1940
That masthead is incredibly cool. This ab exercise, I did yesterday. Eighty years hence, it still works.
1940
Making the masthead be the blooms on the flowers is a cute idea, too. This feels like it should be gently animated, or something.
1942
"Oh yes, I've bought my clothes for your whirlwind wedding, but I'm NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT."
1942
And THIS is clearly the cover of the murder mystery based on whatever that lady was writing in her burn book.
1943
"Musical puns, oh, how I regret you."
1943
You're telling me I can take a one hour capsule vacation? That sounds like it is destined to be unsatisfying.
1944
The red hand of a demon reaching into the imagined skull of a lady? This is very Agatha Christie to me.
1945
I do not have a Vogue subscription. If I did, I might read this issue -- there is an article in there called "Germans Are Like This" that includes news of the Holocaust, and something about how the war is "half over" (it would end in September). Basically, wartime Vogue would have been quite interesting.
1946
This cover model, Dorian Leigh, has a humdinger of a Wikipedia page. I like the cool confidence of this.
1947
I want to frame this. It's just... we all dream of this feeling, don't we?
1948
"Gosh I hope they cleaned off this building."
1949
1950: Jean Patchett
This is so stunning, it's almost hard to tell whether it's a photograph or a painting or some kind of hybrid.
1951: Anne St. Marie
I am familiar with neither the "hormone beauty story" nor the concept of "wide coiffures," so I'd be curious even WITHOUT Anne's malevolent watermelons.
1952: Dovima
That cover line makes it sound like fashion decided to print its own currency. The United States Fashion Dollar.
1953
This one seems to be UK Vogue. I'm not sure what happened to the US one. But I do love her sweater, and also how BORED she seems by the idea of sitting through a coronation. "Another one?" she huffs. "Bring me a double Pimm's."
1954: Evelyn Tripp
Is the "Indispensable Dress, Six Versions," like the Infinity Dress, where it's one piece of cloth that you can twist different ways? Also, I assume "portable week-end food" is just a giant spread all about sandwiches.
1955: Anne St. Marie
This is cool. I'd want to be at that brunch, and I don't even LIKE brunch.
1956: Anne St. Marie
"WHAT? My head is wearing 20 pounds of accessories, so please don't yell for my attention unless you mean it."
1957: Joanna McCormick
She has an air of Jamie Lee Curtis about her. Jamie Lee could have been in a movie about this cover. I assume her character Wanda Gershwitz would have been involved.
1958: Dolores Hawkins
"You guys, this cover line is nonsense, and we can't even SEE a dress in the phto. Let's just stick a carnivorous kitty on the cover and call it a night."
1959: Gitta Schilling
She is stunning. I'd like that cocktail ring, also.
1960: LeFerre
Well, this is it. It's never going to get better, EVER, than, "How to diet if you have no character at all," although "What's conversation?" is delightfully Dowager Countess.
1961: Dorothy McGowan
So let me get this straight: Is Vogue saying that an intelligent woman asked if she could learn chicness, thereby implying that smart women didn't know how to do both? Dorothy here looks somewhat taken aback as well.
1962: Ina Balke
That's a cool shot. Also, there's apparently an article in here about Gordonstoun, the boarding school Prince Charles hated. JUICY. (Probably not though.)
1963: Celia Hammond
This is prim but also softly sexy. That dress is perfect for the setup.
1964: Anne de Zogheb
She is modeling the heck out of that hat. "The fashion that's this summer" is so awkward, though.
1965: Brigitte Bauer
Pow INDEED.
1966: Jean Shrimpton
Wow. Okay. First, that cover line about hormones and how to BE FEMININE FOR LIFE is certainly striking an irresponsible chord about health and menopause and such. Like, yes, we have to take hormones, but calm down, Vogue. Second, I keep thinking she's posing in front of brightly colored and bejeweled false teeth.
1967 Andrea Rimaldi
I snorted out loud at the bottom line about how much men should do about their looks. I imagine lots of women left this one around their bathrooms just as subtle hints that MAYBE it's the man's turn to DO SOMETHING about LOOKS. I also want to read about the countess and her hair pieces.
1968: Lauren Hutton
What a great shot. There is SO much text, yet I'm still drawn to her.
1969: Windsor Elliott
She looks like a cross between Katy Perry and Kesha.
1970: Karen Graham
"How a Frenchman trains his American wife"? Pass, monsieur.
1971: Gunilla Lindblad
This reminds me of when my friend started a school paper, and we bought Print Shop, and suddenly EVERY page had a wacky font on it and some clip art JUST BECAUSE WE COULD. We have so many colors here. So. Many.
1972: Karen Graham
This has real Rosie the Riveter echoes to it.
1973: Lauren Hutton
Yawn, basically.
1974: Lauren Hutton
This notion of "The American Woman issue" is interesting to me because presumably that's what Vogue is peddling itself as every other month as well -- a Bible for American women -- and it just isn't putting a label on it.
1975: Beverly Johnson
It took an awfully long time to get a Black woman on the cover; this was Johnson's second, I think, after making that history in August 1974. Also, Vogue was very concerned that The American Woman had no knowledge of how to dress or live in hot weather. It's a recurring worry.
1976: Patti Hansen
This feels like the cover of a cheap teen romance novel. Also, how dare they bury "mother self destructs" in the middle of that list?
1977: Lisa Taylor
Here, they have fired their cover writers and used a blandness generator.
1978: Rosie Vela
Seriously, whoever had to tease what the "experts" are saying clearly didn't read the articles.
1979: Kelly Emberg
We're now in a deeply generic stretch.
1980: Kim Alexis
Wait, now they're peddling workouts for your HAIR?
1981: Kim Alexis
I love that, in the same breath, they're pitching "seasonless dressing" as a "summr find."
1982: Kelly Emberg
"What counts," as cover lines go, is maybe the peak of Mount Vagueness.
1983: Alexa Singer
That's a LOT of collars for summer.
1984: Isabella Rossellini
I wonder what they thought "Up!" was conveying, exactly.
1985: Alexa Singer
This has a real Impractical Aerobics feel to it. And "sure" sounds so... exhausted. Like it's giving up. "Here. Here is this cover. Sure, whatever."
1986: Shari Belafonte
I am delighted to see Shari's face here -- she lights this up -- but I am also intrigued to see Vogue asking whether Woody Allen likes women. Which is meant in a respect/high-regard way, and not a question of whether he's secretly into men. I tried to read what I could see of the article, but I couldn't quite make it all out.
1987: Estelle Lefébure
Well, I approve of the stripe, anyway.
1988: Kathy Fedoruk
You can see why Grace Mirabella was let go. There is way too much sameyness in these, with only a couple exceptions, and it's all TIGHT TIGHT TIGHT shots. Anna's first cover was November 1988 and it's a full body shot, and exhausting arrays like this -- and bear in mind all the OTHER months that came in between, so it was YEARS of this strung together -- are why.