Before Playboy, Came “La Vie Parisienne”

A pair of clandestine, gender-bending lovers are about to embrace at la brasserie. A fashionable young woman in a barely-there dress is partying the night away in the cabarets of Paris without a care (or a man) in the world to ruin her fun. A curious eye would be intrigued by the risqué illustrations of…

The Wicked Society Magazine of the Gilded Age

Before the devil wore Prada, there was a Civil War veteran, a so-called “pasha of the Gilded Age,” who was one of the most vilified characters in magazine publishing. Arising out of nowhere like our beloved Gatsby, William d’Alton Mann became the kind of person all society people wished to emulate (in practice). He was well read,…

17 Eyebrow-Raising Headlines on Vintage Cosmopolitan Magazines

Cosmopolitan is and always has been provocative women’s magazine. I remember reading it as a curious teenager, trying to fold over half the page I was looking at so the person next to me wouldn’t see. But browsing through the Old Magazine Shop‘s vintage copies of the mag, I found myself quite surprised, sometimes even…

Pre-War Germany’s Buried Art Nouveau Magazine

A magazine like Jugend was never going to survive Nazi Germany. A monthly art periodical created in Munich in the late 19th century, it featured many Art Nouveau artists on its cover, and effectively launched the art movement in Germany. They called it Jugendstil, literally “youth style” in German. This period of art and design is still…

She Put Bohemianism on New York’s Front Page

No magazine has a cover style as distinctive, enduring and charming as that of The New Yorker. With its unmistakably unique title font and with almost a century’s commitment to using original artwork on its front cover in every weekly edition since 1925, it’s arguably the most influential magazine ever when it comes to culture,…

The Dapper Rebels of Los Angeles, 1966

In the summer of 1965, riots broke out in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles. Over a six-day period, 34 people were killed, 1,032 injured and over 3,438 arrests were made. In 1966, LIFE magazine revisited the site of the worst riots America had ever seen in its history. The photo essay depicting the…

Cover Girls of the Anti-Apartheid

Once described as the “Hollywood of Black South Africa”, in 1951, Sophiatown, Johannesburg was one of the last surviving multiracial neighbourhoods of Apartheid and a symbol of resistance against a racist regime. It was here where the writers of DRUM magazine found their beat and South Africa’s Black celebrities and entertainment found their spotlight. It’s…

Dream about Dressing Up Again with a Century-Old Fashion Magazine

What will you wear to your first social event when the lockdowns are over? Are you daydreaming about that moment yet? When you finally get to open your closet and put together an outfit that doesn’t involve a stretchy-pant combo. Here’s hoping this worldwide confinement will change fashion for us and bring us back to…

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Forgotten Art Deco Marvels of a Lost 1920s Copacabana Magazine

Little information has survived about Brazil’s Para Todos magazine. I couldn’t actually find what date or why it ever went out of print. I do know that it was created in 1918 with a focus on movie stars, and in 1922 until 1930, it came under the direction of José Carlos, a cartoonist, illustrator and major talent in Brazilian Art…

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“Girl Watching” in Paris

I stumbled upon something pretty peculiar today. This is an excerpt from a 1959 issue of Girl Watcher magazine. [Illustration 1] Considered one of the ‘creepiest and most perverted’ magazines of its day, the publication promoted randomly stalking and ‘collecting’ women as a hobby. What really caught my attention was this special guide to ‘Girlwatching’ in…