OUGD601: Vogue by the Decades - (1950's)

Fashion photography dominated the magazine covers in the 1950’s, with the 50’s almost being summed up via Jean Patchett’s sweeping eyebrow, photographed by Erwin Bloomenfeld. The 1950’s was the golden decade of haute couture, with corsetry and ‘the new look’ dominating most of the fashion scene with tiny concave waists. This was the time when the fashion legacies/styles we reference today were originally created and established, by then new designers. The ruling designers Vogue reported on was Christian Dior (founded of the post-war New Look), Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, Christobal Balenciaga, and Coco Chanel who came back to the world of fashion after closing her Maison in the mist of the French invasion. Fashion photography was also booming; Vogue commissioned Irving Penn in 1950 to photograph the couture collections for the first time. His pictures, graphic and pure, continue to inform how we view and appreciate the art of fashion, as well as documenting the style of the times. Looking objectively, we cannot catergorically say that Penn’s view is the most accurate way of understanding the 1950’s, especially when considering society and the working class, yet his images do contain fantasy and allure in a way it has been hard to follow since.

The concave waist was hyper feminine (women were severely repressed and objectified in these days, with their place often being for the gratification of men). The tiny waists were often embellished and created via corsetry, bowing a nod to the earlier days of fashion (1800’s) where this tactic first became socially popular. Two looks reigned supreme in Vogue; the new look hour glass that featured a full skirt and stem-like middle, and a ‘glove fitted’ slim line that emphasised a tiny midriff. Vogue was a strong pioneer of the diet, so much so it had whole sections about dieting tips and top diets printed regularly in the magazine. It christened ‘Diet X’, The cottage cheese diet, the psychological diet, ‘duces wild’ diet and the grape diet. Vogue wanted to be such a heavy influence they even created a panel called ‘The Diet Authority’, naturally consisting of men (as subconsciously women only wanted to please men - Mulveys theory).

After the war ended fashion did boom within society and publishing culture, with Vogue reporting on the first official fashion shows in New York City, Italy and presentations of couture in Paris. As well as this, Vogue documented smaller shows in Spain (Madrid), Belgium and Dublin, enhancing their idea of a fashion community and reporting on more than what was happening on their home soil. Vogue wanted to be the authoritarian voice in fashion, giving a holistic overview of the world of fashion, under its point of view.