After reading Edna Woolman Chase’s
Always in Vogue, I felt like I had to sit down and spend some time in the
company of her great publishing rival, Carmel Snow. Snow left
Vogue to become
fashion editor and eventually editor of
Vogue’s chief competitor,
Harper’s
Bazaar.
The World of Carmel Snow was published in 1962, eight years after the
Woolman Chase book but, my goodness, it seems like a century away. It was
published after Snow’s death, written up from interviews with Mary Louise
Aswell, fiction editor for Snow on
Bazaar and who bookends Snow’s words
with her own commentary. I had wondered if the supposed differences between
Woolman Chase and Snow were
hype building on the part of the press but you
can feel the marked differences between the two women in every word of this
book. It’s light, there’s a lot less self-justification and there’s simply more fun.
Snow, it appears, was willing to try things out and make mistakes as her famous
quote from the book suggests, “elegance
is good taste
plus a dash of daring.”
There’s a fair proportion of the book
devoting to answering the story of her defection from
Vogue, the cause of so
much pain to Woolman Chase and Nast. She describes working under Woolman Chase
as “almost like being back under
my mother’s thumb,” and notes that rather than preparing to hand the reigns
over to Snow, Woolman Chase was actually proposing demoting her to society
editor. She answers the more personal attacks on her too. As Nast had been so
significant to her life and career, how could she not attend his funeral? And
as for her nocturnal habits? “Edna further maintained that the only time I got
any sleep was when I fell asleep in my partner’s arms on the dance floor,
I maintain that if my eyes were closed,
it was in ecstasy.”
Even after the
defection, the two would have had to deal with each other on a professional
level,
at the collections in Paris for example, or working together as
part of the Fashion Group (established by Woolman Chase in 1930 – Snow mentions
the reports she gave to the group, but no more about their dealings). The
rivalry continues, with talent being poached back and forth between the
magazines. Snow gets the photographer George Hoyningen-Huene; Woolman Chase takes
the illustrator Bébé Bérard although, according to Snow, she “couldn’t stand Bébé’s work, and kept him
on only because she knew I wanted him.”
Once you’ve read this book it’s hard to
imagine how the two ever did work together, or how Woolman Chase ever managed to
contain Snow and her energy and ideas. Snow moves to
Bazaar in 1934, only as
a fashion editor, rather than editor-in-chief. Yet she soon enforces her
viewpoint on the magazine, whether that’s in being the first women’s magazine to
feature a diet feature (yeah, thanks for that Carmel!), or signing up Alexey Brodovitch to overhaul the layouts (he also did
the gorgeous layout for this book, which is peppered
with great imagery of Snow and the signatures of a few of the famous people she
knew).
Daisy Fellowes photographed by Cecil Beaton, in open-toe sandals, 1931, via
By her own admission, Snow was fascinated –
sometimes distracted – by the new. Remember Woolman’s Chase’s
horror of open-toed sandals in the city? Snow describes Daisy Fellowes (then
Bazaar's Paris correspondent) walks into a collection “looking as no woman had dared appear in a city
before. Her sun-burned legs were bare, her red toenails peeped out from open
sandals, and her dress was of white cotton piqué”.
Rather than being outraged, Snow was fascinated and subsequently went on to
feature cotton as a suitable fashion for haute couture.
Bazaar was also the magazine
to achieve lots more firsts, including writing about hair-dye, featuring jeans, as well as starting the custom of listing clothing stockists beyond New York
City.
Snow devoted a
lot of “furious activity” to her ambition to “present the best in every field”
to her readers, whether that was fashion, photography, art or writing. Her
career advice, as given in the book, could read as a riposte to Woolman Chase:
“The greatest treasure in a fashion
career – if you have it, guard it carefully – is an open, adventurous mind.”
Carmel Snow with Balenciaga, via
She also talks a lot
about her own instinct and intuition. Snow is superstitious in a way that stays
true to her Irish Catholic upbringing, and is guided by a full range of advisers,
from God to fortune tellers, in her decision-making. It seems to work. She
seems to have the ability to latch onto the next big thing, and quickly. “Whether
you are planning to make fashion or sell it, photograph it or promote it you
will have to keep flexible and ready to take off at a moment’s notice on a new
tack”, she writes. “There is no room for prejudice or cliché”. Snow describes
being the only one applauding Balenciaga’s first solo collection, where you could
“feel the hate in the room.” Of course, she gets the final say in the matter: “When I turned
over the Paris issue of
Harper’s Bazaar to Balenciaga’s collection, the fashion
world began to pay attention. The rest is fashion history.”
Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland at Harper's Bazaar, via
Snow builds an
impressive team of adventurous thinkers around her at the magazine. As well as
Brodovitch, she famously hired
Diana Vreeland, sensing her “daring
originality and taste.”
Lucile Brokaw, shot by Martin Munkacsi for Harper's Bazaar, December 1933, via
There are the photographers too: Louise Dahl-Wolfe,
turned over by
Vogue but, for Snow, “from the moment I saw her first colour
photographs I knew that the
Bazaar was at last going to look the way I had
instinctively wanted my magazine to look.” And she gets photography out of the
studio and into the real world with that famous swimsuit shoot with Martin
Munkacsi in 1933: “The resulting picture of a typical American girl in action,
with her cape billowing out behind her, made photographic history.”
Carmel Snow with Chanel: presumably taken just after Chanel has asked Snow to "squeeze her buttocks", via
There’s an impressive cast of supporting characters
who dance across the pages of this book, including
Anita Colby, Truman Capote (first
published by
Bazaar) and Chanel – subject of my favourite gossipy aside in the
book, “when she urges you, as she
frequently does, to squeeze her buttocks, you find they’re as hard as a cement
ball.” The models she found and featured for the first time included Lauren Bacall and Suzy Parker.
The World of Carmel Snow is an inspiring
read because of Snow’s passion for her work, and her dedication to being a bit
daring. She demanded the same of her staff, and she ultimately demands the same
of her readers:
“And if fashion isn’t
your field, as probably it is not for some of you who read my story, remember
this: whatever your career may be – in the home – in business – in the arts,
make it a love affair.”
