"Sometimes I bought Vogue instead of dinner. I found it fed me more."

I’m having a Carrie Bradshaw kinda week.

No sooner did I post that little diddy yesterday with a photo of Carrie and Big looking earnestly at each other, than I spied this neat invitation in my inbox.  Vogue is coming to Austin:

Did you know that Joan Didion, Patron Saint of My Laptop, used to write for Vogue?

Her very first job when she moved to New York was being a promotional copywriter for the magazine.  But eventually, she became … effing Joan Didion.

Anyway, today is another gray day in Austin — c’mon, weather!  Enough already! — so I thought I’d have some fun with this Vogue post.  Here are some vintage Vogue covers, and the intriguing little stories they tell about us.

October 1943.  Isn’t this interesting?  Not a cover model in sight.  But a telling caption nonetheless: “8 New Ways to Double Your Clothes Money.”  Ahh early 1940s … American ladies tentatively opening their pocketbooks back up after the Great Depression.

April 1950.  Lady Gaga would dig the face netting, no?

The early 1950s were a cool time in graphic design:  Artists, fed up with patriotic and overly sentimental US images borne from their country’s wars, started getting a bit edgier.  Jasper Johns came of age in the 1950s, as did the Beats, writing on topics and in formats the reading public had never seen before.

For a decade with tend to think of as utterly conformist, you really can see the artistic experimentation everywhere — including Vogue.

January 1950.   Don’t you love this wild cover art?

August 1954, British Vogue.  Again with the cool, concept-y cover art!  I wish today’s women’s magazines embraced this bolder, experimental cover style.

And finally, just for kicks.  This has little to do with Vogue but everything to do with awesome, a photo shoot my fashion designer buddy Rene and I did recently at her boutique which involved her dog, Jack.

That’s Jack looking up at me; what you can’t see is a live rabbit in my arms!  (Also Rene’s).  

If Jack’s sweet doggy face looks a little perplexed, that is probably why.  “What is that creature she’s holding?”