Classic Vanity Fair covers
Launched by Conde Nast Publications in late 1913, Vanity Fair magazine became a trailblazer in the art of celebrity photography, publishing iconic images of figures from the movies, business, literature, politics and society circles.
Editor Graydon Carter writes of America at the time of the Great War, when the magazine made its debut: "For the first time, the nation saw itself encircling the planet - not just as a Great Power (whose benefits and consequences were debated even then) but as an entrepreneurial powerhouse and cultural dynamo. And Americans had attitude: they were willing to build people up but also cut them down to size. They applied a sense of humor - broad, sophisticated, sly, rambunctious - to everything. This was the environment from which Vanity Fair sprang."
The magazine continues that attitude 100 years after it began.
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
Confusion over the target audience - Would men care about frilly clothes? Or women about cars and golf? - soon led to a name change (to just Vanity Fair).
Type treatments for the magazine's name varied form issue to issue in the early years.
"Photography right from the beginning was an essential element of what Vanity Fair was," Graydon Carter, the current editor of the magazine, told CBS News.
Left: Greta Garbo, as photographed by Edward Steichen in 1928, and published in the October 1929 issue of Vanity Fair.
"She was complaining about just the terrible hair she had that day," Graydon Carter told CBS News. "And she pushes it back like this. And Steichen just says, 'Hold it like that,' and takes the picture. And that is the iconic image of Greta Garbo."
This was the last cover of the "Jazz Age" Vanity Fair, before the magazine suspended publication.
Left: Models Helen Bennett, Muriel Maxwell and Bettina Bolegard, photographed by Horst P. Horst, for a Vogue/Vanity Fair copy.
At left is a dummy cover for the April 1982 prototype Vanity Fair, featuring a Richard Avedon photograph of dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov surrounded by splashes of color. Copies were sent to potential advertisers, and by the following year Vanity Fair Was back on the stands.
"It was a perfect time," said Carter, of the magazine's rebirth during the Reagan Era. "It was just the beginning of what I would like to call the Age of Money. The people with money were more showy with the money, which is sort of not great for society, but it's very good for journalists maybe, because it gives you something to write about."
Left: The October 1985 issue, photographed by Bill Graham. Right: July 1997, photographed by Mario Testino.
"Sex is a very important part of, like, getting magazines off the shelf and into your living room," said Graydon Carter. "And beautiful, attractive people are more pleasing on a coffee table over a 30-day period than not-so-beautiful people."
From left: Nicole Kidman, Catherine Deneuve, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Vanessa Redgrave, Chloe Sevigny, Sophia Loren, and Penelope Cruz.
From left: Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, CIA director George Tenet, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
For more info:
"Vanity Fair 100 Years: From the Jazz Age to Our Age" - Edited by Graydon Carter (Abrams)
For more info:
"Vanity Fair 100 Years: From the Jazz Age to Our Age" - Edited by Graydon Carter (Abrams)
100 Years of Vanity Fair (Conde Nast)
vanityfair.com
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan