All That Glitters

"A repository of fashion, pleasure, and instruction.”

Words emblazoned on the cover of the inaugural issue of Harper’s Bazar, in 1867, that still run through the veins of the high-fashion magazine today. It is an ethos dripping in artsy-fartsy opulence, captured in their most iconic covers: from a coquettish model adorned with red lipstick and white-rimmed sunglasses in 1958, to Demi Moore atop a spiral staircase feeding a giraffe on the April 2010 issue.

To the uninitiated, Harper’s Bazaar may come across as Vogue’s little sister – not-quite-as glamorous and less prominent, lacking movie adaptations and a notorious EIC – and is sometimes regarded as the uncool one even among fashion insiders. But there is something about art and photography that sets Bazaar apart, in addition to its illustrious history and distinguished list of editors. Bazaar also predates Vogue by 30 years.

In a nod to the magazine’s place as the first of its kind, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris named its February 2020 exhibition dedicated to Harper’s Bazaar “First in Fashion”. Back in 1867, the magazine was America’s first fashion weekly to cover European couture in a way that went far beyond clothes. The Harper brothers – the same names behind Harper’s Magazine and HarperCollins books – saw that there was a space for a magazine that appealed to the new affluent class in American society; one that read like an art-directed catalogue, with an astute focus on arts, literature and society.

The youngest of the bothers, Fletcher, set his sights on a magazine that would serve as an instructional guide on how to live well. He drew inspiration from German publication Der Bazar that featured fashion illustrations of Parisian and Viennese clothes; hence, the magazine started out as a weekly titled Harper’s Bazar, without the double A’s.

The magazine’s first editor, Mary Louise Booth – a 36 year-old women’s rights and suffrage activist – penned that DNA-defining mission on the first issue in November 1867, expounded upon in an editorial in the same issue titled Our Bazar. The article posited that Harper’s Bazar aimed to be “a vast repository for all the rare and costly things of earth—silks, velvets, cashmeres, spices, perfumes, and glittering gems; in a word, whatever can comfort the heart and delight the eye.”

In addition to such reports, like glimmery jewelry spreads and how-to’s on tying a bow in the most well-mannered way, Bazar’s early issues stuck to Fletcher Harper’s scriptural doctrine to go beyond fashion. A list of contributing luminaries that ran like an ultimate who’s who of the literary world – from Charles Dickens to Henry James and George Eliot – contributed sharp musings on poetry, work and social mores. Emmeline Raymond, founder of French publication La Mode Illustrée, was enlisted as Bazar’s Paris correspondent – her column offered a glimpse into glitzy French society and life.

On the other hand, Booth found herself at loggerheads with Fletcher in the one area that he considered verboten: politics. While she set forth that to be fashionable was to be forward thinking and deeply engaged in the ideas of the moment, the topic of homemaking – the role of a lady of a well-appointed house – was still prevalent. In quiet dissent, Booth regularly ran articles on the right to vote and the merits of work and education for women.

By the 1930s, during the collective reign of new Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow, Art Director Alexey Brodovitch and era-defining photographers like Martin Munkacsi and Richard Avedon, Harper’s Bazaar had become a force in altering the artistic representation of female models.

With Snow by his side, Munkacsi broke ground, capturing socialite Lucile Brokaw running down a beach in full stride for the December 1993 issue. Under the watchful eye of Brodovitch, the women in Avedon’s fashion spreads weren’t seraphs or statues, in the traditional idea of models mimicking mannequins. They twirled and leaped in blurs, muscles flexing and clothes billowing with an ephemeral realness.

Another such image featured Dovima, one of Avedon’s favorite models of the time, gambolling between elephants in a Dior gown. Her neck stretches gracefully to steal a glance at one of the magnificent beasts, her hands reach out to touch their ears. The photo is now seen as an emblem of the mythology of fashion, and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Brodovitch also revolutionized magazine design. Hired by Snow for his cinematic cropping, obsessive typography and profligate use of white space, she described his aesthetic as “bold and arresting,” a code that did away with the tidy layouts of old. His creative prowess was lauded by Truman Capote, who once wrote, “What Dom Pérignon was to champagne ... so [Brodovitch] has been to ... photographic design and editorial layout.”

One of Brodovitch’s biggest contributions was how he brought art to the covers of Bazaar, commissioning a tour de force of artists, from Salvatore Dali to Jean Cocteau and Marc Chagall, to create original work for the magazine. With his credo, “Astonish me,” Brodovitch inspired Dali to take a stab at fashion illustration for a 1935 cover, where he rendered two evening gowns – one with a girdle of coral, the other with a girdle of plaster.

Completing the holy trinity of Snow and Brodovitch was Fashion Editor Diana Vreeland – the editrix who allegedly invented the word “pizzazz” and the notion of the modern fashion editor.

Vreeland was known for her eccentric frivolity and wit, issuing aphorisms that heavily circulated through the fashion world. “Pink,” she said, “is the navy blue of India.” She dared Bazaar readers to dream with her notorious “Why Don’t You…” column. “Why don’t you… Have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car? Hermes of Paris will make this,” she suggested.

It is said that while Brodovitch inspired photographers and artists, Vreeland gave them a taste for everything luxe and wild. She considered photographers as a vehicle to convey her message to readers, to set them free in a bold wave of escapism that revolutionized editorial style.

Iconoclasts Man Ray, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Gleb Derujinsky worked – not just with, but through – Vreeland to deliver some of the most impactful imagery in fashion, ripe with attitude, strength of character, colour and fantasy. A standout amongst these is Man Ray’s black-and-white close up of a woman’s face, jolted by a flash of red lipstick. “The Badge of Red Courage,” the text beside her croons.

Vreeland and Brodovitch’s partnership was so seminal, it inspired Funny Face, a 1952 spoof of the Bazaar culture and its temperamental editors that starred Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. So, while unbeknownst to most, the magazine did get its own tribute à la The Devil Wears Prada back in the day.

As the 60 and 70s arrived and Vreeland headed to Vogue as Editor-in-Chief, Snow’s niece, Nancy White, took over Bazaar. With the rise of sportswear designers, the magazine pushed for an even more liberated approach to fashion that began to take shape in America. Suzy Parker appeared in one of the first fashion layouts featuring a bikini. Japanese photographer Hiro, a prodigy of Brodovitch, lived by this maxim; his infamous shoots include Jerry Hall languidly smoking on a beach and a Harry Winston diamond necklace hanging from a barefoot bovine.

It wasn’t until 2001 that the magazine saw another emblematic Editor-in-Chief, with the appointment of Glenda Bailey. Though venerated for her whimsical, surreal covers, such as the aforementioned Demi Moore plus giraffe, Kate Winslet hanging from a Manhattan scaffold and Rihanna reclining into the mouth of a shark, Bailey’s true flair was her adroitness at honoring the legacy of the old Bazaar, balancing fashion with editorial features on art and literature.

Above all, her biggest triumph was keeping the quintessence of Bazaar intact while steering the magazine into the epoch of Instagram. Vanessa Friedman wrote in the New York Times that in an age when things were looking grim for the glossies, Bailey saved Bazaar from being crushed by the Internet and “the rise of the armchair influencer.”

She made the pages super shoppable by erecting shopBAZAAR.com, an online shopping site that translates content from the magazine directly into the store. Bazaar also leveraged social media and advertising strategies more than any other magazine – this includes interactive content, like their fashion emojis campaign, and browsable ads on the Bazaar website, like the Net-A-Porter ones with a search box embedded.

In February 2020, Bailey tended her resignation at Bazaar. After thriving for 19 years at the magazine, she moves up within Hearst as a global consultant. The industry is in a tailspin over how this is going to affect the publishing industry, as more and more big-name, long-standing editors drop like flies, like Marie Claire’s Anne Fulenwider and Graydon Carter leaving Vanity Fair.

The buzz on everyone’s lips is the future direction Bailey’s successor will take the storied magazine. Bazaar has been lambasted for becoming too invested in trying to appeal to a wider audience in building their online presence, brand-plugging celebrity features – like Gwyneth Paltrow on the February 2020 cover in a Tom Ford breastplate, excessively highlighting Goop in the cover story – and being unable to pull off mixing shopping pages with the magazine’s archetypal high brow features.

Compounding the problem were the high profile defections to Vogue during Bailey’s tenure, including esteemed photographers Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh and Juergen Teller. What Bazaar can hold onto is that all these creative powerhouses had their start at Bazaar, and without Brodovitch and Vreeland, the notion of modern editorial photography would not have evolved the way it has.

It feels like the end of an era, when eccentricities like “Why don’t you… Have the most beautiful necklaces in the world made of huge pink spiky coral with big Siberian emeralds?” were commonplace, and poetic photographic works by the likes of Avedon and Hiro garnered more than enough “likes” and “following” to keep the magazine going. Maybe the time has come for Bazaar to go back to offering readers material like this that they can’t get online, and, as Friedman put it, raising the bar and trusting readers to meet them there.

References

The Real Fashion Trend of Glenda Bailey’s Bazaar https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/style/harpers-bazaar-glenda-bailey.html

Harper's Bazaar: 150 Years: The Greatest Moments by Glenda Bailey, 2017

The Cult of Diana
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/1993/11/diana-vreeland-199311

Richard Avedon’s Fashion Revolution
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1958/11/08/a-woman-entering-a-taxi-in-the-rain

Harper’s Bazaar Says It’s Just Fine
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/harper-s-bazaar-says-it-s-just-fine.html

150 Years of Harper’s Bazaar

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a18658/history-of-harpers-bazaar/

Why Don’t You…? 15 Arresting Bon Mots from Diana Vreeland
https://www.harpersbazaar.com.sg/life/why-dont-you-by-diana-vreeland/