#magazineeditors

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Magazine Cover during the ‘Carmel Years’

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Vogue Covers of Magazines Carmel Snow was part of while her term at Vogue.

Chronology - Row 1 L-R :  1927 August  Vogue and  1927 October  Vogue

Row 2 L-R :  1930 January Vogue and  1930 February Vogue 

Row 3 L-R :  1930 May Vogue and  1931 March Vogue

Row 4 :  1931 May Vogue

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Style of working

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She also lived the fashion lifestyle 24/7. She rarely ate anything but was an advocate of liquid lunches and was renowned for nodding off at fashion shows after a few too many cocktails. She was forced into retirement afew short years before her death in 1961 at the age of 74. Forever the lover of fashion, Carmel was laid to rest in a red brocade Balenciaga suit. 

She is credited with so many different titles in her career yet her legacy is almost non-existent. The reason why remains a mystery but it may be that as Richard Avedon said, “she faded before stardom became a thing. There weren’t stars in her day”.

One of her readers who likened the feeling of picking up an issue created under her thumb as being anonymously said, “like a kid in a candy store, you get a kick just out of looking". She made a big impact into a lot of peoples life throughout her career. 

Photo Credit - Top : University of Fashion

Bottom : Gleb Derujinsky

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Style of working

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Carmel Snow had an instinct about how women regarded themselves in the 1930s and believed that the images in "the Bazaar," as she liked to refer to the magazine, needed to embody that mood—a kind of freeing femininity and individualism that existed in the corners of Katharine Hepburn's smile and the loose lines of a Coco Chanel dress. She had long been interested in taking fashion out of the studio, but the physical liberty, the sense of place, and the unabashed humanism in Munkacsi's work broke new ground. The Piping Rock beach picture was a revelation—a stolen moment that conveyed real energy in a real environment in real time. Soon Bazaar was filled with images of women in motion and in the world. This was what led to the evolution of magazines. She not only opened a new path for photography but also for how magazines can be perceived. 

This method is what I connected to when reading up about her work. Her rebellious nature in the industry is what got her to the position she had. It also was the reason for her downfall. She had a certain reputation and was respected for her opinions, she had also introduced so many talented people to the industry, but after a while of working in the indutsry she took her position for granted. She has contributed a lot for Bazaar’s success and to the fashion industry. 

During her work she made significant changes to the concept and appearance of the magazine. Due to Carmel’s decisive creative approach, she received the nickname of ”a little Irish firecracker”. This name described her working style very well. 

Photo Credit - Robert Doisneau

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Carmel Snow had a great eye for talent.

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Diana Vreeland - Carmel Snow met Diana Vreeland in the year 1936 in New York at the St. Regis Hotel, when she spotted a seemingly unabashed woman with roses in her dark hair dancing in a Chanel lace dress, her cheekbones emphatically rouged. The woman's name was Diana Vreeland, and she and her husband had just returned to New York after a stint in Europe. The next day, Snow commissioned Vreeland to write a column for Bazaar called "Why Don't You … ?," which was designed to offer blithe suggestions for more stylish living. Vreeland didn't disappoint: Her proposals were often so decadent, outlandish, and gleefully out of step with the austere modes of the Depression era—"Why don't you wash your blonde child's hair in dead champagne as they do in France?"—they were soon parodied in The New Yorker. Not long after, Snow hired Vreeland to be Bazaar's new fashion editor.

Photo Credit - (Top) Horst P. Horst

(Middle) Walter Sanders 

(Low) St. Regis Hotel

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Style of working

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During World War II, Carmel Snow and photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson snuck into occupied France to get images of the destruction there since, as Carmel said, “people at home really have no idea of what war is.” She ran the photographs in two issues, educating readers on war, but integrated Cartier-Bresson’s photos with the regular content. It was effective. Carmel made fashion seem not trivial, but beauty surviving in a world of suffering. World War II had left fashion, France’s second largest industry, moribund. Carmel worked hard to bring it back to life, championing its designers in the U.S., particularly Dior and Chanel. Her advocacy of the New Look made it the template for post-war design. Paris was back on top of the fashion world, to stay forever.

She was unapologetically courageous. What she said had a lot of value in the industry. She brought Paris back to the top in the fashion industry when it was struggling to succeed after World War II. She was responsible for introducing photography in fashion shows. She had a lot of new and improved ideas for the Magazine. 

In a memo, William Randolph Hearst famously wrote that he knew he had no control over Carmel. Snow came into her own at Harper’s Bazaar with her eye for spotting era-defining talent. She transformed an ailing magazine into a groundbreaking and forward-thinking publication.

Photo Credit - Top : Walter Sanders 

Bottom : Wikipedia 

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Magazine Cover during the ‘Carmel Years’

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Harper’s Bazaar Magazine covers that Carmel Snow worked on during her term Pt. 1.

Chronology - Row 1 L-R : 1934 August Harper’s Bazaar, 1935 March Harper's Bazaar and 1935 August Harper’s Bazaar

Row 2 L-R : 1936 January Harper’s Bazaar, 1937 March Harper’s Bazaar, 1937 July Harper’s Bazaar, 1937 September Harper’s Bazaar and 1937 October Harper's Bazaar

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Magazine Cover during the ‘Carmel Years’

3/5

Harper’s Bazaar Magazine covers that Carmel Snow worked on during her term Pt. 2.

Chronology - Row 1 L-R : 1938 January  Harper’s Bazaar and 1938  February Harper’s Bazaar

Row 2 L-R : 1938 August Harper’s Bazaar and 1938 October  Harper’s Bazaar 

Row 3 : 1939 February Harper’s Bazaar,  1939 March Harper’s Bazaar and 1939 July Harper’s Bazaar

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Carmel Snow had a great eye for talent.

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Alexey Brodovitch - Carmel Snow  met Alexey Brodovitch at a design exhibition at the Art Directors Club of New York in the spring of 1934. A Russian émigré, Brodovitch had come to the U.S. in 1930 to take a teaching post at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), in Philadelphia. He'd arrived from Paris, where he worked as a graphic designer, painted sets for the Ballets Russes under the art patron Sergei Diaghilev, and befriended a host of painters, sculptors, and photographers involved in the modernist art movements in Europe at the time. Snow was struck by the immediacy of Brodovitch's work: Images, text, shapes, and ideas all collided and commingled, with dramatic cuts and crops, but everything always felt elegantly composed, with each element working in concert with every other. Snow asked Brodovitch to become Bazaar's new art director that evening

Photo Credit - 

L - Alexey Brodovitch (kneeling) - Taken by Walter Sanders.

R - Alexey Brodovitch (bending) and Richard Avedon (sqauting) - taken by Louis Dahl-Wolfe.