The World in Vogue

In the teeming century that has passed since Condé Nast acquired Vogue in 1909, the magazine has held a mirror to its times, reflecting a nexus of beauty, talent, and glamour through the decades.

In the mistiness of the Baron Adolphe de Meyer s images, the glacial perfection of Edward Steichen s, or the acuity of Irving Penn s; against the fanciful backdrops of Cecil Beaton s elaborate studio sets or the cool emptiness of Richard Avedon s; under the elegant gaze of Horst P.

Horst and George Hoyningen-Huene and Henry Clarke or the mischievous one of Helmut Newton; in the glamorizing visions of Steven Meisel and Herb Ritts and Mario Testino or via the all-seeing eye of Annie Leibovitz; and in the torrent of words from John McMullin, Truman Capote, Lesley Blanch, Valentine Lawford, Francis Wyndham, Plum Sykes, Joan Juliet Buck, André Leon Talley, and William Norwich, the chameleon worlds of fashion, society, and Hollywood have been memorialized by Vogue with wit and reverence. Tradition and innovation, fastidiousness and carefree nonchalance, have each been embodied at various turns by the men and women who made fashion, and Vogue has captured them all, celebrating their style and their surroundings, their parties and their philanthropy.

Two world wars and the Great Depression seismically shook the ordered societal hierarchies that a century ago seemed inviolate. But in their stead came new freedoms and liberations, and Vogue has been there to record the triumph of the unfettered imagination. The world as Vogue began to document it between the wars where beauty and talent were as potent as title and pedigree was in no small measure the literal creation of the urbane and cultivated Condé Nast himself. What Chanel did to free fashion from elaborate stuffiness, Condé Nast did for society, wrote his protégée Carmel Snow. In 1925, when Condé Nast gave the first of his legendary parties in his Park Avenue penthouse (lavishly decorated by Elsie de Wolfe), Snow noted,

Hamish Bowles is European Editor at Large for Vogue. Curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art s 2001 exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years, he has written for such publications as The New York Times and edited the book Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People. He lives in New York and London.

Alexandra Kotur is Style Director at Vogue, where she often works on portrait sittings with Jonathan Becker and Annie Leibovitz. She is the author of Carolina Herrera: Portrait of a Fashion Icon. She lives in New York.