Articles from Vanity Fair Magazine
A look at some of the ready-to-wear golf suits for the spring of 1922. The chic golfer of that year was seen wearing pleated knickers and a smart action-back jacket sporting cargo pockets (formerly known as billows pockets).
This article dates to a the dear, dead days when tennis balls were white and landscapers (rather than diesel machinery) were relied upon to make tennis courts; it was also a time when the abilities of a skilled tailor were required for tennis clothing. These court-side stylists would not simply monitor the drape of tennis trousers but they would anticipate the unspoken needs of their tennis dandies – and in so doing, the tennis blazer was born.
One thing is absolutely certain- Europe is economizing. It must. Everything in the motor world points to an enormous increase in the number of 10 h.p., four cylinder cars and in the even smaller 7-8 h.p. two cylinder machines.
Some ninety-three years ago, Fish was the name scribbled on those unique cartoon illustrations that could be found throughout VOGUE (both American and British) and VANITY FAIR. The editor of American VOGUE between the years 1914 and 1952, Edna Woolman Chase (1877 – 1957) called this English cartoonist brilliant and began running her drawings from her earliest days in that office; her full name was Ann Fish and this article will tell you all we know about her.
This most cosmopolitan of living black-and-white satirists has never stirred from England in all her days. She has never especially extended herself as a spectator of the London life which she so amusingly depicts. She has never gazed on Fifth Avenue.
The legendary sports writer, Grantland Rice
Some ninety-three years ago, Fish was the name scribbled on those unique cartoon illustrations that could be found throughout VOGUE (both American and British) and VANITY FAIR. The editor of American VOGUE between the years 1914 and 1952, Edna Woolman Chase (1877 – 1957) called this English cartoonist brilliant and began running her drawings from her earliest days in that office; her full name was Ann Fish and this article will tell you all we know about her.
This most cosmopolitan of living black-and-white satirists has never stirred from England in all her days. She has never especially extended herself as a spectator of the London life which she so amusingly depicts. She has never gazed on Fifth Avenue.
British poet and literary critic Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) wrote about the Nineteenth Century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) more as a subject of art rather than an influential wordsmith:
Few modern poets have been more frequently drawn, and few have better repaid drawing, than Charles Baudelaire.
Among the list of artists who created likenesses of the poet were his fellow dandy Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883), the photographer Etienne Carjat (1828 – 1906) and an obscure sculptor named Zachari Astrue, who created the poet’s death mask.
One of the special correspondents writing for VANITY FAIR on the subject of motoring was the British novelist Gerald Biss (1876 – 1922), who contributed similar pieces to THE STRAND, TATLER, DAILY MAIL and EVENING STANDARD. In this review, Biss gave his drink-deprived American readers the straight dope as to what they can expect to see from the European car manufacturers of 1921. References are made to the products of the Voisin and Vauxhall Companies and there was some lose talk about electric starters and high-grade tweleve-cylinder cars.
While so many European men were suffering on the Somme and at Verdun, some American fellows were having a swelligant time on the golf links; beautifully attired in linen golf clothes that are pictured in the accompanying attachment.
Here is a paragraph about the school of dance that was maintained by Isadora Duncan in Rye, New York; the notice is illustrated by three stunning photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864 – 1952) depicting thirteen young girls in Grecian attire.
Having seen the international pantry shelf sadly depleted in the way of cups during the stirring campaign of 1921, extended preparations now underway beneath the Union Jack, indicate a counter attack of no slight proportions this coming summer.
For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization
Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep.
This cartoon was drawn by the artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.
The fashion editors who presided over the very young VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE made an effort to keep pace with the dramatic changes taking place in the design of ladies hats and wraps for 1921. The attached article is a case in point.
