Vogue: September 1956 Issue

I picked up this 1956 Vogue September issue from the Strand Bookstore in NYC. It was remarkable.

Reading through each page, the biggest visual element to jump out at me was the design. The folks drawing up each ad and each page layout obviously did not have the aid of modern computing, but this in some ways was a good thing. The product here is a visual sense of minimalism and elegance that is somewhat lost today, with the amount of noise and shock value inherent in today’s media. The feature articles in the magazine were, in contrast, not Vogue’s strongest hour, an awkward experience to read given some of the more visceral inherent sexism in the world of dieting and career advice.

Overall, I highly recommend trying out older magazines like this. They aren’t incredibly expensive (this was about 40 dollars), and it provides a miniature immersion into a past society that isn’t possible to achieve reading contemporary.