A Century Of Festive Vogue Shoots To Inspire Your Holiday Style
For more than a century, Vogue has celebrated Christmas with optimism and originality. Robin Muir looks back through the decades at the images that have captured the joy in honour of the 25th.
Whatever form it may take, the holiday season is a time of celebration and indulgence, reflection and nostalgia, a chance to pause and reset. Historically for Vogue, the last issue of the year was also a time for sparkling graphic and photographic innovation, led by its specially commissioned December covers, a selection of which are presented here.
Actually, when times were really good – that is to say, the interwar years – Christmas started with the November issue and its fabled list of gift ideas. This was in-depth and deadly serious. On the basis that even the most psychic of readers might falter in the face of an obscure, unreadable recipient, Vogue offered up sheaves of carefully curated proposals. By the late 1930s, these verged on parody: “A café-au-lait peke pup from the Ashton Cross shop; a Siamese kitten from Mrs Lesmoir Gordon; a warm-water aquarium complete with the newest apparatus and a few strange, brilliant fishes.”
During the war, optimism remained high, the cover for 1939’s edition featuring candy canes in heightened colours, borrowed from the American edition, candy canes not yet qualifying as an indigenous treat. By 1940, things were slightly more level-headed, with Vogue counselling homespun modesty while photographing titled ladies knitting socks with the air of those who had never before encountered a sock let alone a knitting needle.
In truth, festive issues tend to encourage more than a little vanity. By 1987, the magazine seemed entirely in tune with the era when it surmised, bluntly, “It is about simple greed, presents we all want. Like a diamond necklace.” While attitudes waxed and waned, when it came to the cover, red remained unbeatable. In 1951, Cecil Beaton saluted this most festive of colours by gift-wrapping his cover star in a giant cerise Balenciaga bow, while Clifford Coffin’s 25 replications of a vibrant Christian Dior dress made for a striking 1954 cover.
Below, revisit some of the greatest Christmas images from Vogue through the years.
Juergen Teller1/192017
A metamorphosis is not achieved solely by the wholesale importation of glittering and fantastical ingredients. It’s the imaginative way in which they are used that creates the dazzle, the richness and the magic. Alewya Demmisse wears a Vivienne Westwood kilt and Sonia Rykiel sweater, by Juergen Teller.
2/191956
Don’t try this at home – a garland of Christmas lights, photographer unknown.
Henry Clarke3/191953
The gift of a diamond necklace that separates to make a tiara, by Henry Clarke.
Tim Walker4/192016
“Time for Illumination” by Tim Walker.
André Edouard Marty5/191923
A festive ’20s cover by André Edouard Marty.
Irving Penn6/191959
Christmas in the ’50s captured by Irving Penn.
Helen Dryden7/191916
An illustrated cover for British Vogue’s first Christmas by Helen Dryden.
Georges Lepape8/191930
“Seasonal Offering” by Georges Lepape.
