Vogue (magazine)

Vogue

Editor	Anna Wintour (United States) Alexandra Shulman (United Kingdom) Carine Roitfeld (Paris) Patrícia Carta (Brazil) Franca Sozzani (Italy) Angelica Cheung (China) Aliona Doletskaya (Russia) Kirstie Clements (Australia) Christiane Arp (Germany) Myung Hee Lee (Korea) Priya Tanna (India) Elena Makris (Greece) Seda Domaniç (Turkey) Mitsuko Watanabe (Japan) Rosalie Huang (Taiwan) Eva Hughes (Mexico & Latin America) Yolanda Sacristán (Spain) Paula Mateus (Portugal)
Categories	Fashion
Frequency	Monthly
First issue	1892
Company	Condé Nast Publications
Country	United States
Language	English
Website	VOGUE.COM

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast Publications. Each month, Vogue publishes a magazine addressing topics of fashion, life and design.

The magazine also operates Style.com, its online website.

Style and influence

Vogue was described by book critic Caroline Weber in The New York Times in December 2006 as "the world's most influential fashion magazine":^[1]

Vogue is to our era what the idea of God was, in Voltaire's famous parlance, to his: if it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. Revered for its editorial excellence and its visual panache, the magazine has long functioned as a bible for anyone worshiping at the altar of luxury, celebrity and style. And while we perhaps take for granted the extent to which this trinity dominates consumer culture today, Vogue's role in catalyzing its rise to pre-eminence cannot be underestimated.

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. It has also helped to enshrine the fashion model as celebrity.

Vogue is widely published; today, it is published in 18 countries and one region.

History

Cover, May 1917

Vogue was founded as a weekly publication by Arthur Baldwin Turnure in 1892. When he died in 1909, Condé Nast picked it up and slowly began growing the publication. The first change Nast made was that Vogue appeared every two weeks instead of weekly. Nast also went overseas in the early 1910s. He first went to Britain, and started a Vogue there, and it went well. Then he went to Spain, however that was a failure. Lastly, Nast took Vogue to France, and that was a huge success. The magazine's number of publications and profit increased dramatically under Nast. The magazine's number of subscriptions surged during the Depression, and again during World War II. In the 1960s, with Diana Vreeland as editor-in-chief and personality, the magazine began to appeal to the youth of the sexual revolution by focusing more on contemporary fashion and editorial features openly discussing sexuality. Vogue also continued making household names out of models, a practice that continued with Suzy Parker, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton, Veruschka, Marisa Berenson, Penelope Tree, and others.^[2]

In 1973, Vogue became a monthly publication. Under editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella, the magazine underwent extensive editorial and stylistic changes to respond to changes in the lifestyles of its target audience.

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 high status and reputation among fashion publications. In order to do so, she has made the magazine focus on new and more accessible ideas of "fashion" for a wider audience.^[3] This allowed Wintour to keep a high circulation while discovering new trends that a broader audience could conceivably afford.^[3] For example, the inaugural cover of the magazine under Wintour's editorship featured a three-quarter-length photograph of Israeli super model Michaela Bercu 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', 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."^[1] Wintour's Vogue also welcomes new and young talent.

Wintour's presence at fashion shows is often taken by fashion insiders 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.^[3] 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."^[3]

The contrast of Wintour's vision with that of her predecessor has been noted as striking by observers, both critics and defenders. Amanda Fortini, fashion and style contributor to Slate argues that her policy has been beneficial for Vogue:^[4]

[W]hen 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.

Criticism

As Wintour came to personify the magazine's image, she and Vogue drew critics. Wintour's one-time assistant at the magazine, Lauren Weisberger, wrote a roman à clef entitled The Devil Wears Prada. Published in 2003, the novel became a bestseller and was adapted as a highly successful, Academy Award-nominated film in 2006. The central character resembled Weisberger, and her boss was a powerful editor-in-chief of a fictionalized version of Vogue. The novel portrays a magazine ruled by "the Antichrist and her coterie of fashionistas, who exist on cigarettes, Diet Dr. Pepper, and mixed green salads", according to a review in the New York Times. The editor is described by Weisberger as being "an empty, shallow, bitter woman who has tons and tons of gorgeous clothes and not much else".^[5] The success of both the novel and the film brought new attention from a wide global audience to the power and glamour of the magazine, and the industry it continues to lead.^[6]

In 2007, Vogue drew criticism from the anti-smoking group, "Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids", for carrying tobacco advertisements in the magazine. The group claims that volunteers sent the magazine more than 8,000 protest e-mails or faxes regarding the ads. The group also claimed that in response, they received scribbled notes faxed back on letters that had been addressed to editor Anna Wintour stating, "Will you stop? You're killing trees!"^[7]

A spokesperson for Condé Nast released an official statement saying that, "'Vogue' does carry tobacco advertising. Beyond that we have no further comment."^[7]

April 2008 Vogue cover with LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen; the 1933 King Kong movie poster; the World War I Destroy This Mad Brute poster. Critics contended the cover referred to the images of the earlier two posters and was prejudicial against James because of these associations.

In April 2008, the American Vogue had a cover shot by the famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, featuring the supermodel Gisele Bündchen and the basketball superstar LeBron James. This was the third time that Vogue featured a male on the cover of the American issue (the other two men were the actors George Clooney and Richard Gere), and the first in which the man was black. Some observers criticized the cover as a prejudicial depiction of James because his pose with Bundchen was reminiscent of a poster for the film King Kong.^[8] Further criticism arose when the website Watching the Watchers analyzed the photo alongside the World War I recruitment poster titled Destroy This Mad Brute.^[9]

Other editions

In 2005, Condé Nast launched Men's Vogue and announced plans for an American version of Vogue Living launching in late fall of 2006 (there is currently an edition in Australia). Men's Vogue ceased publication as an independent publication in October 2008 and is now a twice-yearly extract in the main edition.

Condé Nast Publications also publishes Teen Vogue, a version of the magazine for teen girls, the Seventeen demographic, in the United States. South Korea and Australia has a Vogue Girl magazine (currently suspended from further publication), in addition to Vogue Living and Vogue Entertaining + Travel.

Vogue Hommes International is an international men's fashion magazine based in Paris, France, and L'uomo Vogue is the Italian men's version. Other Italian versions of Vogue include Vogue Casa and Bambini Vogue.

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.

In 2007 an Arabic edition of Vogue was rejected by Condé Nast International.

October 2007 saw the launch of Vogue India, which featured Gemma Ward, Bipasha Basu, former Miss World Priyanka Chopra, Preity Zinta, Monikangana Dutta and supermodel Lakshmi Menon on the cover. Vogue India has since had many prominent figures on the cover, incl. Victoria Beckham, Gisele Bündchen, Freida Pinto, Sarah Jessica Parker etc.

Vogue Turkey was launched in March 2010 with Jessica Stam on the cover.

Media

In 2009, the feature-length documentary The September Issue was released; it was an inside view of the production of the record-breaking September 2007 issue of U.S. Vogue, directed by R. J. Cutler. The film was shot over eight months as editor-in-chief Anna Wintour prepared the issue. It included at times testy exchanges between Wintour and her creative director Grace Coddington. The issue became the largest ever published; over 5 pounds in weight and 840 pages in length, a world record for a monthly magazine.

Since 2007, the feminist fashion blog Glossed Over has liveblogged the September issue of Vogue, commenting on its content, photos, and ads. ^{[10] [11]}

Editors-in-Chief

The following individuals have served as editor-in-chief of Vogue:

See also

• Vogue China
• Vogue Italia
• Vogue (British magazine)
• Vogue Paris
• List of Vogue cover models
• List of women's magazines

References

External links

• U.S. site
• History of Vogue at Bookrags.com