish festivities in our homes, we feel glamorous too, as if we were there with the stars.

As we prepare to see this year’s winners take the stage, take a moment also to remember those of the past: the actors, actresses, and directors who set the standard for today. These cinema legends have not only held their very own Oscar statuettes; their faces have also graced the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Glamour. Click on the image to read about each celebrity’s accolades from the Academy.

Actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and his wife, actress Mary Pickford

Actress Helen Hayes, Best Actress winner in 1931/1932 for "The Sin of Madelon Claudet"

Vivien Leigh under a lilac tree

Actor Spencer Tracy, in a tweed sport jacket and leaning against a ladder

Actress Norma Shearer in lamé dress and feathered cap by John Frederics

Actress Ava Gardner in long blue satin gown

Actor Paul Muni, smoking a cigarette

See more photos of Oscar winners

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

"Spring Millinery Number and Accessories," featuring woman in black suit with white cuffs and pearls

In hat fashion, names like Talbot, Descat, and Rose Valois provoked sighs of desire, but it was Caroline Reboux, the queen mother of Paris millinery, who introduced the idea of the modern high fashion hat.

Agneta Fischer modeling a Reboux black satin hat with feather plumes

Suzette Salen wearing a "Printanier" straw hat by Reboux

Dorothy Smart in felt cloche with diamond shape on band, by Reboux

Madame Chiesa wearing a toque hat with striated feathers, by Reboux

Model on left wears an antelope beret by Reboux; model on right wears a grège angora beret rolled into a tricorne, also by Reboux

Reboux started her business in the 19^th century, working closely with couturiers to provide hats that went with their clothing designs. She was the originator of the cloche, and it is said she was the first to use the hand-draped felt technique for making headwear and also popularized veiling on hats. Over the course of her business, which spanned several decades in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, her famous clients included the Empress Eugénie and actress Marlene Dietrich, as well as Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, all of whom were known for their excellent taste in fashion, and hats specifically.

When confronted with today’s greatly diminished millinery industry, it is worth noting that Reboux’s business had well over one hundred employees. Many famed hat-makers trained under Reboux, and though she died in 1927, her business continued to thrive in her style and spirit under her experienced staff.

Woman seen from behind, holding a cigarette, wearing a toque with tall feather-like trim by Maria Guy

Model wearing a velvet toque with feathers, flowers, and veil, by Talbot

Model in Maria Guy turban of striped green velvet by Bianchini

In France, millinery was as serious a business as haute couture, and in the ‘20s and ‘30s, French milliners had almost as much power as couturiers. According to French Vogue, the hat was seen not as “just an accessory,” but as “important a marker of the times and fashions as the length of a skirt.” (French Vogue, April–May 1940, p. 21) Hat designs were as protected as designs of couture clothing, which made it difficult for Vogue to get access to a season’s new creations so they could be sketched or photographed far ahead of the collections. Edna Chase, editor-in-chief during this time, wrote in her autobiography, Always in Vogue, of the fashion coup the magazine scored when, for the first time, the Reboux salon released a new fall hat to Vogue early enough to be photographed for the cover of the August 15, 1933 issue – one of Vogue’s first photographic covers.

Almost as revered in the United States as a hat from Paris was a copy of a real French hat. Even exclusive stores like Henri Bendel and Bergdorf Goodman in New York proudly advertised their copies of French originals, the designs for which were purchased in Paris and copied by the store milliners. Women who couldn’t afford to board an ocean liner like the Normandie to travel to France for an original were delighted to sport a designer copy.

Model wearing a tall conical hat with a veil, by Talbot, reflected in several mirrors

Jule André, wearing a black satin turban with draped fabric forming triangular "wings" at back and sides, designed by Agnès

Model wearing black tulle embroidered headdress by Suzanne Talbot

French milliners believed that a hat could give a lift to a woman’s face and mood, and that is what made their original designs worth the high price tags. In 1940, while under the cloud of German occupation, French Vogue wrote about the role of the hat, saying hats needed to enliven faces that had become too serious. (French Vogue, April–May 1940, p. 21) After the war years, when news of French fashion became accessible again, Americans were shocked to see the flamboyant hats the otherwise war-ravaged French women were wearing. According to Carmel Benito, who wrote in Vogue about her life in Paris during the war, women made do and were clever about fashion, and their hats told the story.

Dorothy Smart wearing a black velvet hat in a cornucopia shape, designed by Agnès

Helen Lyons wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with a black band and rippled edge, by Agnès

Model wearing squared-off stocking cap by Maria Guy

When supplies of felt and straw ran out, women used fabric and braided paper to make hats. There were reports of women making hats from old cheese boxes and decorating them with pigeon feathers. “Hats rose to bewildering heights” when spirits were the lowest, reported Benito. (Vogue, November 1, 1944, p. 125) Millinery was “a contest between French imagination and German regulation.” She wrote of the French getting around German edicts that limited the amount of fabric that could be used for one hat; they would make three hats, using the maximum amount of yardage on each hat, and then wear all three hats at the same time.

A lot was expected of the French hat during World War II, and it is safe to say that although these hats may not have helped win the war, they did deliver the magic that kept French women proud, defiant, and, above all, ahead of fashion.

Agneta Fischer wearing corduroy crested toque by Valois

Gwili André wearing a felt toque with propeller quills, by Rose Descat

Model wearing high-brimmed hat by Alphonsine, leaning on table with baum marten "scarf" and diamond and sapphire jewelry

Model wearing "Bayonne," a wide-brimmed cloche banded with a striped ribbon, designed by Rose Valois

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.

Her ball was held at the Ritz-Carlton on December 27, 1938. The New York Times claimed that “hers was the largest debutante dance of the season,” reported to have cost $60,000, and the New York Daily News reported the goings-on with the headline “Bow’s a Wow.” The ball and the nearly instantaneous fame it created erased any hint of normalcy Frazier’s life may have had. Every night was spent out at El Morocco or the Stork Club among luminaries such as Peter Arno and Irving Berlin and his wife. She became the face of numerous products, from soaps to Studebakers, as well as a regular in both the society and fashion pages of Vogue. Brenda Frazier was the first of a new breed, albeit one all too familiar to us today: the media celebrities, or young women famous just for being famous.

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.

The classical mode, hardly new to the world of fashion, is based on three ancient garments: the chiton, a dress consisting of two rectangular pieces of fabric sewn along the sides and pinned at the top to form shoulders; the peplos, a single piece of fabric curved around the body, fastened at the top with clasps called fibulae, and worn with a cuff made by folding over the topline; and the himation, a scarf, shawl, mantle, or large cloak made from a single rectangular piece of fabric. These three garments are what 1930s fashion designers, including Madame Grès and Madeleine Vionnet, used as inspiration for their modern designs.

A model,wearing crepe romain pajamas by Vionnet, strikes a classical pose.

The French designer Madeleine Vionnet was best known for introducing the bias cut to the world of fashion. The bias, achieved by cutting or draping cloth on a diagonal, provides an additional elasticity to the fabric. The resulting garments cling to the body and accentuate the natural female form. The wrap-style gown above, photographed by George Hoyningen-Huené, shows a particularly innovative dress design that fuses both the chiton and himation into a single gown. What would have been the himation, or mantle, has morphed into a narrow, continuous piece of cloth, wrapping around the torso and leaving long scarves in back.

Mrs. Francis A. Wyman wearing a short ermine jacket, with unidentified model standing to her right wearing a bias-cut, wrap-style satin gown with fox-trimmed sleeves

Mrs. Leo d’Erlanger wears a long gathered white chiffon dress by Alix (later Madame Grès)

Madame Grès was world-renowned for her pleated silk jersey gowns, designed without cutting fabric or pattern-shaping, just as ancient Greeks constructed their garments. Instead, she depended on draping and pleating fabric to achieve her desired effects. In the photograph above, a fashion model is dressed in one of Madame Grès’s handkerchief-weight draped creations and resembles a fluted Greek marble column. A similar dress, pictured below, sheds that linear sculptural iconography of antiquity and takes on more romantic connotations of classicalism when photographed outdoors. In this instance, the wind presses her gown against her body in a way that sensually reveals her feminine contours. And, as if she has materialized out of classical literature, she reaches towards the heavens with an extended arm like a triumphant goddess.

Zorina, prima ballerina of the George Balanchine Company, posing on a Chirico horse statue

Photography is capable of further alluding to the goddess-figure with dramatic lighting and a natural, timeless-looking landscape, as the image below shows. Here, somewhat voyeuristically, we the viewers are privileged to glimpse a creature of divine female beauty in a private moment, even if only temporarily.

Mrs. Allan A. Ryan, Jr., standing in silhouette near a body of water, in Palm Beach, Florida

Model wearing long one shouldered silk gown by Grès, in the mirrored hall at Fontainebleau

In the 1950s, fashion saw a return to cinched waists, petticoats, and hip padding. Simultaneously, fashion was experiencing a classical revival in dress, reminiscent of 1930s glamour. Madame Grès, who had championed the ability to shape a dress without pattern-cutting, adapted her work to fit the fashionable post–World War II “wasp-waist” silhouette. She did this by simply tacking her intricate pleats to a stiff under-bodice.

Model wearing white chiffon dress, banded at the waist to convey classical girdle techniques, and worn with mantle by Gunther Jaeckel

Model posing in the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur, wearing an Egyptian-inspired beige dinner dress by Omar Kiam

The 1960s heralded an exciting time. As never before, sexual freedom and the civil rights movement pushed art, music, fashion, and society to the limits. And for the first time, designers were creating looks that matched young people’s enthusiasm. Vogue was bursting with brightly colored pages showing miniskirts, ultra-miniskirts, transparent PVC clothing, topless bathing suits, and sheer chiffon confections. As seen in the photographs below, women’s easier attitude toward nudity helped transform these much-reduced versions of the himation into a teasing, taunting garment of love and seduction.

Model in Göreme, Turkey, wearing an orange and blue printed evening dress with matching scarf by Pauline Trigère

model Veruschka posing in a blue body-veil in the Gardens of Mandor, India.

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.

Illustrated cover of a pile of football players wearing leather helmets

Called the “Father of American Football,” Walter Camp was a regular Vanity Fair contributor. In Camp’s 1915 article, “Football and the New Rules,” he discusses the changing offensive rules of football, specifically the advent of the forward pass and its ability to create a more exciting game for the spectators. Many sports fans believe it was Knute Rockne, Notre Dame’s coach from 1918 to 1930, and his star player, George Gipp, (“win one for the Gipper”) who advanced the game of football by incorporating these new rules. And, according to another Vanity Fair sports writer, Paul Gallico, the new game of football drew as many as 130,000 fans into Chicago’s Soldier Field to see the annual Notre Dame-Army game.

Portrait of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne

In the 1920s, the NFL advanced the game to a professional level, and, according to a November 1934 article, “The Case for Professional Football,” by sports novelist and Vanity Fair contributor John Tunis, professional football was becoming “one of the thriving industries of sport. Every year more and more people desert the college football stadiums in order to see the professional games.” Tunis went on to state his reasons: “Professional football is faster … the players know the rules better … the play is rougher … [and] since the pro players have played together longer, and for money, they have learned a greater variety of plays,” making the game more exciting and interesting to watch. The athletic prowess of football greats like Ken Strong, Red Grange, Harry Newman, and Jim Thorpe also helped to advance the professional sport.

New York Giants Ken Strong, Willis Smith, and Ed Danowski

In the same article, Tunis also cited lower cost as a reason for pro football’s growing popularity. At the time, admission to a pro game cost only $1.50, compared to the five or 10 dollars that a college game  demanded. Imagine that!

Columbia coach Lou Little addressing a group of football players

Columbia coach Lou Little crouched on top of a brick wall, holding a football

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.

Dancer Dorothy Dilley, performing the "Butterfly Dance" in Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue

Muray was born in 1892 and arrived in America in 1913. Trained as an engraver in Berlin, he settled in New York and continued his career there. At the same time, he became interested in photography, and in 1920 he opened a small portrait studio in Greenwich Village. The following year he received his first commercial assignment, for Harper’s Bazaar. Within five years his photography business was a full-time occupation, and a successful one at that. The editors of Vanity Fair liked Muray’s style and work ethic and used him on hundreds of assignments in New York, London, and Hollywood.

Gilbert Seldes, writer and editor for Dial magazine

Muray was primarily a studio photographer, as was his contemporary (and boss at Condé Nast) Edward Steichen. Though their styles are similar at first glance, Muray’s portraits are more straightforward and lack Steichen’s trademark dramatic lighting, but to good effect. Muray’s sitters often fill, even crowd, the entire frame. Looking at the two photographers’ work brings to mind the relationship between Irving Penn and Richard Avedon: that of two contemporaries tackling the same problem – the seemingly insurmountable task of making a good photograph for the printed page – each in his own unique and masterful style.

Portrait of acting couple Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Mary Pickford

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and his wife, Joan Crawford, seated back to back on the beach in Santa Monica

Baseball legend Babe Ruth

See more Nickolas Muray photos

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.

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.

"The Motor Girl," depicted in color illustration of woman in green coat and fur hat

The first Vogue “Motor Girl” modeled what a fashionable woman should wear on a car trip, and the annual January “Motor” issue highlighted the new automobile models and discussed the benefits of owning and driving a car. During the early 1900s, motorcar driving became a liberating, exhilarating form of travel for many modern women. Vogue’s 1923 Book of Etiquette indicated “motors have been responsible for a great deal of liberty—[A woman] can step into her own motor and drive whom she will, without [an] attendant or chaperon.”

Vogue photographer and writer John McMullin wrote in a January 15, 1923 article, “Her Motor-Car as seen by Him”: “No women with any pretense of elegance could be without her own motor.” And in the June 7, 1930 issue, “The Woman Chooses a Car for its Style” outlined the knowledge a woman brought to automobile purchases, and the impact she had: “The modern garage is like a wardrobe with a car for every occasion, and the woman of the family is the deciding factor in their choice.”

During the 1940s and 1950s, not only were car companies frequent advertisers within magazine pages, the Vogue editorial staff gave them a clear nod of support by focusing on new car models in many fashion shoots.

Model in checked coat, dress, and hat by Bendel, standing with luggage near the trunk of a car

Model in leopard hat and stole, posed with a slide of a blue 1960 Mercury projected on her and the wall

Model Anne Saint-Marie, perched on a 1958 Imperial convertible parked on a golf course

Model, chauffeur, and small dogs in front of a forest-green Lincoln Continental Mark III

In 1961, Vogue ran a “Car Contest” to further solidify their relationship with car manufacturers. The November 15, 1961 issue photographed the most fashionable characteristics of 14 cars, including models by Buick, Cadillac, Dodge, and Volkswagen, in an editorial article on women and their cars. The reader who correctly named all the highlighted car features and the reasons a woman might like them won a car of her choice.

Whether she is escorted in a luxurious, chauffeur-driven sedan, driving a convertible sports car, or transporting her family in a station wagon, a woman and her car is a subject that Vogue has approached in a consistently moving fashion.

Model standing in 1959 Chrysler New Yorker convertible

Model driving an automobile,one arm raised, wearing a veiled Suzy hat and corduroy coat

Model in beige, posed in front of Oldsmobile Super 88 Fiesta station wagon

See additional vintage car photos

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.”

As Vogue later explained in the November 1 issue of that year, “[surrealism] announced to the world at large that art (or poetry) should not take its models and subjects from the exterior world, but must turn to the unexplored, mysterious domain of the subconscious mind… creative freedom is encountered only in dreams; there the human spirit moulds the rigid reality into fantastic shapes of his choice.”

Red-gloved hand inside wicker hat stand wearing a leghorn sailor hat

Ants and birds were just two of the commonplace figures that Dalí put to symbolic use in his surrealistic fantasies. Hands were another symbol explored and shared by many artists. Examples include a Cecil Beaton photograph of a model wearing a black catsuit with small gloves attached to the entire garment; a Man Ray photograph of hands painted by Picasso to look like gloves; or, vice versa, a pair of Elsa Schiaparelli gloves designed to look like hands with painted nails (an effect Schiaparelli achieved using red snakeskin). At times, symbols and magical, nonsensical landscapes were created simply to produce the illusion of happiness.

Woman in swimsuit sailing over a shell on the beach, while a man in a tuxedo sits buried in sand

Bride wearing white plaster flowers and chiffon veil, highlighted with pink and blue lights.

In this cover, for the April 1, 1936 issue of Vogue, Beaton created a dazzling effect with lights and a living model. The female figure is completely isolated and void of the symbolic imagery so essential to Dalí’s work. The symbolism, however, is not missed, for the ethereal blue and pink light – producing simultaneously cool and mellow and burning hot sensations – creates an atmosphere of wonder. The magical ambience of color filters, making the image resemble more a photo painting than a photograph, plunges the viewer into a dreamlike state.

Surrealist photography pushed artists to be more innovative than ever. Effects like tinting, lighting, and layering were used to create these illusionistic covers.

Woman's face half obscured by a man's silhouette

Elongated image of a model wearing tweed jacket and plaid skirt

Model's head and bare shoulders superimposed with images of blue water and starry sky