Harper’s Bazaar: История американского модного журнала

American monthly women's fashion magazine

Harper's Bazaar is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly Harper's Bazar. Since its debut in 1867, as the U. S.'s first fashion magazine, its pages have been home to talent such as the founding editor, author and translator Mary Louise Booth, as well as numerous fashion editors, photographers, illustrators and writers. Harper's Bazaar targets an audience of professional women ranging from their twenties to sixties, who are interested in culture, travel, and luxury experiences. Harper's Bazaars corporate offices are located in the Hearst Tower, 300 West 57th Street or 959 Eighth Avenue, near Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The current editor in chief of the U. S. edition is Samira Nasr.

Book publishers Harper & Brothers founded the magazine based in New York City on November 2, 1867. It was not until 1901 Harper's moved to a monthly issued magazine which it maintains today. Now Harper's Bazaar is owned and operated by Hearst in the United States and the National Magazine Company in the United Kingdom. Hearst purchased the magazine in 1913. The name change to Harper's Bazaar was filed on December 30, 1930. However, the first magazine that showed the spelling "bazaar" on the cover came earlier with the November 1929 issue.

As the turn of the century began in America, Harper's Bazar began featuring both illustrations and photographs for its covers and inside features of high society and increasingly of fashion. During the late Victorian period, as the women's suffrage movement was gaining momentum (American women did not all win the right to vote until 1920 with the passing of the 19th Amendment), the introduction of more tailored dresses and jackets coincided with women's new sense of feminism. Bazaar also began profiling prominent socialites, such as the Astors and the Griscoms. In its early years, Harper's Bazaar focused primarily on society news, women's issues, and literature. The magazine featured articles, short stories, and serialized novels by notable authors such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf.

In 1933, editor in chief Carmel Snow (a former editor at Vogue) brought photojournalist Martin Munkacsi to a windswept beach to shoot a swimwear spread. As the model ran toward the camera, Munkacsi took the picture that made fashion magazine history. Until that moment, nearly all fashion was carefully staged on mannequin like models in a studio. Snow's buoyant spirit (she rarely slept or ate, although she had a lifelong love affair with the three martini lunch) and wicked sense of adventure brought life to the pages of Bazaar. Snow's genius came from cultivating the "best" people. Her first big find was art director Alexey Brodovitch, who innovated Bazaars iconic Didot logo. Brodovitch is perhaps best known for his work with Richard Avedon, who, as a young photographer, was so determined to work at Bazaar that he endured the humiliation of 14 canceled interviews before finally being hired. Snow also unleashed the force of nature known as Diana Vreeland, whom she brought on as fashion editor in 1936. The collaboration of these four visionaries resulted in some of the germane fashion shoots of the 20th century and ended only with Snow's retirement, at age 70, in 1957. The publication in the September 15, 1937 issue of Man Ray's photograph of his partner, the Guadeloupean model and dancer Adrienne Fidelin, was the first time a Black model was featured in a major American fashion magazine. Carmel Snow was living in Ireland before her mother, Annie White paid for her and her sisters immigration to America when she was 8 years old.

In 1934, newly installed Bazaar editor Carmel Snow attended an Art Directors Club of New York exhibition curated by 36 year old graphic designer Alexey Brodovitch and immediately offered Brodovitch a job as Bazaars art director. Throughout his career at the magazine, Brodovitch, a Russian émigré (by way of Paris), revolutionized magazine design. With his directive "Astonish me", he inspired some of the greatest visual artists of the 20th century (including protégés Irving Penn, Hiro, Gleb Derujinsky, and, of course, Richard Avedon). One of his assistants was future Rolling Stone art director Tony Lane. Brodovitch's signature use of white space, his innovation of Bazaars iconic Didot logo, and the cinematic quality that his obsessive cropping brought to layouts (not even the work of Man Ray and Henri Cartier Bresson was safe from his busy scissors) compelled Truman Capote to write, "What Dom Pérignon was to champagne so [Brodovitch] has been to photographic design and editorial layout." Brodovitch's personal life was less triumphant. Plagued by alcoholism, he left Bazaar in 1958 and eventually moved to the south of France, where he died in 1971.

When Carmel Snow saw Diana Vreeland dancing on the roof of New York's St. Regis Hotel in a white lace Chanel dress and a bolero with roses in her hair one evening in 1936, she knew she'd found Bazaars newest staffer. Diana, who is said to have invented the word "pizzazz", first came to the attention of readers with her "Why Don't You ?" column. (A typical suggestion: "Why don't you wear, like the Duchess of Kent, three enormous diamond stars arranged in your hair in front?") Before long, she became fashion editor, collaborating with photographers Louise Dahl Wolfe, Alexey Brodovitch, and Richard Avedon and, later, art director Henry Wolf. Her eccentricity, perception and wit, as well as her sharp wit and sweeping pronouncements ("I adore that pink! It's the navy blue of India," "Elegance is refusal! "), were memorialized in the movie Funny Face, making her, for many, the prototypical fashion magazine editor.

Richard Avedon began creating fashion portfolios for Harper's Bazaar at age 22. His distinctive photographs showed both chic insouciance and boundless vitality. Avedon's women leapt off curbs, roller skated on the Place de la Concorde, and were seen in nightclubs, enjoying the freedom and fashions of the postwar era. He wanted his art in photos to be in the moment for his models, to be much more natural and raw. The goal always for him was to eliminate the background and pull focus to the main subject of the photograph, such as a model in the desert suffering from being stranded in the middle of nowhere. His minimalist style of photography created this new theme in fashion where less can be more. Amazingly, he carved a pathway for models to show their true selves in modeling. He was immortalized in the film Funny Face by the character Dick Avery (played by Fred Astaire), who asked, "What's wrong with bringing out a girl who has character, spirit, and intelligence?" Alongside Fred Astaire was the leading lady Audrey Hepburn who portrays a "plain" girl who ultimately blossoms into a beautiful women. Avedon contributed many stills of Audrey Hepburn to the film, although he did not believe it truly captured her beauty, because getting to know her set her beauty on whole another level that just could not be caught in a photo. Being photographed by Avedon for the February 1959 issue of Harper's Bazaar, China Machado was one of the first non caucasian models to appear on the pages of a fashion magazine.

Gleb Derujinsky's 18 year career at Harper's Bazaar spanned from 1950 to 1968 and during that time produced some of the classic images of the era. Scouted by editor in chief Carmel Snow and art director Alexey Brodovitch, Derujinsky joined the elite group of photographers, including Richard Avedon, who shot for the magazine. Working closely with the then fashion editor Diana Vreeland, Derujinsky proved a pioneer in his field, creating stunning juxtapositions between European Haute Couture dresses and landscapes ranging from desert sands to car junkyards, fairgrounds and airports, all this at a time when air travel was yet to become as common as it is now. "Avedon shot dresses and clothes, Gleb shot women living in them". To mark the inauguration of Pan Am's Boeing 707 in 1957, Derujinsky traveled across the world with Nena von Schlebrügge, and Ruth Neumann, whom he would later marry. The latter would be his muse from the seaside harbors of China, to the Nara Deer Park in Japan, and throughout Thailand, Spain and Greece. The 1957 Paris Collections were the basis for a 25 page spread in Harper's Bazaar featuring his photographs. "Gleb Derujinsky's photographs evoke the best of Harper's Bazaar: exquisitely beautiful, original, and instantly iconic images of a very fashionable life".

Nonnie Moore was hired as fashion editor in 1980, having served in the same post at Mademoiselle. The New York Times noticed the changes she made at Harper's Bazaar, highlighting how the magazine had been "looking a little dowdy", but that Moore had "noticeably sharpened the magazine's fashion point of view" by showing "brighter, younger and more stylish", complimenting her use of "young and exciting fashion photographers", such as Oliviero Toscani.