Fashion Theory. Volume 1, issue 3. pp.

247-260
Reprints available directiy from the Pubiishers.
Photocopying pemnitted by licence only
C 1997 Berg. Printed in the United Kir>gdorr.

Dressing Up and
Talking about It:
Fashion Writing
in Vogue from
Laird O'ShM BorralH 1968 to 1993
Laird Borrelii is a Phi Beta Where would fashion be without Hterature?
Kappa graduate ot Boston Diana Vreeland, D. V.
College with a BA m English
Literature. She holds ah MA In
Museum Studies/Costume Moreover, isn't Fashion a literature?
History from the Fashion Roland Barthes, The Fashion System
institute of Technology and is
Currently employed as a
curatorial assistant at the
Museum at FIT'S Costunne
Collection.
Introduction

The subject of fashion writing is Fashion. Fashion itself is a glorious

and protean fiction. The creation of a "glossy" like Vogue is not unlike
24« Laird O'Shes Borrelli

the creation of a work of literature. Both magazine editors and authors

craft their own worlds. Fashion fictions in Vogue ate communicated
using images and words.
Much attention has been given to fashion images—both advertising
and editorial—by art and fashion historians, sociologists, analysts of
the media, and feminists. All acknowledge the potency of the fashion
image, but their conclusions have often been negative, focusing on the
(fashion) media's (stereotypical) portrayal of women. What is under-
stood is that the layout, illustrations, and photographs of a magazine
like Vogue successfully communicate (fashion) information colorfully,
strikingly, quickly, to millions of women (Ballaster et al. 1991, 36).'
Some images, like that of the gun-slinging Verushka in a Saint Laurent
safari top, become iconic' Others, like Guy Bourdin's for Charles
Jourdan, or more recently Steven Meisel's photographs for Calvin Klein,
scandalize.
The seduction by the fashion image is immediate ("at first sight"),
whereas the texts of fashion must be read word-for-word. Both image
and word function to articulate fashion and to create its narratives. It
is not surprising in our modern "Age of the Face" (Harris 1993, 134)
that attention to the fashion image has been ascendant and fashion
writing has been relegated to the role of accompanist. This can be
attributed to the overall predominance of the image (especially through
th( electronic media) in our culture and also to the complicated relation-
ship between what Roland Barthes has termed "image-clothing" and
tl e "written garment" in fashion magazines (Barthes 1990, 3). Feminist
s udies of women's magazines have tended to concentrate on "women's
service magazines" like Goad Housekeeping rather than on "glossies"
'ike Vo^Mc' The glossies have received attention from art historians who
have focused on the work of fashion illustrators and photographers,
but little attention has been paid to fashion writing.
Words and images behave in different ways. A picture of a miniskirt
performs a different function than the naming of it. Barthes suggests
that words make the image "intelligible: Ithat] it is not the object but
the name that creates desire" (Barthes 1990, xii). I h e importance of
language to fashion has been greatly "glossed" over by image-clothing.
I assert, however, that fashion is perpetuated by the fictions constructed
around it. Further, its evolution is dependent on the durability of its
oral culture* (both written and voiced). Orality implies community. Not
only do we dress up; we talk about it.
Just as fashion images have received more attention than fashion
writing, so have the personalities of Vogue editors received more
attention than their written editorial achievements. Vogue had three
editors-in-chief between 1968 and 1993. Diana Vreeland, Grace
Mirabella, and Anna Wintour have each produced very different
fashion narratives. Their individual inflections relate not only to the
environments (historical and sartorial) in which they worked but to
Dressing Up and Talking about It: Fashion Writing in Vogue from 1968 to 1993 249

their different answers to the question: "What is Fashion?" In creating

a semiology of fashion, Barthes described its language, on the whole,
as being "institutional" (Barthes 1990, 186). My interest, however, is
in the manner in which Vreeland, Mirabella, and Wintour have
constructed individual voices from this institutional language.
I have chosen as my primary source the section of the magazine
entitled "Vogue's Point of View" ' and have limited my study to the Fall/
Winter collection issues—a total of thirty-one issues between 1968 and
1993. By limiting my study to September issues (the fashion year's most
important) 1 was able to cover twenty-five years of fashion and three
editorships. Six Vreeland, nineteen Mirabella, and six Wintour issues
are reviewed.
Point of View was chosen as a primary source for several reasons,
not the least of which is that it has appeared in every September issue
for twenty-five years. Its importance is suggested by its location: directly
before the spreads that are the "heart" of the magazine (though not its
"bread and butter"). Point of View exists to summarize, highlight,
describe, promote, report, and instruct on the best of the new looks
that appear in the fashion spreads. While the fashion spreads contain
desirable images, fashion doti'ts are incorporated into the text of Point
of View. Sometimes they are gently stated: "We love the look of a long
narrow leg in a marvellous slim boot, but we've got our eye on width
now" (1968a). The voice may also be authoritatively dismissive:
"Anything does not go. Bell bottoms do not go with a pants suit."
(1971a). It provides all the news, what is fit to wear and what is not.
As Point of View condenses the information previously given in
features on beauty, accessories, and clothing, it prepares the reader (sets
the mood) for the fashions that are to come. Point of View is written in
a kind of fashion-writing shorthand, "initiating" (Barthes 1990, 14)
the reader with the information needed to translate the fashions shown.
Words and phrases from Point of View are also used repetitively as titles
and slogans in the fashion spreads.
Throughout this article I will be referring to Point of View as though
it were authored, pen tr paper, by the editor-in-chief. This is usually
tiot the case, as the creation of a magazine is a collaborative effort,
involving editorial, art, and advertising departments, among others.
However, what is finally produced is fashion—as defined by the editor-
in-chief. The voice of Point of View is the voice of Vogue, resonant with
the particular inflections of the editor-in-chief. Thus I will acknowledge
Vreeland, Mirabella, and Wintour as its successive "authors."

Tie violet ribbon in your hair.

[Diana Vreeland), Vogue, September 1, 1968
The attitude is attractive, casual, nonchalant—the attitude of jeans and
sweaters.
[Grace Mirabella), Vogue, September 1973
250 Laird O'Shea Borrelli

Leather still emerges with a tough, give-'em-hell attitude, which should

satisfy the Thelma and Louise in every woman
[Anna Wintour], Vogwe, September 1991

The Editors

In distinguishing between writers and editors, between style as

"absolutely singular speech" and writing as "collective speech," Barthes
asserts that:

the editor invests nothing of himself in his speech, nothing of his

deep psychology; he simply conforms to a certain conventional
and regulated tone...by which, moreover, we immediately
recognize a fashion magazine (Barthes 1990, 227-228).

While acknowledging that the language of fashion is largely formalized

with its own conventions, I have found that Vreeland, Mirabella, and
Wintour developed distinctly individual styles. It is, for example,
impossible to confuse a late 1970s Point of View by Mirabella with any
one produced by Vreeland. Each bears the signature of the editor, even
as the look of the magazine reflects her vision. The written editorial
styles that Vreeland, Mirabella, and Wintour have crafted with the
common tools provided by the existing verbal "fashion system," are
examined in the following pages.

Diana Vreeiand, Editor-in-Chief 1963-1970

In life, and as an editor, Diana Vreeland was heroic and adventurous.

Fashion was the tool with which she realized fantasies and made fictions
real. She celebrated the incredible transformative aspect of clothing and
encouraged others to do so. The following proclamation is a character-
istic one:

To transform yourself into a Romany princess is divine—if it turns

you up and puts you at your ease. But don't get lost in someone
else's dream: there is enough adventure in fashion to find your
own (1970a).

Vreeland's penchant was for dream clothes—costume, as opposed to

"real" clothing. Her preference was for the unique creations of the haute
couture. It should not be surprising that ready-to-wear, with its "plain-
spoken" quality, was not favored by a woman who firmly believed that
individuality and idiosyncrasy could, and should, be eloquently
expressed through clothing. In the captions of her fashion spreads, it
Dressing Up and Talking about It: Fashion Wnting in \/ogue from 1968 to 1993 2S1

is typical to find comments such as "we added the tassels" or "shown

without matching belt." Such adjustments are nor only Vreeland-isms
but are also in keeping with the free spirit of the 1960s. Similar comments
are not found in Mirabella's 1970s Vogues that plug for "all of a tone"
and "total look" dressing (1972) and suggest that the reader "let the
designer do the putting together" ( 1977). Just as Vreeland and Mirabella
defined the needs of women differently, so they viewed fashion and its
functions variously. Vreeland stressed inventiveness; Mirabella
emphasized selectivity and smart shopping.
It must be acknowledged that while Vreeland did encourage
individual expression in her texts, her own voice and predilections,
indeed her signature, are vividly affixed to Point of View. Mirabella
figured herself as a "democratic" editor, concerned with fashion "for
all," in contrast with Vreeland. In Vreeland's Vogue, democratic values
relate not to the masses (mainly serviced by the ready-to-wear industry)
but to the freedom of expression, however fantastic, associated with
the couture. Point of View, before and during Vreeland's editorship, ran
under the title "Vogue's Eye View." The Table of Contents each
September noted that the collection report was by Diana Vreeland, and
each of Vreeland's September Point of Views is signed with her
curvaceous and bold initials: DV. "Eye View" is a fitting title, as the
opinions and the language in which they are expressed are so very much
the personal voice of an "I." The subjects of movement, the exotic, the
historic, and the literary appear throughout Eye View, the fashion
spreads, and in Vreeland's memoirs.
"High" culture, particularly literature and the fine arts, informs
much of Vreeland's Vogue. Allusions to Chaucer, Proust, and Rimbaud
spice her distinctive texts with an inspirational and exuberant
pitch. Vreeland's texts are always moving toward crescendo.
Barthes recognizes "culture's" place in fashion's rhetoric as "simply
represent[ing] a reasonable degree of social advancement" (Barthes
1990,241). This suggests that culture is a convention of fashion writing
tied to the editor's perception of the reader's acculturation rather
than to a personal style. I read the "culture" in Vreeland's texts as
distinctive.
The text of Vreeland's Vogue is the least "poor" (Barthes 1990, 236)
of the three editors'. Its "cultural" richness is especially evident when
compared with Mirabella's texts which have virtually no allusions to
high or low culture, and with Wintour's which are rife with references
to popular culture. Vreeland's Vogue is the most poetic in style, and it
combines, with gusto, many of the characteristics of fashion writing
identified by Barthes, including use of metaphor, alliteration, and
"mythic" language.
Vreeland sees colors with names like "café-au-lait" and "dubonnet."
She discovers that long coats transform the wearer into a "1970s
clothed nude descending a staircase, swinging through the streets.
2B2 l-âird O'Shea Borrelli

swinging ail over the world" ( 1970b). An invocation to "tie violet ribbon
in your hair' (1968a) has the syncopation of poetic verse. Vreeland's
texts are like nuggets of ore to be mined for suggestions that have the
potential of transforming life, through fashion, into a glittering and
marvelous adventure.

Grace Mirabella, Editor-in-Chief 1973-1987*

Whereas Vreeland was concerned with potentiality, Mirabella focused

on function and practicality. Vreeland wrote: "In the evening, we go
east of the sun and west of the moon—we enter the world of fantasy"
(1970a). Mirabella asserts: "When you come to evening this year, you
do not come to another planet" (1971a). Mirabella fashioned herself
as a champion of "real" clothes for real (American) women. Her down-
to-earth concerns focused not only on the wearing but on the acquiring
of fashion. Mirabella's Point of View is designed to be a consumer's
guide for "shopping, buying, and wearing" (1981).
As a guide, Mirabella's Point of View participates in the didactic
function of fashion language, as identified by Barthes (Barthes 1990,
6). A statement such as: "End of lecture. Beginning of new season—
next page" (1973) suggests that Mirabella was conscious of her
didacticism. Besides being characteristic of Mirabella's style, this
dogmatic stance was perhaps a necessary editorial position in a
decade—the "anti-fashion" 1970s—during which "the multiplication
of styles created an impression of total anarchy" (Boucher 1987,434).
Mirabella's editorials countered fashion anarchy with practical
fashion guidance for recessionary times. Her premise was that the value
of clothes related to their functionalism. Thus, it was important to shop
smartly and get what you paid for—clothes that adapted to the many
facets of a modern, active woman's lifestyle. She concluded that the role
of Vogue was to provide information with which readers could make
good consumer decisions. After all:

If you don't know a hen from a fryer, you're going to wind up

with a sauteed cardboard. And if you don't know a narrow line
from a tight one, you're going to find yourself with a turkey on
your hands (1975).

No peacocks for Mirabella.

Point of View, under Mirabella, was written in the (quasi) style of a
business brief, focusing on "dollar-for-dollar" value and "real-life"
practicality. The tone is part feminist, part consumer advocate, and part
"auntie"' figure; witness: "catch yourself in a rear-view mirror before
you walk out of the store" (1981).
Dressing Up and Talking about It: Fashion Writing in Vogue from 1968 to 1993 253

Mirabella stated that she wanted her Vogue to be "information-

packed" (Mirabella 1995, 154), and she succeeded—her Point of View
is more dense than either Vreeland's or Wintour's. It is not dense with
things fictive, historic, or poetic, however. Rather she referred to "green
stamps" (1974) and styles that were "our pick for Ford of the year"
(1977). Clothes are not divine; they are "luxe-y" and easy, they project
confidence and bravado. This is the American sportswear look,
straightforward, and with the "chic informality" (Mirabella 1995,154)
Mirabella so valued.

Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief 1980-Pr«sent

In place of the French couture fashions that Vreeland loved and the
American ready-to-wear looks that Mirabella favored, the (British)
Wintour combines American and European styles into a kind of
"international" or "global" fashion. Her first cover (November 1988)
featured a model in jeans and a beaded Lacroix jacket. Wintour has
adopted the role of "mix-master" which well suits the retro and street-
influenced styles of recent times.
Wintour plays the role of fashion-editor-as-celebrity well, publicly
making light of it, but initiating in 1992, the "Letter from the Editor"
through which her voice is heard. Her signature is affixed to the
"Letter" where, typically, the artists and writers whose work has been
commissioned for the issue are highlighted. Art and literature were the
lenses through which Vreeland saw and interpreted fashion; Wintour
focuses instead on the relation of the world of fashion to the world of
art—especially highlighting the trends of the former and the "down-
town" scenes of the latter.
Youth and trendiness are featured in Wintour's Vogue. Characteristic
is kinetic advice such as: "One bold stroke of ruby red lipstick creates
forties glamor. In a few seconds a temporary tattoo provides downtown
attitude" (1992). Wintour has stated that her approach is "to have
enough reality in the magazine not to lose a lot of readers, or a lot of
people who aren't as hip as everybody else or as willing to accept
change" (Sischy 1993, 101). Vogue\ attention to "hipness" under
Wintour is in keeping with the quest, on the part of the media, to define
and woo the so-called x-generation of twenty-something consumers.
Under Wintour, Point of View has been used as a space in which to
explore and define trends with essays entitled "The Cutting Edge"
(January 1992) and "What's Modern Now?" (January 1993) by Suzy
Menkes. Though Point of View has traditionally been the vehicle of the
editor, Wintour's role is not diminished by her use of Menkes. Rather,
Menkes joins Vogue's stable of contributing artists and writers—while
Wintour's voice is sounded in the Letter from the Editor.
Like Menkes, Wintour is, by her own definition, a journalist (Sischy
1993, 101). Her journalistic style differs from Vreeland's poetry and
 Laird O'Stiea Borrelii

the spare, business style of the Heloise-like Mirabella. Wintour's Point

of Vjew is sprinkled with references to icons of popular culture like
Madonna, Twiggy, and Marlene Dietrich. She cites (big fashion) names
such as Lacroix and Christy Turlington, as well as quotes, in journalistic
fashion, designers and industry professionals. Wintour meticulously
traces trends such as: "Ralph Lauren's Russian romanticism; Jean-Paul
Gaultier's textured tribute to Hasidism and Rifat Uzbek's multi-cultural
mélange" (1993). The trends Wintour identifies are the currency of a
modern, fast-paced, and increasingly international world.

...Words strain.
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden.
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish.
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place.
Will not stay still.
T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," from The Four Quartets

The Language of Fashion

Fashion language (or "Vogue speak") is a fascinating subject. It is

colorful, inventive, and over-blown: "Furs are to die"; colors are
"tauped up"; looks are "leotard simple." Barthes speaks of the rhetoric
of fashion as "a very broad formulary" (Barthes 1990, 186). The
consistency and tenacity of this "formulary" is confirmed by the
relevance of Barthes' 1958-1959 study of French magazines to my own
of American Vogue horn 1968-1993.
Fashion rhetoric, like the larger world of fashion which Gilles
Lipovetsky describes as a "cocktail of images, sounds, and meanings,"
(Lipovetsky 1994, 160) is concocted of smaller parts such as metaphor
and alliteration. I have organized these smaller parrs into four
categories: visual, oral, emphatic, and popular, in order to identify some
of them better. They serve to fulfill the two major functions of fashion
language identified by Barthes: to "denote," or describe an actual
garment, or to "connote," or relate the object to the world." Neither
the functions of language nor the categories 1 have defined are absolute.
A single word can fulfill different functions; thus an alliterative
description can fulfill both oral and emphatic functions.
Adjectives and metaphors are often used to convey the visual aspects
of fashion—"image-clothing." The color, dimension, and style of a
garment (its parts or the whole) are thus made vivid. In addition to the
characteristically colorful ad|ectives which typify Vogue-speak
("seraglio shimmer"), there exists a whole other subcategory of
"adjectival substances" created by hyphenation. Thus there exists the
"knit-two-purl-two look" (1970b) and the "have-it-your-way philos-
ophy" (1993).
Dressing Up and Talking about It: Fashion Writing in Vogue from 1968 to 1993 255

Metaphor aids in the visualization oí style by linking a look or a

garment to a point of reference outside of the world of fashion as in
"red stockings à la the Wife of Bath" (1969bl. While metaphors and
adjectives help the reader to "see" fashion, the use of alliteration sounds
the voice of fashion as it describes the current mode: "Drifty. Dreamy.
Wow plus sigh."' Mental tongues are tied around the "written-
garment" in the September 1, 1968, issue of Vogue where "fringe is
flicking, flashing, flying" whereas the "sixties pop of patent" adds
rhythm to Wintour's prose in 1990. In 1977 rhyme highlights the arrival
of "wonderful new flings-of-things." Alliteration and rhyme help to
syncopate the text and to lend it an oral texture.
The third major function of the language of fashion is the emphatic
one. Fashion's rhetoric is one of absolutes and extremes, allowing only
for bangs, never for a whimper. Emphasis is achieved mainly through
hyperbole and repetition. This description of coats that are "bigger,
furrier, luxe-ier than anyone's, anywhere, ever"'" is typical of the
hyperbolic statements common to Point of View. There are several
subcategories of repetition. Repetition can be alliterative or fixed
mantra-like on a single word: "belt it tight, tight, tight at the waist"
(1969a). An aberration of repetition is multiplication: "Furs are flat,
fuzzy, fluffy, puff>\ silky, short, long, patterned, coloured" (1968a). The
yoking together of seemingly unrelated topics ("new and recherché"
[1969b]), after the fashion of multiplication, is known as parataxis.
Barthes uses the example: "She likes studying and surprise parties,
Pascal, Mozart and cool jazz" (Barthes 1990, 225)—quite a heady
"cocktail."
Barthes' jazz is countered by Wintour's: "shiny leather motorcycle-
style clothes with a rock 'n' roll/Brando glamour" (1991). Popular
language and references to popular culture are often used in Point of
View. I use the term "popular language" rather than Barthes' "poor
rhetoric" (Barthes 1990, 236-7) or Ellen McCraken's "mythic
language" (McCraken 1993, 77) because popular implies mass or
multiplicity. I place the everyday maxims, proverbs, and euphemisms
that appear in Point of "^'iew under the heading of popular language.
Barthes makes an important separation of the authoritative fashion
editor from the "mass of...users (which would be the equivalent of the
'speaking mass' which produces language)" (Barthes 1990, 215) in the
production of fashion language and writing. Expressions such as "any
woman worth her salt" (1970b) and "poufs, crinolines, and all that jazz"
(1988) have their roots in a popular parlance used by readers and
consciously invoked by editors to broaden the appeal of their messages.
In the photographic spreads, where images create the main narrative,
wordplay hones the message, drawing attention to details. For example,
the titles accompanying a spread on coats in the September 1968 issue
of Vogue read: "Coats/all wrapped up," and "Coats/on top of it all.""
This type of wordplay has been called childlike. Barthes characterizes
256 Laird O'Shea Borrellí

^: il. this language as a borrowing from "...a vulgarized literary tradition,

''•f • either from rhyming games...or from commonplace comparisons"
'''x'- (Barthes 1990, 237). I find this use of language interesting precisely in
. the way it self-consciously combines the "high" with the popular.
Moreover this type of yoking in some ways mirrors the relationship
• between the idealized, distant image and its popular, verbal denomin-
.» * ator (coat, glove) which makes it understandable and accessible.
' :• Editorial self-consciousness is one of the most subtle and interesting
features of Point of View. The language of fashion, like the clothing it
describes, is ever changing. Thus the editor must constantly redefine
the words that she uses to write fashion. Changes in fashion language
are marked in Mirabella's Vogue with the greatest frequency. For
example, the reader is warned against accepting "old-fashioned"
definitions in 1976. There is also a pause in the September 1977 Point
of View to note that "soft...is one of those tricky umbrella words that
can mean anything and everything" and an ensuing redefinition of the
word.
Fashion language can be season specific. "Edgy" is the term of choice
for the recent Spring 1996 collections. In September 1970 Vreeland
wrote that "Variety is the great big glorious word in fashion right now."
In 1991 Wintour noted that: "eclectic is the buzzword." Words can be
as changeable as hemlines. In 1969 readers were informed of "the eclipse
of 'groovy' which now sounds very Lawrence Welk."'-Names of trends
often come from popular language, or enter into it, as "grunge" did.
In her essay on fashion images, Kathy Myers focuses on the instability
created by the media's ability to produce new meanings (Myers 1987,
58). The same is true of fashion language, which needs constantly to
be redefined in relation to new clothes and changing environments.
The so-called "verbiage of fashion" (Caen 1989, 29) is countered,
to a great degree, by the conventions of fashion language that have been
identified above. In their survey of English women. Ballaster et al.,
discovered that the language of fashion was a source of pleasure to
readers. They reported that "...when talking about magazines, women
endlessly and diligently parody and mimic them, displaying their own
literacy in and mastery of its generic conventions" (Ballaster, et al., 35).
The language of fashion, a popular one, is owned and can be enjoyed
by all, while its images are often rarified, and garments often unobtain-
able.

The Tone

Vreeland's exaltative and lyrical exclamations, Mirabella's practical

narrative guidance, and Wintour's snappy, savvy journalistic style are
distinctive forms of the oral culture perpetuated through women's
magazines. This culture can rightly be designated oral, although it is
Dressing Up and Talking about It: Fashion Writing in Vogue from 1968 to 1993 257

written because of the "write-speak" (Ferguson 1983, 165) style which

is its distinguishing feature. Ballaster et al., note that "...many analysts
have been struck by the intimate tone employed to address the reader,
the cozy invocation of a known commonality between 'we women'"
(Ballaster et al., 9). This "chatty" tone is related to the style of writing
known as "personalizing" (Ferguson 1983, 165). Fashion writing is
specifically written for women in a tone that is complicit, based on a
shared interest in fashion.
Most of the current scholarship on women's magazines focuses on
their "feminocentric" (Ballaster et al., 169) bias and on the images of
women in them." The tone of women's magazines has also been the
subject of much study. Barthes defines this tone as "maternal" (Barthes
1990, 241) (which is perhaps an accurate characterization for the
dictatorial late 1950s), but today "the idea of the magazine as friend"
(Ballaster et al., 1991, 125) is ascendant. This tendency can be dated
to the late 1960s when "magazines became less dogmatic and more
interactive" (Craik 1994, 52). The editorial voice of Vogue'm the period
from 1968 to 1993 is positive, friendly without being too warm, and,
importantly, it is an informed voice. The editor is privy to "insider-
information" which justifies her authority to tell the reader what
"everybody" is wearing, report what "we" (the editors of the magazine)
like, and suggest what "you" (the reader) should buy.
Feminists have criticized the advertising and editorial portrayal of
women in fashion magazines as being misinformed and/or misogynous.
Unlike newspapers, which are characterized by "empirical and analytic
reporting," magazines use "ideal and emotive novelisation" as their
means of appeal (Ballasteretal., 1991, 48). Novelization shifts the focus
from what is (facts) to what could or should be (conjecture). Fashion
magazines necessarily offer a fractured world view because their focus
is one subject. (The use of parataxis in fashion writing emphasizes this
fragmentation.) Fashion magazines present not a whole world-view but
an Utopian one.
Though images of women in fashion magazines are sometimes
fractured too, the fashion magazine, as an institution, is seen to unify.
Naomi Wolf believes that women's magazines represent "women's mass
culture" and asserts that they "cater to that delicious sense of
impersonal female solidarity...bringling) out of the closet women's lust
for chat across the barriers of potential jealousy and prejudgement"
(Wolf 1991, 70). Similarly, Diana Fuss notes that: "the entire fashion
industry operates as one of the few institutionalized spaces where
women can look at women with cultural impunity" (Fuss 1992, 713).
Some, though, would argue that the institutionalized language of
fashion provides women with stereotypical ways of talking about each
other as well.
Fashion magazme editors, like editors of technical journals, use
largon that is specific to their subject. Jargon of any kind is thus
258 • Laird O'Shea Borrelli

"institutionalized." Vogue is a primer of fashion language, but what I

have found is that Vreeland, Mirabella, and Wintour have each created
separate voices that can also be learned. Thus it is possible to mimic
fashion language not only in a general manner, but quite specifically—
Vreeland's "divine," Mirabella's "ease." The way in which the editor
has "dressed" up fashion's rhetoric has changed the way we talk about
it.

Notes

1. This book was written collectively.

2. A recent trend at Conde Nast is the reproduction of archival images
in magazines such as Vogue and Allure. This attests to the power
of retro on current fashions and also, more generally, to the power
of the image.
3. See Ellen McCraken for distinctions among magazine genres, such
as weeklies, glossies, and service magazines.
4. SeeCraik 1994, 55.
5. References to September Pomt of Views between 1968 and 1993
will be credited parenthetically in the text. Between 1968 and 1972
Vogue was published twice in September, on the first and the
fifteenth. September 1 issues are designated (19a) and September
15 issues are designated (19b). Although Point of View has
appeared variously in Vogue as: Vogue's Eye View, Vogue's Point
of View, Vogue/Point of View, it will be referred to as Point of View
throughout.
6. Mirabella was promoted to Editor in 1971 and became Editor-in-
Chief in 1973.
7. See Ballaster et al.1991, 118. The "auntie" is more generally
referred to as the "agony aunt." She dispenses advice in regard to
readers' queries.
8. Barthes' fashion system is divided into A and B ensembles. A ensem-
bles are denotative; B ensembles are connotative. See 3.12, 40.
9. n.a.. Vogue, March 15, 1968, 130.
10. n.a., "Paris Report," Vogue September 15, 1971, 62.
11. n.a.. Vogue, September 1968, 632, 628.
12. n.a.. Vogue, April 15, 1969, 82.
13. See Craik, 50.

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