Vogue's New World: American Fashionability and the Politics of Style

[para. 1]: "Despite the French connotations of its title, the first Vogue was an inherently American cultural phenomenon. It began in New York in 1892 as social gazette for a Eurocentric elite and became a more professional and self-confidently patriotic publication under the directorship of Condé Nast, who purchased it in 1909. Although Vogue has always maintained its aloofness as an elite women's publication, this article links the magazine with the geographical and social conditions of its production. The magazine carefully negotiated the urban and demographic fabric of Manhattan at a period when concepts of national and gender identity were undergoing a radical transformation. In the face of mass immigration and the rise of new models of womanhood during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, early Vogue adopted a largely conservative stance. However, as the magazine's editorial staff and market audience changed during its first three decades, Vogue began to renounce the snobbery of the social networks of the Gilded Age (the period from 1870 to 1914). While it maintained privileged ties to Europe, it also began to embrace more populist understandings of "authentic" American taste and style in dress. This new nationalism included a greater acceptance of mass-produced and branded goods, an attitude which typifies American fashion design and production in the twentieth century."