Lunchtime Lecture: The History of Fashion Journalism

In 2004 contemporary art scholar Rafal Niemojewski noted the advent of a new type of fashion publication: ‘They cannot be defined as fashion magazines, strictly speaking […] With their avant-garde positioning, they take a fresh look at fashion, placing it in an interactive relationship with the plastic arts, music, the cinema and the “celeb” world’ (2004: 180).  In fact, the hybrid magazine has a long history, indeed the first fashion magazines placed fashion firmly in the context of the broader arts.

In this talk, Kate Nelson Best will cover various historical incarnations of the hybrid including La Mode, La Gazette du Bon Ton, Flair, Interview, Dazed and Confused and Visionnaire and will argue that this type of magazine appears when fashion finds itself at the nexus of shifting artistic movements and equally at times of cultural dislocation.