Strictly for Ladies

In the sumptuously chic offices of the Conde Nast Publications in Manhattan a birthday was celebrated this week. It was the 50th anniversary of Vogue, a brilliantined 35-c- slick devoted to expensive living and women's fashions. Off the presses came a fat issue reviewing five decades of styles.

"Baths Every Week." Vogue was not always strictly a woman's magazine. Born in the '90s, it was at first a thin, snobbish weekly beamed at socialites and full of socialite-weight stuff. One early issue, peering snootily over its lorgnette, inquired: "Now that the masses take baths every week, how can one ever distinguish the gentleman?" For years Vogue carried a stock feature labeled "The Well-Dressed Man."

Smart, promotion-minded Conde Nast bought the magazine in 1909 with money saved as Collier's advertising director, made it a semimonthly. His simple advertisingman's formula: bring together people who want to buy something and people who want to sell. That the formula was successful is evident in the roll call of Conde Nast products. Today C. N. Publications mothers, besides Vogue, House & Garden, Glamour (fashions for the younger set), British Vogue, the Vogue Pattern Book, Vogue patterns, Hollywood patterns. A French edition was suspended in 1940 when the Germans got within gunshot of Paris.

Result: C. N. Publications' net for 1943's first nine months was $1,524,039 (before taxes). Only in bottom depression years has C. N. dipped into the red. And biggest profitmakers are Vogue (usually fat with flossy ads) and the Vogue patterns ("regulars" from 30-c- to 75-c-, "specials" at 75-c-, "couturiers" at $2).

Posies for Horses. Since Conde Nast's death last year, C. N.'s president and publisher has been polished, handsome, Russian-born Iva Sergei Voidato ("Pat") Patcevitch, 43, onetime Wall Street analyst and a smart business operator with the Nast promotional flair.

Editor of Vogue itself is Edna Woolman Chase (mother of Actress-Author Ilka), an amber-eyed, blue-haired, 66-year-old. An able, experienced judge of style trends, Mrs. Chase started in the circulation department 38 years ago, in no time was writing picture captions. Sample: "Mauve is the prevailing nuance of the hour . . . even to the ear posies of one's carriage horses." In 1914 she became Vogue's editor. She gets to work around 10 a.m., Mondays through Fridays, leaves about 6. An admirer of things transatlantic, she is largely responsible for Vogue's British spellings of such words as "pyjamas" and "colour."

Editor Chase's staff includes some men--a couple of art directors, several photographers and famed esthetic Virtuoso Frank Crowninshield, who was editor of C. N.'s now defunct Vanity Fair and who is now a C. N. "editorial adviser." But Vogue is chiefly run by women, most of whom keep their hats on daylong as they work, thus give the appearance of being ready to take flight at any moment for some chichi affair.

Widened Horizons. Vogue's fascination for its 225,000 subscribers lies in the fact that: 1) it is well-illustrated (usually in incredibly true colors), with pictures of good clothes against breath-taking backgrounds; 2) it manages to stay out in front of current fashions, thereby lets its readers know, not what is stylish today, but what will be stylish tomorrow. Vogue does not create new fashions; it merely learns what designers are planning to bring out, reports on those designs which it likes.

When World War I cut Vogue off from European designers, Editor Chase countered with the first U.S. fashion show. To avoid undernourishment for her magazine in World War II, she has temporarily broadened Vogue's horizons. Now Vogue sprinkles, among its fashion articles and pictures, pieces on such subjects as the need for Nurse's Aides, Red Cross workers, etc., usually illustrated with photographs of glamorous stage, screen and society beauties in handsomely pressed uniforms.

Sometimes Vogue has trouble when it tackles such ungloved topics. Right after Pearl Harbor five photographers were dispatched to get photos of "New York at war." All five were arrested: One, an eager lad, was taken to the pokey when caught trying to photograph Brooklyn Navy Yard from an apartment roof. It was a day that well-gowned, well-run Vogue would just as soon forget.

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