Articles from Vanity Fair Magazine
There were several clothing options available for the well-heeled men fortunate enough to (briefly) enjoy Titanic‘s First Class comforts. Dinner suits were not strictly confined to black and there were a number of shirting and accessory choices; this article covers all of them quite thoroughly.
More on men’s fashions can be read here.
In the June, 1920 issue of British Vogue, an anonymous correspondent tried her hand at prophecy:
As surely as the woman of yesterday was born to ride in a limousine, the woman of today was born to fly an aeroplane.
-that said, we have higher hopes for the women of the 21st Century – however, a year earlier, the Vanity Fair writer charged with covering all aspects of motoring, both horizontal and vertical, penned this enthusiastic article and filled it with the names of many of the women aviators who were at that time, striving to make new records in aviation history; it must have been a very exciting time in history to experience (except for the dental care).
A small column from a 1915 issue of Vanity Fair in which the correspondent praised the virtues of Howard Copeland (an American psychologist and ambulance volunteer working in Frabce), Gertrude Aldrich (author of an Atlantic Magazine essay titled, Little House on the Marne), Cardinal Mercier (author of the Great Belgian Pastoral) and W.F. Bailey (authored a paper concerning the war in Northeastern Europe). These writers are preferred to the usually celebrated ink-slingers like Hellaire Belloc, Rudyard Kipling, Anatole France, and Arnold Bennett who are all compared to amateur recruiting sergeants in support of the War.
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Two articles from two different magazines reported the news that the World Champion Boxer of 1919, Jack Dempsey
In the future, other athletes would follow in his steps to Hollywood; his fellow boxer Gene Tunney would follow him out there eight years later (The Fighting Marines). Swimmers Buster Crabbe (Buck Rogers) and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) got the fever and came out during the early days of sound movies.
Writing his review of O Pioneers, DRESS and VANITY FAIR book critic Henry Brinsley wrote:
Miss Willa Cather in O Pioneers! (O title!!) is neither a skilled storyteller nor the least bit of an artist. And yet by the end of the book, something has happened in the readers mind that leaves him grateful…There isn’t a vestige of ‘style’ as such: for page after page one is dazed at the ineptness of the medium and the triviality of the incidents…And the secret of this is the persistence throughout of a single fine quality of the author – her extraordinary sincerity.
This cartoon pokes fun at the high cost of being charitable. Throughout much of World War One there was always the problem of what to do with the growing number of refugees and orphans -and the answer was never cheap. This drawing reveals a different Rea Irvin, but the drawing style for which he would be remembered is clearly emerging.
The famed Conde Nast illustrator from days of old, Ann Fish, assumed the nom de guerre, Hello in order to impart to her well-fed audience the terror of German Prussianism. In this cartoon, she illustrated what a German invasion of Manhattan would look like.
A piece of VANITY FAIR social satire concerning the returning American veterans of the World War I and how the industrial slaughter had changed them (as if such a thing could!).
The following five page article was written by the World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967), in an attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty….
In the early Twenties there were a good many social changes which men had to struggle to understand; among them was the Modern Woman. The Italian novelist and lexicographer Alfredo Panzini (1863 – 1939) attempted to do just that for the editors of Vanity Fair.
‘Don’t expect us’, she says to you, disconsolate male, ‘don’t expect us to be like the old-fashioned girls who went to church, and did the laundry, and looked up to their husbands as to their God.’
The following is an excerpt from the review of the New York production of the 1921 play, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton 1888 – 1965). With much enthusiasm, the reviewer wrote:
We know of no better expression of the creed of the new generation than that which Clemence Dane has drawn up….
What followed was a very short soliloquy which beautifully summed up not only the philosophy of the modern woman, but the philosophy of much the Twentieth Century.
Celebrated columnist Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) wrote this piece to mark the end of the Wilson administration (1912 – 1920) and usher-in that of Warren G. Harding (1865 – 1923).
Unlike the ink-slingers in ages to come, Lippmann had pleasant remarks to make regarding his presidency:
And I firmly believe that the historian who examines the state papers of Wilson up to November, 1918, will say, not only that they are in an unbroken line from Washington’s Farewell Address, but that it required something very like genius under the pressure and in the fog of a world war, to keep that line intact.
Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.
Read a 1951 profile of a future First Lady: the young Nancy Reagan.
With the publishing of the first part of his autobiography, Reveries Over Childhood and Youth, W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939) got some attention in the American press. This small column first appeared in VANITY FAIR magazine praising his ability as a genuine artist.
One writer’s reminiscence of attending a London party and being introduced to Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) and the object of his affection, John Gray. The author insists, as has been documented in other places, that Gray was the model for Wilde’s character Dorian Gray:
Once at a Private View in the New Gallery, as I came downstairs, I came on Wilde, in the midst of his admirers, showing more than ever his gift of versatility. Seeing me he made a gesture, and as I went up he introduced me to John Gray, then in what is called ‘the zenith’ of his youth. The adventure was certainly amusing…
An additional article about Wilde can be seen here.
Click here to read a 1940s article about American sodomy legislation.
The attached men’s fashion article concerns the a brief autumn visit to the country; recalled by an anonymous fashion scribe whose charming prose allowed us to envision a leisured life in the late Gilded Age.
The attached men’s fashion article concerns the a brief autumn visit to the country; recalled by an anonymous fashion scribe whose charming prose allowed us to envision a leisured life in the late Gilded Age.
This article is very broad in it’s appeal; the fashion journalist did not simply cover the summer suit options available to the Well-Dressed Man of 1921 but also the tennis apparel, equestrian attire and the apropriate togs for slacking off at your favorite homo-phobic, sexist, anti-semetic and racist club.
A look back at men’s jackets, both for the garden party as well as other antiquated leisure activities.
