VOGUE

I found an issue of Vogue from August 1, 1936.  It was in a collection of other issues of Vogue from around the same period.  I wasn’t expecting it to be so different from our modern magazines, but I found that it was unique in a lot of ways.  First of all, almost all of the depictions of clothing and shoes were drawn out by an artist, which makes the magazine feel more personal.  I would like to see more hand-drawn pictures in our modern magazines.  I feel like if you create something with a computer application, you can make a more colorful and detailed picture, but you miss out on the hand-drawn and creative feel.

The article that drew my attention was one on page 72 titled “Adventures in Education.”  In the article, College of Bennington was profiled.  Bennington is a women’s college located in rural Vermont.  The way the author of the article described the college was different from how we see writing in women’s magazines today.  There was a great deal of figurative language and the college is described as having “shed a lot that we thought belonged to colleges, as the modern maiden has shed grandmother’s stays and petticoats.”  The author was showing through this statement that what we think belongs is always evolving, and we have the ability to change what is perceived as normal.

Within the article, there were photographs of women who attended the college, participating in activities like sculpting and painting.  It reminded me of a summer camp that I went to when I was younger.  If I had seen these pictures without the article, I would not immediately think of an academic college.  Instead, I would think about an art school or club.  Bennington College got many of its plans and ideas from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.  Sarah Lawrence did not have a set curriculum and “in an economics course, students find themselves reading proletarian novels along with statistics.”  The courses changed from year to year, and the classes were never quite what you would expect.

After reading through the article and other sections of the magazine, I got a strong sense that women at the time were searching for a change.  Most of the articles made use of the word “modern” many times throughout, signifying that women did not want to be associated with the old-fashioned views of the mothers and grandmothers.  Women were seeking education, expression through fashion, and a sense of individuality.

 In my view, the 1930’s was an incredibly important time to the transformation of our society.  Women wanted a voice and they passed on that attitude down to their children.  The fact that I am now in college studying the same curriculum as men my age would have been looked upon favorably to many of the women at that time.  Without modernist views from women in the past, women’s rights and other progressions in our society may not have been possible.