“In Vogue” Book Review
IN VOGUE: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous Fashion Magazine
By Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva
I don’t know where I first heard about this book or why I had added it to my wishlist on Chapters Indigo, but it was on there for several years. Then, last year I received some birthday money, so combined with my birthday discount at Indigo I decided to go ahead and buy it. (If you have a Plum Rewards account with Indigo, you get a 20% off discount on one purchase made during your birthday month) It was a fairly pricey book, which I wouldn’t have bought at full price, but with my discount it came to $64.00 with free shipping.
A few days ago I was looking at it again and realized I never shared it here on the blog, so, a year later, here is my review of the book! (If you’re interested in the other fashion books I have in my personal library I have a post about ethical/sustainable fashion books here, editorial fashion books here and fashion history books here)
This is a very large and heavy book. I already have several Vogue coffee table books, (see here) so I anticipated that this one would be the same size, but it is actually a bit smaller than the other three at 9.25″ x 12.25″. However, while my other three books are heavy on the pictures and light on the text, this one has a lot of text. It’s a large book, because it would be a crime to print the Vogue images too small, however, it also includes a lot about the history of the magazine, from the 1800’s before Condé Nast bought the magazine, all the way up to the present day. The book was originally published in 2006 and updated in 2012 (already over 10 years ago!?) I recently saw the original 2006 version for sale on Poshmark, and they said that it was 10″ x 14″, so it was just a little bigger.
I learned a lot about the magazine, the editors over the years and how the magazine was able to outperform the majority of the other women’s magazines of the day to become The definitive fashion magazine; only a few of their competitors still survive today.
Different creative directors, photographers and illustrators are also profiled, with entire subsections talking about what they contributed to the magazine and how it evolved over the years to suit the times. Sometimes Vogue drove the trends and sometimes they aligned themselves to the culture. The last part of the book talks about how the magazine was able to make the transition to online content, without sacrificing print media.
I did sit down and read this entire book over the course of a week, but it was very big, so I had to use my lap desk to hold it and that limited where I could read it. It’s not really a reading-in-bed sort of book. The book is assembled in a chronological and sensible order so there wasn’t a huge amount of flipping back and forth, which was very nice.
And lastly, not to be left out of this review; the book is also full of beautiful fashion spreads! That is the thing Vogue is most famous for, and the book did not disappoint, with full page images sometimes printed over both pages. Because of the size of the book, it is like paging through a very thick Vogue magazine. There was a good range of images from all the eras, really showcasing the magazine’s famous creativity for over 100 years.
Pros:
- It is full of beautiful images from all the eras, which makes it a lovely coffee table book.
- It is an actual history of the magazine, not just a photo album. A perfect book for someone who is interested in history and vintage fashion, not just modern fashion.
- This is a very high quality book with a sleek design. The white on black board cover is so graphic and I love it. The front and back of the book are printed with the same design. Even the dust jacket is beautiful, so I’ve left it on for now.
- It fits on a bookshelf! Coffee table books are designed to be on a coffee table, of course, but that doesn’t always work. Especially when you don’t even have a coffee table. My other large Vogue books do not fit on a bookshelf, and so they currently live way up on top of the shelf 7 feet in the air, which makes looking at them tricky. It’s nice that this one fits on a shelf for easy access.
Cons:
- Like most fashion books and content, once you reach the 1960’s there will start to be nudity. This is not something I like to see, so I’ve covered up those pictures so I won’t accidentally open them.
- The book is so big and heavy that it is a bit tricky to read. It’s a coffee table book, and all the large images are a treat, but since there is actually a lot of text in it, it would have been better to read if it was smaller size. But who wants to sacrifice those big, beautiful fashion images?
- On some of the pages there was a bit too much white space and the small magazine cover images could have been made larger. When you’re holding a massive book, it’s kind of ridiculous to have to peer at tiny images. I understand the graphic design is very editorial, but it would have been nice to have them a smidge larger.
- Stickers on covers. I wish that publishers would stop putting stickers on books; it’s a crime. I’m happy to know that this is the “updated edition”, but couldn’t that sticker have been placed on the plastic wrap? Why did they have to desecrate this beautiful cover image? I have not attempted to remove the sticker because I picked at the edge and it felt very stuck on, and I didn’t want to ruin the dust jacket. Sigh.
In summary, this is a beautiful book and I do not regret adding it to my personal library. If you have a place to display large books, that would be even better. However, even if you have it on a standard bookshelf like me, it’s still a nice book to pull out periodically and page through for inspiration.
