How Vogue Helped Women Ease into the Workforce in the 1970s

When Vogue launched in 1892 as “a dignified authentic journal of society, fashion, and the ceremonial side of life,” it was aimed at the leisure class.

At this time, and well into the 20th century, women of means typically did not have paid jobs, though the magazine’s masthead has always included those of “the fairer sex”—including all seven of its editors-in-chief.

As long as there have been women toiling behind the scenes at Vogue, so there have been depictions of women working in its pages:

Be they society matrons involved with charity work, Red Cross volunteers, entertainers, or designers like Coco Chanel and Elsa Peretti.

The models shouldn’t be counted out, either.

By the time the 'Me Decade' rolled around, topics like office wear, work/life balance, and climbing the corporate ladder (all hobby horses of the magazine’s then editor, Grace Mirabella) were relevant to a greater number of readers.

(Or, as a 1980 jingle for Enjoli fragrance would have it, “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan.”)

“Ten to six…. Eight to eight…. Five days a week…. Six. If you work, the one thing you don’t have is time on your hands. But you do have a lot of things going for you: You’re involved, active, on the go, interested and interesting….you know what’s happening in the world around you. You’re part of it. And you want to look that way.”

While fashion remained an important, and self-affirming, form of communication, it simply couldn’t be a central preoccupation of a nine-to-fiver, and the tone of the magazine shifted.

Soaring purple prose was replaced with more down-to-earth language, and expert voices were added to the mix.

“A woman used to want to look pampered,” the entrepreneur added. “Now she wants to look like an efficient woman—simple and natural.”

Thankfully, that wasn’t a stretch: The burgeoning ready-to-wear market offered women lots of choices at at varied price points.

(Diane von Furstenberg’s wrap dresses, which sold in the millions, cost about $85 in 1975, for example.)

Including Halston, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Geoffrey Beene, who created clothes that were swoon-worthy without being exotic or costume-y, leagues away from the far-flung romantic fictions that Diana Vreeland had filled the magazine with.

It was defined as “openness, the confidence to break obsolescent rules, to extend boundaries. To live with structured—not strictured—ease.”