Images From the Vanguard

“The fashion world’s a dangerous place. The most vulnerable don’t survive it.”

--Kennedy Fraser, “On the Edge: Images From 100 Years of Vogue”

Celebrating Vogue’s 100th anniversary, “Images” describes the ways in which this cornerstone of the Conde Nast empire has both invented and survived the dangerous world of fashion.

The book, published this spring, makes it clear that the people involved in producing the magazine throughout its history have had an uncanny ability to stay on the cutting edge.

It all started with entrepreneur Conde Nast, who grew up poor in St. Louis at the turn of the century but who, perhaps inspired by occasional visits to his grandparents’ mansion, became fascinated by the social elite.

Nast bought Vogue, then a high-society weekly, in 1909, and set about creating a world of beautiful people and rare objects in glossy editions.

From the beginning, he surrounded himself with living legends: photographer Edward Steichen, interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe and Editor Edna Chase.

Nast lost Vogue in the stock market crash of ’29. Control of the magazine fell to the banks and British press lords.

In 1932, Carmel Snow, considered to be the most brilliant fashion editor of this century, defected from the editorship of Vogue to become editor of the then-equally prominent Harper’s Bazaar.

And a lasting rivalry began.

Artist Alexander Liberman, the genius most influential in directing Vogue’s image, arrived in 1941. Under his guidance, paintings by Dali, photos by Irving Penn and news features by Joan Didion have appeared in the magazine. Fashion from the outer edge--Chanel, Schiaparelli, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rifat Ozbek--and portraits of the more outrageous artists of their day--Colette, Cocteau, Matisse, Marilyn and Madonna--have reflected his sophisticated taste.

Liberman sent women to cover the wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. He encouraged profiles of politicians and reports about such issues as sexual harassment.

The Newhouse family, which owns Conde Nast, acquired Vogue in 1959. By then, the magazine’s main traditions--daring photographs, disarming personalities and fashion from the far side--were entrenched.

Diana Vreeland arrived in 1962, having resigned from Harper’s Bazaar where she felt stymied. As editor, she ushered in the era of action photographer Richard Avedon, androgynous model Twiggy, the futuristic fashions of Rudi Gernreich and close-up photos of a face-lift operation.

Her sense of the outrageous and her flamboyance got her fired in the early 1970s. Her red office was cleaned out overnight, but she went on to direct the costume institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her society editor, 80-year-old Margaret Chase, was let go soon after. She threw herself from a window to her death.

By the height of the women’s liberation movement in the mid-’70s, the editor’s editor, Grace Mirabella, was directing Vogue. She decided that working women, not socialites, set the fashion trend. That idea didn’t last at Vogue, but it lives on at Mirabella, the magazine Rupert Murdoch created for her when she got the ax.

Enter Wintour--”Nuclear Wintour” as she’s been called for her quick decision-making and occasional lack of tact.

“Vogue’s history is full of ambitious, impossible romantics; of empresses, kings and courtiers; of tantrums, betrayals and abrupt beheadings,” Fraser observes in the introduction to “Images.”

The uneasy mix has resulted in the most successful fashion magazine in American history.