Recent Articles

Marcel Duchamp Returns to New York City
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

Exempted from serving with the French military in World War I, the artist Marcel Duchamp returned to New York City where he triumphed during the Armory Show of 1913 – together he and his two brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, all showed their groundbreaking art. Marcel was the toast of New York and his modern painting, Nude Descending a Staircase was regarded as a masterwork.

In the attached VANITY FAIR article, Duchamp let’s it be known that he crossed the submarine-infested waters of the Atlantic to see American art.

New Portrait Busts by Jo Davidson
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

This single column reported on the 1916 busts that were created by the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952), during his tour of war-torn Europe.
By the end of the Twentieth Century, much of his work would be in the collections of many of the finest art museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the U.S. Senate Art Collection and the National Statuary Hall, both in Washington.

World War I Fashions: Summer, 1916
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

Ignoring the general unpleasantness taking place outside of town, the taste-makers of Paris soldiered-on as best they could, creating garments for the summer of 1916 that were both original and feminine and bore the mark of Paris’ characteristic opulence.


Click here to read about the New York fashions of 1916.

Paris Puts a Stick in the Mode…(Vogue Magazine, 1919)

Fashion, like all empires, has it’s slaves. The slaves are treated cruelly but, strangely, they never seem to mind; they do what ever is required of them. Many are the examples of fashion’s tyranny: in the past it has demanded that it’s slaves wear cowboy boots, although none could rope a steer, and it has demanded of it’s slaves that they wear uniforms, although none could fight. In fashion’s name the slaves have removed ribs and teeth, reduced or enlarged body parts, dyed hair cross-dressed and tattooed themselves like jail-birds. The slaves do it all and there seems to be no limit to fashion’s fickle whims that will ever make them say, no.


To illustrate this point, you can read this beautifully illustrated Vogue magazine article from 1919 in which the beast demands perfectly healthy young women to walk with canes.

Hats from the Spring of 1925
(The Delineator, 1925)

Tenderly ripped from a copy of Delineator Magazine was this one page that featured nine chic illustrations of the fashionable hats for the Spring of 1925.

The small hat trimmed on top with an artichoke bow, pom-poms, gardenias, roses, water lilies, violets or quills is very popular…Hats for general wear remain head-size. The large hat is seen occasionally with afternoon gowns and will be worn with more formal Summer frocks.


Click here to see a beautifully photographed article about the fashionable hats of 1947.


Group therapy for weight loss celebrates its 60th year…

The Tennis Blazer
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

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.

Cars from Europe Get Tinier
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

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.

BBC Television Broadcasting Begins
(Literary Digest, 1935)

The British Broadcasting Corporation announced that they were capable of transmitting television programming as early as 1935:

The British engineers plan to begin with a single broadcasting tower, capable of transmitting television images to receiving sets within a radius of about thirty miles…British engineers are not the first to try television broadcasting. A station has been operating regularly in Berlin for several months.

Dance International
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

In New York last week, on the polished floor of the Rainbow Room, Rockefeller Center’s skyscraping night club, Hawaiians, Chinese, Scandinavians and Africans stamped whirled, leaped, and gesticulated to a dozen different kinds of music…it was an exposition of no little cultural and social importance – ‘Dance International,’ a festival showing the progress of the dance in all nations since 1900.


In their quest to document the evolution of dance in the United States, the audiences were treated to Modern Dance performances by Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Paul Weidman and Paul Haakon.

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