What’s on My Bookshelf: Fashion Edition series part 4
The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983-1992
Tina Brown, 2017
This book is an amazing read for anyone who has ever dreamed of working for a fashion magazine.
While I was in school at the Kent State New York Studio, I took a class where we put together a class fashion magazine. One of the first things we did in the class was watch The September Issue documentary on Vogue to get a refreshing idea of how the process works.
Fast forward a year, and one of the last classes I had to take to fulfill my fashion media requirements was an entire project on one magazine. If I couldn’t have Vogue, it was a blessing in disguise to end up with, you guessed it, Vanity Fair.
Fast forward a little more, and I came across this book in a Goodwill. I recognized the name from my project, and now it seemed destined for me to read her book.
Once I read that Tina Brown got married at Grey Gardens, I became further intrigued to read. That wasn’t a huge detail to the story at all, but the history of that home was a brief obsession of mine.
While Tina Brown was editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, she notably turned the magazine around towards success.
Note: Vanity Fair is not a fashion-focused magazine. Tina Brown was no fashion expert. I think of the magazine as a much younger, rebellious cousin of Vogue who knows all the juicy gossip and dresses phenomenally.
I love getting a glimpse into vintage high society. Here, the focus was on high social circles in New York City at the height of the 80s. It seemed like every diary entry included a dinner party, often casually name-dropping big celebrity names.
Even though the book is written in diary entries, you get a sense of such vivid characters that help the book read like a story. To name a few names, Alex Liberman, Si Newhouse, and the legendary work of people like Annie Leibovitz, stand out to me.
So many people are aware of the almighty Anna Wintour at Vogue. But, at the same time, another girl boss was making a big name at Condé Nast. That woman was Tina Brown. Her impact might not be talked about enough.
Having a celebrity on the cover of magazines is the norm today. But in the 80s, Tina Brown at Vanity Fair had crafted a masterful formula that balanced the glamour of Hollywood with real-world news and politics.
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