Task 1 research on vogue

The first issue of Vogue saw the light in 1892 in America. In 1909 the magazine was acquired by Conde Naste Publishers. The magazine's volume became thicker and its main focus was turned on women. ... Another important period in American Vogue history began in 1988, when Anna Wintour became its Chief Editor.

The women’s magazine as we know it—a lavishly illustrated celebration of consumption and beauty aimed at a popular audience—emerged in England in the 1870s. In a 1994 paper for theJournal of Design History, Christopher Breward explains how this new format grew out of shifting views of a woman’s role in society.

Breward writes that the nineteenth century brought a new populist model to women’s publishing, which had been, since the 1700s, an elite, literary affair. Better printing equipment, a falling newspaper tax, and rising literacy rates brought magazines to more households. The first popular interest British fashion magazine started up in 1806, but the 1870s and 1880s brought a new variety to the genre—graphics-heavy, with a focus on women’s position in the public world. In 1875, there were 20 such titles. By 1898, there were 30.

One magazine explained that its features on fashion and decorating had “the aim of being useful to others, who are prevented by duties or distance from visiting those houses where the best of everything is to be seen.” Breward notes that another, unstated purpose of the features was promoting advertisers’ products. Either way, he writes, the central idea was building a “feminized consumer culture.”