CONDE
́
NAST
After emerging as the brainchild of New York pub-
lisher Conde ́ Montrose Nast (1873–1942) in the
early 1900s, by the end of the century Conde ́Nast
Publications became one of the largest consumer
magazine companies in the world. Its earliest pub-
lications,VogueandVanity Fair, were among the
first to use studio and portrait photography as illus-
trations. The rise of fashion and product photogra-
phy, as well as its evolving marriage with graphic
design, also influenced the aesthetics and produc-
tion of images appearing in media and advertising.
Conde ́Nast has been credited with pioneering the
editorial format of fashion and lifestyle periodicals,
as well as launching and promoting the careers of
numerous prominent photographers from the Unit-
ed States and abroad.
The publishing empire known as Conde ́ Nast
established its name on the newsstand in 1909,
when Nast acquired The Vogue Company and
began revampingVoguemagazine, which had deb-
uted as a New York society weekly in December
1892.Vogueremained the company’s flagship pub-
lication as Nast purchasedDressandVanity Fair
(initially merged then shortened toVanity Fair)in
1913, andHouse & Gardenin 1915. In 1922, Nast
renamed the company Conde ́Nast Publications,
and five years later, it went public. Glamour of
Hollywood(renamedGlamour) joined the Conde ́
Nast magazine roster in 1939, and by 2000, more
than a dozen new titles appeared, including:Allure,
Architectural Digest,Bon Appe ́tit,Bride’s,Conde ́
Nast Traveler,Details,Gourmet,Gentleman’s Quar-
terly (renamed GQ), Lucky, Mademoiselle, Self,
The New Yorker,W, andWired.
Born in New York and raised in the Midwest,
Conde ́Nast studied math and philosophy at Geor-
getown University, then went on to receive a law
degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Through a highly successful stint as the advertising
and business manager forCollier’s Weeklyin New
York from 1900–1907, Nast created and refined
what became his blueprint for marketing and posi-
tioning periodicals in an increasingly competitive
marketplace. While targeting circulation to an audi-
ence of consumers willing to pay more for magazines
featuring color covers and double-page layouts, he
aggressively pursued high-end advertisers to fill out
more and more pages, thereby maximizing revenue
with each new issue. With Nast at the helm as the
new publisher ofVogue, the magazine’s readership
expanded from 30,000 in 1910 to 100,000 in 1918.
As Edna Woolman Chase became the Vogue
editor-in-chief in 1914, she worked closely with
Nast throughout its transformation into an inter-
nationally visible, fashion-focused, photo-illus-
trated monthly. Chase’s influential tenure with the
magazine lasted from 1895 until her retirement in
1952, at the age of 75. The editor-in-chief post of
AmericanVoguewas subsequently held by Jessica
Daves (1952–1962), Diana Vreeland (1963–1971),
Grace Mirabella (1971–1988), and Anna Wintour
(1988–) In 1916,Voguebecame the first magazine
to spawn international editions, which were pub-
lished in each country’s official language. British
Voguedebuted in 1916, SpanishVoguein 1918,
French Vogue in 1920, and German Vogue in- Since then,Voguehas launched editions else-
where, including Australia, Brazil, Greece, Italy,
Mexico, Russia, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.
In 1913, Paris-born photographer Adolph de
Meyer signed on to contribute exclusively to
VogueandVanity Fair, in what was deemed the
most generous contract of its kind at the time. In
the mid-1920s,Vogueopened a photo studio in
Paris that served as the source for most of its
photographic illustrations. European and Ameri-
can photographers alike brought their artistic con-
cerns to the nascent field of fashion photography.
Avant-garde approaches to portraiture, lighting,
and composition began to eclipse the tenets of
Pictorialism. From the 1920s to the 1930s, the
work of photographers such as de Meyer, Horst
P. Horst, Andre ́ Kerte ́sz, Man Ray, and Edward
Steichen made it into to the pages ofVogue, by way
of the magazine’s Paris studio.
Early on, Nast shaped the visual resonance of his
fledgling periodicals by approving each photo-
graph for publication. His affinity for and commit-
ment to the photographic medium was further
exemplified in a Vanity Fair series on modern
photographers, which ran in the early 1920s under
the art direction of Heyworth Campbell. On the
CONDE ́NAST