La Gazette du Bon Ton was a leading French fashion

Fashion design

Fashion design is the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. Fashion designers work in a number of ways in designing clothing and accessories....

 magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 that was published from November 1912 to 1925. Founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel, the magazine covered the latest developments in fashion

Fashion design

Fashion design is the art of the application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural and social latitudes, and has varied over time and place. Fashion designers work in a number of ways in designing clothing and accessories....

, lifestyle, and beauty

Beauty

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...

.

Elitism and arts focus

The magazine strove to present an elitist image to distinguish itself from its many competitors. It was available only to subscribers and was priced at a steep 100 francs per year, or $425.61 in today's money. The magazine was published on fine paper. The magazine signed exclusive contracts with seven of Paris's top couture houses (Cheruit, Doeuillet, Doucet, Paquin, Poiret, Redfern, and Worth) so that the designers' fashions were shown only in the pages of the Gazette. The magazine's title was derived from the French concept of bon ton, or timeless good taste and refinement.

The magazine also aimed to establish fashion as an art alongside painting, sculpture, and drawing: according to the magazine's first editorial, "The clothing of a woman is a pleasure for the eye that cannot be judged inferior to the other arts."

To elevate the Gazettes literary status, the magazine featured essays on fashion by established writers from other fields, including novelist Marcel Astruc, playwright Henri de Regnier

Henri de Régnier

Henri François Joseph de Régnier was a French symbolist poet, considered one of the most important of France during the early 20th century....

, decorator Claude Roger-Marx

Claude Roger-Marx

Claude Roger-Marx , was a French writer, and playwright, as well as an art critic and art historian like his father Roger Marx...

, and art historian Jean-Louis Vaudoyer

Jean-Louis Vaudoyer

Jean-Louis Vaudoyer was a French novelist, poet, essayist and art historian. He was also administrator general of the Comédie-Française from 1941 to 1944.- External links :*...

. Their contributions ranged in tone from irreverent to ironic and mocking.

Fashion illustrations

The centerpiece of the Gazette was its fashion illustrations. Each issue featured ten full-page fashion plates (seven depicting couture designs and three inspired by couture but designed solely by the illustrators).

It employed many of the most famous Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 artists and illustrators of the day, including Georges Barbier, Erté, Paul Iribe

Paul Iribe

Paul Iribe was a French designer, journalist, artist, and fashion illustrator.-Early Life and Career:Paul Iribarnegaray was born in Angoulême, France in 1883, of Basque parentage....

, Pierre Brissaud

Pierre Brissaud

Pierre Brissaud was a French Art Deco illustrator, painter, and engraver whose father was Docteur Edouard Brissaud. He was born in Paris and trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and Atelier Fernand Cormon in Montmartre, Paris. His fellow Cormon students were his brother Jacques, André-Édouard...

, and Georges Lepape, who all, rather than simply drawing a mannequin in the outfit, like most previous fashion illustrators, depicted the model in various dramatic and narrative situations.

Works cited

• Davis, Mary E. Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism. University of California Press: 2006. ISBN 0520245423.