A New York State of Mind
Fashion in the Big Apple: Where Vogue's iconic stories unfold against the backdrop of New York's skyline and streets
By Condé Nast Archive
By Ivan Shaw
Model in a Wool Suit and Ermine Mantle, Vogue (1946-09-15) by Constantin JoffeCondé Nast Archive
Frank Sinatra sang a love letter to the “city that never sleeps.” Author E. B. White laid the city bare in Here Is New York, and director John Carpenter created a cult movie classic with Escape From New York.
Vogue itself is a child of New York City, and its skyline and streets have played essential characters in many of the magazine’s best fashion stories.
Model in a Two-Piece Dress, Vogue (1975-01-01) by Deborah TurbevilleCondé Nast Archive
Launched in 1892 by New York City resident Arthur Turnure, and initially backed by some of Manhattan’s most important families, another New Yorker by the name of Condé Nast acquired Vogue in 1909. In its long history, Vogue has occupied numerous city spaces.
Nast moved the offices to the Graybar Building, located over Grand Central Station at 420 Lexington Avenue. By the 1970s, the company, by then owned by the Newhouse family, was housed on Madison Avenue in the heart of the famed advertising agency neighborhood.
Another relocation happened near the close of the century when Condé Nast Publications moved a few blocks west to Four Times Square; one of the motivations for this change was to help revitalize Manhattan’s famous theater district, which had fallen on hard times. Similar considerations were taken into account when the company became the anchor tenant at One World Trade Center, placing it in the middle of the rapid development of downtown post 9/11.
As Vogue has been inseparable from its city of origin for more than 125 years, it’s not surprising that its photographers and editors have frequently used its streets and skylines as backdrops.
As World War II drew to a close, New York enjoyed a growing economy and with it a new sense of prosperity. The rooftop of the Museum of Modern Art was the setting for a story photographed by Frances McLaughlin-Gill for the July 1945 issue.
So striking was the site that the caption writer saw fit to mention the “city, sky, glass and chromium,” in addition to sharing the details of the very latest wartime fashions. The magazine would revisit the newfound connection between fashion, landscape, and industrial design many times over. Access has always been a trump card at Vogue, a name that opens doors--and, evidently, construction sites.
Erwin Blumenfeld didn’t wait for construction to be finished on a new midtown skyscraper to photograph model Barbara Mullen amid the scaffolding in a coat for the February 15, 1948 issue.
In contrast, a landmark, the Empire State Building, is visible in a 1954 story shot by John Rawlings. The image’s socialite subject might come and go, but the city will always stand tall, patiently waiting for her return.
Fast forward to 1962 when Horst P. Horst placed models atop a marble block in front of the famed Seagram Building for a story on fall fashions.
Model in a Gray Cashmere Coat, Vogue (1962-08-15) by Horst P. HorstCondé Nast Archive
Their playfulness contrasts with the giant, protective Park Avenue office towers that Horst has fading softly in the background, like a field of trees in the background of an Impressionist painting.
Manhattan, facing a financial crisis, was a very different place in 1970 than in earlier decades, and its street and nightlife took on an air of wildness. For a 1977 New York collections portfolio, Oliviero Toscani literally walked the designer Mary McFadden and a group of models across a street to capture the spirit of the designer’s fall collection.
Mary McFadden and Models, Vogue (1977-09-01) by Oliviero ToscaniCondé Nast Archive
As traffic stopped to allow for the parade of models, a New York City cop jokingly impedes their march forward. It was anyone’s guess as to where these models and the city itself would be heading next.
Things got good again in the bullish, go-go 1980s, and Vogue was there to capture women as they cracked the glass ceiling. “Life at the Top” was the title of a story that showed how nineteen “amazing women…thrive[d] in the world of power, creativity and enormous effort.”
Arthur Elgort snapped fashion model Renata Vackova on the street, right hand on hip, left hand holding her briefcase, with a take-no-prisoners look as she gazes on to Madison Avenue from the entrance of the Carlyle Hotel. She’s ready for whatever the streets have to offer.
The mood the the 1990s was less expansive, which suited both the sagging economy and fashion’s new fascination with understated minimalism; bling made way for the LBD.
Elgort, then in his third decade with the magazine, often chose to photograph models close to his studio on Grand Street. For a 1996 sitting, Elgort literally put his subject on a desk on a cobblestone street in SoHo.
His subject, the former Vogue editor Elizabeth Saltzman, cooly sits atop it. In her chic black coat she looks unperturbed by even the slightest thought of oncoming traffic. The city is hers.
