The Jewish Visionaries Who Helped Create the Look of Vogue
When I think about Vogue, I think about the images first.
The covers. The photographers. The models frozen in a moment that somehow becomes part of fashion history.
For more than a century, Vogue has helped define what the world considers fashionable. Its pages have turned models into icons, transformed the way clothes are photographed and elevated fashion photography into an art form of its own.
But the more I began researching the people behind some of the magazine's most recognizable images, the more I noticed something I had rarely heard discussed.
There is a remarkable Jewish story woven through Vogue's history.
Vogue was not founded by Jews. Established in New York in 1892, the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast in 1909. Yet during the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants, refugees, publishers, editors and photographers became instrumental in shaping the magazine's visual identity.
At the center of that story was Alexander Liberman.
Born in Kyiv in 1912, Liberman grew up in Europe and worked in publishing in Paris before fleeing wartime France and arriving in New York in 1941. He joined Vogue that year, became its art director in 1943 and eventually rose to editorial director of Condé Nast.
Liberman understood that a fashion magazine could be something more than a catalog of clothes.
Photography, typography and page design could work together to create something closer to modern art. And perhaps even more importantly, he recognized the creative talent capable of making that happen.
One of his most consequential decisions came in 1943, when he hired a young photographer and designer named Irving Penn.
Penn was born in New Jersey in 1917 to a Russian Jewish family. When he arrived at Vogue, he was not yet the legendary photographer he would become. He initially worked on layouts and creative ideas rather than taking the photographs himself.
But Liberman saw something in him.
That October, Penn photographed his first Vogue cover: an unusually spare still life featuring a handbag, gloves, a belt and other accessories rather than a fashion model.
It was a radical departure from the elaborate fashion imagery that had traditionally dominated magazine covers.
Penn would remain connected to Vogue for more than six decades.
His photographs stripped fashion down to its essentials. Instead of relying on ornate rooms or elaborate sets, he often placed couture against simple backgrounds, directing attention toward the silhouette, construction and person wearing the clothes.
Liberman famously called Penn's photographs "stoppers," images so compelling that they made readers pause while turning the pages.
But Penn was not the only Jewish photographer transforming the magazine.
Erwin Blumenfeld's journey to Vogue was far more dangerous.
Born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1897, Blumenfeld experimented with Dada, collage and photography before establishing himself in Paris, where he began photographing for French Vogue in the 1930s.
Then Europe collapsed around him.
In 1940, Blumenfeld was interned in France as an "undesirable alien." His daughter Lisette was imprisoned at the Gurs internment camp, and his family struggled to escape a continent increasingly dangerous for Jews.
Eventually, with assistance from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the family reached New York in August 1941.
Within a few years, a Jewish refugee who had been imprisoned in Europe was producing some of the most daring images in American fashion.
Blumenfeld experimented with color, double exposure, unusual cropping and photographic manipulation.
One of his most famous Vogue covers, published in January 1950, featured model Jean Patchett's face reduced almost entirely to an eye, eyebrow, red lips and beauty mark against a white background.
It barely resembled conventional fashion photography.
That was precisely what made it extraordinary.
Blumenfeld demonstrated that a magazine cover did not simply have to document a dress or a beautiful woman. It could become a work of graphic art.
Then there was Richard Avedon.
Born in New York in 1923 to a Jewish family, Avedon developed an interest in photography at an early age. At twelve, he joined the Young Men's Hebrew Association camera club.
After establishing himself at Harper's Bazaar, he joined Vogue in 1966, becoming one of the magazine's defining photographers.
Where Penn could make fashion feel still and sculptural, Avedon made it move.
His models jumped, laughed and appeared to exist beyond the clothes they were wearing. His photographs challenged the stiff formality that had once characterized much of fashion photography.
Taken together, Penn, Blumenfeld and Avedon offered three strikingly different visions of what a fashion photograph could be.
But photographers alone do not make a magazine.
Behind the images was another part of the story: the Jewish publishing family that came to control Condé Nast itself.
In 1959, Samuel I. Newhouse Sr. acquired majority control of Condé Nast. His son, Samuel Irving "Si" Newhouse Jr., would eventually oversee its magazine business and help transform the company into an international publishing empire.
Under the Newhouse family, Condé Nast expanded its influence across fashion, art, culture and journalism. Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and other publications became some of the most recognizable magazine titles in the world.
One of the defining relationships within that institution was between Newhouse and Liberman.
The Newhouse family provided the publishing resources and institutional support. Liberman brought an extraordinary ability to recognize and nurture creative talent.
Together, their contributions helped establish the environment in which photographers, editors and artists could take risks that would shape the magazine for generations.
There was another Jewish figure working somewhat more quietly within this world.
Leo Lerman grew up in a Jewish immigrant family in New York and began writing for Vogue in 1942.
Over a career spanning more than fifty years at Condé Nast, he became known for his coverage of theater, art, literature, entertainment and society. He eventually served as Vogue's features editor and briefly as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair.
Lerman represented another dimension of what Vogue was becoming.
Fashion was no longer isolated from the rest of culture. It increasingly existed at the intersection of clothing, photography, art, theater, celebrity and intellectual life.
And Lerman helped bring those worlds together.
What I find most striking about this history, however, is not simply what these individuals accomplished.
It is where so many of them came from.
Liberman fled wartime Europe.
Blumenfeld survived internment and escaped Nazi persecution.
Penn was the son of Jewish immigrants.
Avedon grew up in a Jewish family in New York.
Lerman was raised in a Jewish immigrant household.
And the Newhouse family eventually controlled one of the most influential publishing companies in the world.
There is something remarkable about that progression.
People whose families had experienced immigration, displacement or life outside the traditional social establishment became some of the individuals determining how that establishment would be photographed, presented and remembered.
There was no single "Jewish" Vogue aesthetic. These figures had different relationships with their Jewish identities and approached photography, fashion and publishing in very different ways.
But their contributions collectively helped change how fashion was presented.
The more I research Jewish contributions to fashion, the more I realize how much of that history exists beyond the names stitched into clothing labels.
Open an old issue of Vogue today, and their influence is still there: in the white space surrounding a photograph, in a model caught in motion, in an unexpected crop or simply in the idea that a fashion photograph deserves to be treated as art.
Some of the people who helped teach the world how to look at fashion were Jewish visionaries whose personal and family histories stretched from Kyiv and Berlin to immigrant neighborhoods in New York.
And in the process, they helped create the look of Vogue.
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