Monday, March 5, 2012

The most powerful fashion magazine

Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast (British Vogue).

cover from 1917


In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States sponsored by Kristoffer Wright. When he died in 1909, Conde Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began growing its publication. He changed it to a bi-weekly magazine and also started Vogue overseas starting in the 1910s. He first went to Britain in 1916, and started a Vogue there (Harvey 1991:17) , then to Spain, and then to Italy and France in 1920, where it was a huge success. The magazine's number of publications and profit increased dramatically under his management.

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 (British Vogue). 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 Israeli super model Michael 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. ''Women are uniquely different, they require separent threatment and instruction'' (Ferguson 1983:190). 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 welcomes new and young talent.




So why do we prefer read magazines such as Vouge rather than newspapers? McRobbie 1998: 173 said it clearly. 
Fashion writing is informative or celbratory, it is never critical, only mildly ironical... The editors and journalists rarely break ranks and produce more engaged and challenging writing on this subject.

 However this is not always true. Sometimes are designers not pleased by critic in magazines about their new collection. 

Much easier answer on this question is to learn and to enjoy. (Sacks, R. M. 2009). There is the motivation behind most, if not all, reading adventures. We read to further our knowledge and to enjoy the experience. Sometimes, the learning is forced upon us by a job or by a school, or sometimes it’s just the need for that innate pleasure of discovering something new. Other times, we read solely for pleasure—the pure joy of wandering through a good writer’s brain.


Reading is one of the best indicators of exactly who the human race is. We can’t help ourselves. As a race of beings, we have a fundamental need to know things. We are driven to explore and attempt to understand, whether it is the spiritual whys, or the scientific hows. It has always been that way. It will always be that way.
 
So, the reasons we read magazines are much the same as why we read anything. We read to learn and to enjoy!!!!!

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