Vanity Fair Magazine – Page 10 – Old Magazine Articles

‘Cupid to Seal the Balkan Peace”
(Vanity Fair, 1913)

By the time this item appeared in print, the Balkan War (1912-1913), was over however some of the swells of Europe put their crowned heads together and collectively came up with the best Medeival plan they could think of in order to insure the promise of peace. The plan was to have:

• the Czar’s daughter, Grand Duchess Olga (1895 – 1918), would wed Serbia’s Crown Prince Alexander

• the Czar’s second daughter, Grand Duchess Tatiana (1897 – 1918), was promised to Rumania’s Crown Prince Charles (1893 – 1959)

• All concerned agreed that Rumania’s Pricess Elizabeth (1894 – 1956) and Crown Prince George of Greece (1890 – 1947) would make a simply splendid couple (they divorced in 1935).

Much Talk of White Waistcoats, Shoes and Shirts
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

When the smoke cleared following the close of that dreadful unpleasantness that spanned the years 1914 to 1918, there remained much work to do; bodies to be buried, cities to be rebuilt. Men and nations prepared to face the new realities that came with the new social structure; many weighty subjects had to be addressed that had been ignored for so long a time. The most pressing of these topics was deciding which was the proper combination of white waistcoat and dinner jacket? In an age of industrial slaughter, which was more suitable: double-breasted or single-breasted? and what of ties, shoes and overcoats?

Theater Intermissions and Prohibition
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Prohibition has been pretty rough on everybody, but there is no class of people which it has hit so hard as the theater-goers. The Federal Amendment has completely wrecked their evenings. It isn’t so bad while the show is going on; the blow falls between the acts. In happier times the intermissions were the high spots of the evening…

With pin-point accuracy, Vanity Fair was able to identify the new minority-victim class that emerged from America’s unfortunate experiment with Prohibition: Broadway theater enthusiasts (It might be argued that the real victims were American bar tenders, many of whom high-tailed it over to Europe where they established a number of American-style bars).

The attached page from the magazine can be classified as humor and is illustrated with six great sketches by Edith Plummer.

Read other articles from 1919.

A Cartoonist with the U.S. Army in Germany
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

A few cartoons by the illustrator George Wright (1872 – 1951) depicting the American Third Army during it’s 1919 occupation of Germany.

The Rosettis
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Shortly after the death of William Michael Rossetti
(1829 – 1919), Welsh poet and essayist Arthur Symons
(1865 – 1945) wrote this essay remembering the man, his brother (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) and the friendship that the two shared with poets George Meredith and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Charles Huard: War Artist in the 1914 Trenches
(Vanity Fair, 1915)

Seven sketches from Soissons by the war artist Charles Huard (1875 – 1965) as they first appeared in a fashionable American society magazine.

Click here to read additional article about the World War I artists.

The Well Dressed Man in Winter
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

Illustrations of fashion’s offering from the Fall of 1921: great coats, semi-great coats, overcoats and ulsters; raglan and otherwise.

Russian Modernism After the Revolution
(Vanity Fair, 1919)

Art alone survives the earthquake shocks of revolution, and Russian art has been doubly secure because of it’s deep-rooted imagination and it’s passionate sincerity.

That was the word from Oliver M. Sayler writing from Moscow as it starved during the Summer of 1919. Sayler, known primarily for his writings on Russian theater from this period, wrote enthusiastically about the Russian Suprematist Casimir Malyevitch, Futurist David Burliuk and The Jack of Diamonds Group; believing deeply in the Russian Revolution, he wrote not a word about how the Soviets mistreated the modern artists of Russia.

Madame X by John Singer Sargent
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

In order to mark the New York arrival of Portrait of Madame X by John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1924), VANITY FAIR’s editors chose to run this anecdote concerning the 1884 creation of the work as well as a reproduction of one of the pencil studies for the profile head of the sitter, Madame Gauterau.

Paris Fashion: Summer, 1916
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

Paying no mind to the continuing unpleasantness that was taking place somewhere around the Somme (ie. W.W. I), the taste-makers of Paris soldiered-on and created garments for mid-summer that were original and feminine and bore the mark of Paris’ characteristic opulence.

Legendary fashion designer Christian Dior had a good deal of trouble with people who would illegally copy his designs; click here to read about that part of fashion history.

Allied Aerial Reconnaissance During World War I
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

This article,Photography’s Notable Part in the War was written by an active participant in the aerial reconnaissance arm of the Royal Flying Corps, Captain Henry A. Wildon. He reported that both sides in the conflict recognized early on that intelligence gathering by way of camera and aircraft was a real possibility:

Our first airplanes in France were not supplied with photographic equipment. It was not until the beginning of 1915 that the importance of of photography became apparent, and was made possible by improvements in the type and general stability of the airplane.

Remembering the Golden Age of the Dandy
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1920)

This is a fun read covering the all too short reign of the dandy. It touches upon those who were the great practitioners of the art (Beau Brummell, Sir Phillip Dormer Chesterfield, Beau Nash, Sir Robert Fielding, Count Alfred d’Orsay) and those who came later, but deserving of honorable mention (King Alphonso XIII and Oscar Wilde), as well as the wannabe bucks who wished they were dandies but simply came away well-tailored (George IV and Edward VII).

An article about Beau Brummell can be read HERE

The Water-Colors of John Marin
(VanityFair, 1922)

When Fifth Avenue’s Montross Gallery launched an exhibit featuring over one hundred creations by the American painter John Marin (1870 – 1953) in the winter of 1922, art voyager and all-around well-respected critic Paul Rosenfeld (1890 – 1946) was present, and very shortly put pen to paper in order to heap many bon-mots upon the man and his work:

He applies his wash with the directness of impulse that is supposed to be discoverable only in the work of small children. One racks one’s brain for memory of a water-color painter who reveals in every stroke of his brush a more uninhibited urge outward.

Humorous Writing by Erik Satie
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

The attached article is yet another among the several tongue and cheek essays that the French composer Eric Satie (Alfred Éric Leslie Satie 1866 – 1925) contributed for the amusement of the fun-loving readers of VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE. Published just three years prior to his death, it is beautifully illustrated, and stands as one solid page of pure silliness in which Satie considered the place of art in the animal kingdom, and concludes that of all the arts, architecture and music are the only two creative endeavors that the creatures of the field ever seem able to embrace:

I know of no literary work written by an animal – and that is very sad.

Wet vs. Dry
(Vanity Fair, 1918)

If you are looking for a serious report concerning the political battles fought in Congress regarding Prohibition (1919 – 1933), you can keep looking. The attached essay is a humorous parody of that dispute between the Drys and Wets as it existed just months before the ‘Noble Experiment’ began in earnest. By November of 1918, the American newspaper readers had simply overdosed on the redundant writings of assorted war correspondents – and so, with a bit of whimsy, the VANITY FAIR writer George S. Chappell sat down to write about the political war between these two groups using the same journalistic affectations everyone was so heartily sick of. You will also find a mock military map depicting the faux topography in dispute.

Campers of 1921
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1921)

Motor camping is in it’s infancy, observed the shrewd and sure-footed motoring journalist George W. Sutton in this 1921 VANITY FAIR report regarding the evolution of campers. To further illuminate his readers, he provided black and white plans illustrating the interior of two campers mounted on the back of Ford chassis (during the 1920s, Ford Model Ts were by far the most common make of automobile). Although there were a handful of camper-shell manufacturers at the time, the two featured here were custom made.

‘Paul Verlaine in London”
(Vanity Fair Magazine, 1916)

British poet and literary critic Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) remembered the time French poet Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896) was his house guest.

The 1921 book review of Paul Verlaine can be read here…

A Profile of Guillaume Apollinaire
(Vanity Fair, 1922)

An appreciative essay celebrating the work of Guillaume Apollinaire (born Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky: 1880 – 1918) by the high-brow art critic Paul Rosenfed (1890 – 1946).

For Apollinaire possessed the perfect adjustibility of the born poet. He would have found himself much at home in any environment into which he would have been born, whether it would have been one of pampas and herds and lonely hamlets, or one of concrete, newspapers, war and steel.