Vanity Fair vanished inside Vogue for 47 years before coming back
Condé Nast's glossy thrived in the 1920s, then the Depression killed it and Vogue absorbed it in 1936. The name lay dormant until a 1983 revival, which went on to unmask Watergate's Deep Throat, put a pregnant Demi Moore on the cover and turn its Oscar night party into Hollywood's hottest ticket.
The name itself is borrowed twice over: John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress imagines a town called Vanity Fair ruled by Beelzebub, and Thackeray's novel of 1847 and 1848 popularised it. Condé Montrose Nast bought a men's fashion title called Dress in 1913 and renamed it in stages until only Vanity Fair remained. At its 1920s peak it sold 90,000 copies, but falling advertising in the Depression doomed it. In December 1935 Nast announced the merger into Vogue, effective March 1936.
Owner S.I. Newhouse announced a revival in June 1981, and the first new issue appeared on February 21, 1983 under Richard Locke. He lasted three issues. Leo Lerman followed, then Tina Brown from 1984 and Graydon Carter from 1992 to 2017, a long run later satirised in Toby Young's book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, filmed with Jeff Bridges as Carter.
The revived magazine mixed celebrity with serious reporting. Marie Brenner's 1996 exposé of the tobacco industry became the film The Insider, and the May 2005 issue named Mark Felt as Deep Throat, the source behind the leaks that led to Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation. Photographers such as Annie Leibovitz supplied lavish covers, most famously her 1991 portrait of Demi Moore naked and pregnant. Not everything landed well: a 1999 shoot of Mike Myers dressed as a Hindu deity drew criticism and an apology.
Its legal battles made headlines too. Roman Polanski won a libel case against the magazine in London in 2005, testifying by video link from France, a first in English legal history. Abroad, the magazine now runs editions in Britain, Italy, Spain and France, while a German version launched in 2007 at a cost of 50 million euros folded in 2009 after its weekly sales fell from half a million to under 200,000. The Oscar party, begun in 1994, started with about 120 dinner guests.
Source: Vanity Fair (magazine)
