Everything about Vanity Fair Magazine totally explained
Vanity Fair is an American magazine of culture, fashion, and politics published by Condé Nast Publications.
Condé Nast's Vanity Fair
Condé Nast began his empire by purchasing the men's fashion magazine
Dress in 1913. He is said to have paid $3,000 for the right to use the title "Vanity Fair" in the United States, but it's unknown whether the right was granted by an
earlier English publication or some other source.
Condé Nast renamed the magazine
Dress and Vanity Fair and published four issues in 1913. After a short period of inactivity it was relaunched in 1914 as
Vanity Fair.
The magazine achieved great popularity under editor
Frank Crowninshield. In 1919
Robert Benchley was tapped to become managing editor. He joined
Dorothy Parker, who had come to the magazine from
Vogue, and was the staff drama critic. Benchley hired future playwright
Robert E. Sherwood, who had recently returned from
World War I. The trio were among the original members of the
Algonquin Round Table, which met at the
Algonquin Hotel, on the same West 44th Street block as Condé Nast's offices.
Crowninshield attracted the best writers of the era.
Aldous Huxley,
T. S. Eliot,
Ferenc Molnár,
Gertrude Stein, and
Djuna Barnes all appeared in a single issue, July 1923.
Starting in 1925
Vanity Fair competed with
The New Yorker as the American establishment's top culture chronicle. It contained writing by
Thomas Wolfe,
T. S. Eliot and
P. G. Wodehouse, theatre criticisms by Dorothy Parker, and photographs by
Edward Steichen;
Claire Boothe Luce was its editor for some time.
In 1915 it published more pages of advertisements than any other U.S. magazine. It continued to thrive into the twenties. However, it became a casualty of the
Great Depression and declining advertising revenues. Condé Nast announced in December 1935 that
Vanity Fair (circulation 90,000, its peak) would be folded into
Vogue (circulation 156,000) as of the March 1936 issue.
Modern revival
Condé Nast Publications, under the ownership of
Si Newhouse, announced in June 1981 that it was reviving the magazine. The first issue was published in February 1983 (cover date March), edited by Richard Locke, formerly of
The New York Times Book Review. After three issues, Locke was replaced by
Leo Lerman, veteran features editor of
Vogue. He was followed by editors
Tina Brown (1984–1992) and
E. Graydon Carter (since 1992). Regular
columnists include
Sebastian Junger, Michael Wolff,
Christopher Hitchens,
Dominick Dunne, and
Maureen Orth. Famous contributing photographers for the magazine include
Bruce Weber,
Annie Leibovitz,
Mario Testino and the late
Herb Ritts, all who have provided the magazine with a string of lavish covers and full-page portraits of current
celebrities. Amongst the most famous of these was the August 1991 cover featuring a naked, pregnant
Demi Moore, an image entitled
More Demi Moore that to this day holds a spot in pop culture.
In addition to its controversial photography, the magazine is also known for its high quality articles. In 1996, journalist Marie Brenner wrote an
exposé on the
tobacco industry entitled "
The Man Who Knew Too Much". The article was later adapted into a movie
The Insider (1999), which starred
Al Pacino and
Russell Crowe. Most famously, after more than thirty years of mystery, an article in the May 2005 edition revealed the identity of
Deep Throat (
W. Mark Felt), one of the sources for
The Washington Post articles on
Watergate, which led to the 1974 resignation of
U.S. President Richard Nixon. The magazine also includes candid interviews from celebrities: from
Teri Hatcher admitting to being abused as a child to
Jennifer Aniston's first interview after her divorce from
Brad Pitt.
Anderson Cooper talked about his brother's death while
Martha Stewart gave an exclusive to the magazine right after her release from prison.
In August 2006,
Vanity Fair sent photographer Annie Leibovitz to the
Telluride, Colorado home of
Tom Cruise and
Katie Holmes for its October 2006 issue. The photo shoot was of the couple and their daughter, Suri Cruise, who had previously been "hidden", without pictures released to the public, causing many to start to deny her existence. This issue became the second highest selling issue for the magazine; the first was the Jennifer Aniston cover after her divorce.
In keeping with the influence of Hollywood and pop culture on the magazine,
Vanity Fair hosts a high-profile, exclusive
Academy Awards after-party at the restaurant Morton's. In addition, its annual Hollywood issue usually consists of pictorials of that year's respective
Academy Award nominees. Previous Hollywood issue covers have included group images of
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Nicole Kidman, and
Catherine Deneuve together and
Owen Wilson,
Ben Stiller,
Chris Rock, and
Jack Black together.
The magazine was the subject of
Toby Young's book,
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, about his search for success, from 1995, in
New York working for Graydon Carter's
Vanity Fair. The book has been optioned for a movie, with
Jeff Bridges slated to play Carter.
There are currently four international editions of
Vanity Fair being published, namely in the
United Kingdom,
Spain,
Germany and
Italy. The latter two editions are published weekly.
Controversy
Controversial pictorials
Some of the pictorials in
Vanity Fair have garnered criticism. The April 1999 issue featured an image of actor
Mike Myers dressed as a
Hindu deity for a photo spread by
David LaChapelle: after criticism, both the photographer and the magazine apologized.
Another issue whose cover image courted controversy was the March 2006
Tom Ford's
Hollywood Special Edition: the cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz, featured
Keira Knightley and
Scarlett Johansson, both nude, accompanied by a fully-clothed
Tom Ford, a last-minute replacement for
Rachel McAdams, who had backed out of the shoot after refusing to appear nude.
In addition, the December, 2006 issue (Vanity Fair's first "Art Issue") drew controversy with its photo of Brad Pitt wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers. Although Pitt had signed a release for the image, which was taken in September 2005, he claims he didn't expect it to emerge on the magazine cover more than a year later. Vanity Fair has said that it obtained the rights for the image, as part of a collection, and that it had issued a letter to Pitt informing him, prior to the publication.
On
April 25,
2008, the televised entertainment program
Entertainment Tonight reported that 15 year old Miley Cyrus had posed topless for a photo shoot with Vanity Fair. The photo, and subsequently released behind-the-scenes photos, show Cyrus without a top, her bare back exposed but her front covered with a bedsheet. The photo shoot was taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz. The full photograph was published with an accompanying story on The New York Times' website on
April 27,
2008. On
April 29 2008,
The New York Times clarified that though the pictures left an impression that she was bare-breasted, Cyrus was wrapped in a bedsheet and was actually not topless. Some parents expressed outrage at the nature of the photograph, which a
Disney spokesperson described as "a situation [that] was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines." The trial started on
July 18, 2005, and Polański made English legal history as the first claimant to give evidence by video link. During the trial, which included the testimonies of
Mia Farrow and others, it was proved that the alleged scene at the famous New York restaurant
Elaine's couldn't possibly have taken place on the date given, because Polański only dined at this restaurant three weeks later. Also, the Norwegian then-model disputed the accounts that he'd claimed to be able to make her "the next Sharon Tate".
Polański was awarded £50,000 damages by the
High Court in London. The case was notable because Polanski was living in France as a fugitive from U.S. justice, and never appeared in the London court for fear he'd be extradited to the U.S. and Graydon Carter, editor of
Vanity Fair, responded, "I find it amazing that a man who lives in France can sue a magazine that's published in America in a British courtroom," while Samantha Geimer commented, "Surely a man like this hasn't got a reputation to tarnish?"
Lindsay Lohan interview
In January 2006,
Vanity Fair published a cover feature and an interview with
Lindsay Lohan in which she admitted using drugs "a little", although she denied ever using cocaine, describing it as a "sore subject". The article said she'd recovered from "
bulimic episodes", and that her 2005 hospitalization was for "a swollen liver and kidney infection". Lohan later said she was "appalled" that her words were "misused and misconstrued" for the article; the magazine however replied that "Every word [wasrecorded] on
tape.
Vanity Fair stands by the story."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Vanity Fair Magazine'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://vanity_fair__magazine.totallyexplained.com">Vanity Fair (magazine) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
