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As December winds down, so too do Vogue’s 125th anniversary celebrations, which have given us the opportunity to look at the past as it relates to how we are living now. The magazine’s debut issue was published on December 17, 1892, and as we compare the world as it was then to today, there’s a lot of forward progress to track and yet more to be made. The corseted 19th-century female readers of Vogue couldn’t cast a ballot; now women’s voices, and votes, are increasingly being heard and counted. Plus, there are many ways for us to take up space even when we’re not wearing voluminous leg-of-mutton sleeves. Some things, like an obsession with shoes and a fascination with royalty, never seem to change. Read on to compare and contrast.
Cover Stories
Dated December 17, 1892, Vogue’s first issue featured a debutante emerging from an ethereal (and, one imagines, perfumed) cloud of butterflies and roses. This budding pillar of society was drawn by A. B. Wenzell, a fashionable artist whose work was described at the time as being popular “with the art worshippers of society.” (Ironically, he’d later illustrate Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, a takedown of the elite.) John Currin, one of contemporary art’s greats, was tapped to paint A-list actress Jennifer Lawrence for one of four covers for the magazine’s September issue. “To be in a situation of producing a cover for this famous magazine, I’m a little scared,” Currin told The New York Times. “I do worry about decorum.”
In the Pink
Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted In the Meadow between 1888 and 1892. Though the sitters’ backs face the viewer, it’s evident that they are young girls as they wear their hair long and loose. Their pastel frocks also add to the Edenic mood of this Impressionist masterpiece. Looking at the painting through the lens of 2017 fashion, one might note that the brunette, who aptly chose a rose-colored dress, anticipated the trend for millennial pink by 125 years.
Party-Hearty
“The Week’s Social Event,” is how The New York Times described the ball Mrs. William Astor, the queen of New York society, hosted at her Fifth Avenue mansion in 1892. Later that month, the newspaper would publish Astor’s guest list, comprised of members of “the 400,” a shorthand term for society, which ostensibly referred to the number of people who would fit into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom. In these information-rich days, ceremony and content are constant companions, and they’re both on display at the annual Costume Institute Gala, which isn’t merely the week’s social event, but the party of the year.
The Crown
Speaking of ceremony, we are no less immune to the pomp and circumstance—and getups—of royals today than we were 125 years ago. This year marked not only Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s 70th wedding anniversary, but the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. You might have heard, too, that Prince Harry became engaged to Meghan Markle. With nonstop reporting on the regals, it’s no surprise that designers would pay sartorial homage to the crown. Lady Di was the muse at Off-White, while at Faith Connexion and Burberry, the royal references were applied more broadly and with a touch of military panache.
Pump Up the Volume
Outside of fashion, there weren’t many ways for women to “take up space” in 1892. Recently the leg-of-mutton sleeve, a mainstay of the fin-de-siècle silhouette, has been passed through a postmodern filter and become a 2017 trend via the OTT 1980s. For Resort 2018, Gucci presented a puff-sleeved look (above, right) as an homage, the house said, to the Harlem–based designer Dapper Dan. A social media callout led to a larger (and ongoing) conversation about how designers use inspiration, and also put the luxury business in touch with the local designer, a step in the right direction that could transform a puff piece into progress.
Kindred Soles
“A peep into the shoe closet of a girl of the day,” wrote Vogue in 1892, “would reveal shoes and slippers of every shape and color arranged on wooden lasts, so that the shape may never vary, and the number required is without end.” Sound familiar? Further proof that shoe lust transcends time comes from the magazine’s declaration that “in no way does the luxury of the times display itself more prominently than in the attention paid to the ‘little dainty silken stocking’ and the numberless slippers one must possess in order to be bien chaussé.” Sub in Gucci’s logo socks and Saint Laurent’s yeti boots, and you’ve got a trendsetter’s holiday 2017 wish list.
Hoop Dreams
At a moment in which athletes in a politically split America are speaking to societal issues, fashion has become obsessed with athleisure. Suddenly designers whose mood boards are usually pasted with dreamy images of dancers of the Ballets Russes and 18th-century French interiors are throwing curveballs in the form of references to more rugged pursuits like baseball (Ashish, Gucci), soccer (Koché, Faith Connexion), and basketball, whose rules were originally published in 1892, the same year that the first public game of hoops was recorded. It wasn’t played by women back then, but in Valentino’s Resort 2018 campaign, female ballers ruled the court.
Love, Actually
Vogue was directed at men and women of society, with columns specifically addressed to the gents. “Many people may think all this attention to detail in dress trivial,” wrote the “As Seen by Him” columnist in the magazine’s second issue. The writer wholeheartedly did not share that point of view and expanded at length on the fads of the day, from Prince’s knots to jeweled cigarette holders. Fast-forward 125 years and the divisions between menswear and womenswear are dwindling even as the concept of gender fluidity is changing and expanding.
Taking Shape
The Vogue Girl, introduced in the debut issue, was the creation of the magazine’s first art director, Harry McVickar. Over the years she went through many iterations, but she first appeared in a corseted and panniered 18th-century–style getup that molded her into shape. “Woman’s passion for humps,” irritated the magazine’s first editor, Josephine Redding, no end. “What plausible reason can possibly be assigned for a 19th-century woman pretending, at intervals, to the possession of big head, enlarged small of the back, abnormal growth of hip, exaggerated breadth of shoulder?” the magazine raged. “The hump defies classification. Each variety is unique and owns no kinship to its predecessors.” Not so in 2017; when Rei Kawakubo presented her Spring 2018 collection in Paris, the exaggerated and sculptural shapes referenced not only silhouettes from Marie Antoinette’s day, but could be connected by a red thread to her “lumps and bumps” show for Spring 1997, both of which challenged our definitions of fashion and beauty.
Technicolor Dreams
This Spring season Thom Browne took his show on the road, presenting a gender-bending fashion fantasia in Paris. His sugar-coated starting point was “two girls dreaming of unicorns and mermaids.” About 125 years earlier, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec dared to open people’s eyes to rawer and then-forbidden aspects of Parisian life. Le Lit, circa 1892, shows two women abed who could never have imagined freedoms like same-sex marriage. Vive l’amour.