Vogue's Bizarre World

The editors of Vogue and Viking Press have put together an impressive anthology by "extracting and re-distilling" the best of Vogue since that magazine began to publish in 1893. The World in Vogue chronicles "seven momentous decades of names, faces, and writing that have held the public eye in the arts, society, literature, theatre, fashion, sports and world affairs." An ambitious undertaking, to say the least.

Vogue's raison d'etre provides the theme which permeates the book, and, I think, insures its success. As well as reporting "news" in its own inimitable way, Vogue exists more importantly to "cherish the sense of beauty, to feed the mind, to stir the imagination." In performing these functions, it excels. One must, of course, put up with those inevitable articles on the role of women, on travel, on famous people. The writing about the arts is sometimes noteworthy and often entertaining.

In "The Art of Ballet," for instance, Agnes de Mille emphasizes the difficulty of maintaining ballet posture. "It is possible to win a track meet; but to win a track meet and to look at the same moment as though one were far away, reading a book, takes some doing."

Auden's "The Opera Addict" amusingly probes the nature of opera. "The ideal operatic hero and heroine fall in love with the most unsuitable person they can find...they keep appearing at the most embarrassing and improbable times and places possible; they persistently and shamelessly make scenes in public."

Auden advocates a "just for the hell of it" attitude toward opera, as the means of coming to view as "positive advantages of the medium" the "unromantic physical appearance of the lovers, the improbability of the plots, the suspension of critical action while the singers get things off their chests, and the palpably sham scenery..."

Slight Snobbery

The "honest satisfactions of snobbery" found in Vogue's pages by the Times reviewer appear only in the sections on society. With few exceptions, the editors succeed in their aim of presenting "a level judgment of quality in people, places, manner, and milieu."

The writing on early society is a high point of the book. In "Leaves Culled From the Journal of a Lady of Fashion," the life of Ward McAllister's day comes through better than his memoirs relate it. "Breakfast at Delmonico's--1893" tells of young gentlemen spending lively, idle afternoons in days long since past. Frank Crowninshield, longtime editor of Vanity Fair, considers society from 1888 to the post war age in "Ten Thousand Nights in a Dinner Coat." Dividing his recollections into the Rustic, Pompous, Boom and Jazz periods, he notes it was at one time fashionable "to be dull, to be opulent, to be stuffed, to be bored." Society eventually relaxed and dinners speeded up from two hours to 55 minutes. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish "injected candour where before she had found cant," and laughter "replaced an owlish gravity of demeanour."

Brief summaries of each decade inform the reader of newsworthy events: the Titanic sank and the tango began, nylon appeared in stockings and then disappeared into parachutes; dry ice and penicillin were invented; Sputnik went into orbit.

There are collections of epigrams--G.B.S. On Women: "It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. Nay, she often does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits for the fly."

Some pieces are downright hilarious, such as Dorothy Parker's description of a torturous afternoon at the beauty parlor in "Life on a Permanent Wave." Occasional significant essays add to Vogue's intellectual stature such as Camus' "The Crisis of Man."

The Kennedy family receives ample coverage, including a description of the Joseph Kennedys's life in London when "the parents kept a card-index on their children, the better to check upon measles, trips to Europe, and visits to dentists." Jacqueline Lee Bouvier's prize-winning essay of 1951, "People I Wish I Had Known," is reprinted. (She chose Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde and Diaghilev for their theories of art.)

In the realm of fashion, Vogue remains unsurpassed. As a "provider of discontent" (the Times reviewer again), Vogue features the slightly unattainable fashions, but its choices are still credible, unlike rival Harper's Bazaar, which is really too far out, and serves mainly to index the absurd and the extreme.

The World in Vogue observes only major changes in fashion (such as Patou's drop of hemlines in 1930, Dior's New Look in 1947, and the chemise in 1958). The volume ends on a most sophisticated note, with the mischievous, tongue-in-cheek observation: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

But into every anthology a little of the obtuse and trite will creep. "Life Must Surpass Itself" by Rene Dubos was a piece I never made it through; one can stand only so many phrases such as "the responsibilities of the future" and "the spirit of human brotherhood." "The Revolution of the Women" delves into the problem of freedom as "a burden and a responsibility."

Some essays amuse and others inform; some are truly important while the value of others is chiefly historical. Some are trite and some just bore. The photographs (by Cecil Beaton and Edward Steichen among many others) and art reproductions in this oversize, handsomely bound volume are superb.

But don't try to plow straight through the book as I did; you'll never make it. Instead, dip in occasionally and taste it. The World of Vogue is an endless assortment of hors d'oeuvres from a platter arranged with discerning taste.