As Seen in Vogue

Book excerpt: Throughout the twentieth century the ready-to-wear industry, fashion journalism, and mass-media advertising fueled one another’s success by identifying an ever-widening consumer class and fanning the desire to be fashionable. Through more than six hundred fashion ads that appeared in Vogue from the magazine’s debut in 1893 through the next ten decades, Hill documents not only this symbiosis but also an evolution in American fashion, society, and culture.In rich progression, the images document metamorphoses: from alabaster Victorian homemaker to painted flapper in just a generation, from conformist fifties mom to miniskirt-clad iconoclast only a decade later, from power-suited yuppie of the eighties to the techno self-stylist of the new millennium. In this long view of interactions that shaped much, much more than the fashion, Hill offers a comprehensive examination and resource for students and professionals in fashion and business history, popular culture, advertising, marketing, and women’s studies.