Condé Nast

Condé Nast is the name for both a worldwide publishing company and the man who founded it. Condé Nast (1873-1942), the man, was noted for his innovative publishing theories and flair for nurturing readers and advertisers. With the purchase and upgrading of Vogue in 1909, he established the concept of specialized or class publications, magazines that direct their circulation to a particular group or class of people with common interests. By 1998, Condé Nast Publications, Inc. (CNP) held 17 such titles, many of which are the largest in their respective markets. Like its founder, the magazine empire is one of the most powerful purveyors of popular culture, with an average circulation of over 13 million readers a month and an actual readership of more than five times that. The company, now owned by illustrious billionaire S.I. Newhouse, continues to be the authority for many aspects of popular culture.

After purchasing Vogue in 1909, Condé Nast transformed its original format as a weekly society journal for New York City elites (established in 1892) to a monthly magazine devoted to fashion and beauty. Over the century, and with a series of renowned editors, Vogue became a preeminent fashion authority in the United States and abroad. Its dominance and innovation spanned the course of the century, from its transition to a preeminent fashion authority (under the first appointed editor, Edna Woolman Chase); to the middle of the century when Vogue published innovative art and experimented with modernistic formats; and during the end of the century, when editor Anna Wintour (appointed in 1988) redirected the focus of the magazine to attract a younger audience.

Condé Nast bought an interest in House & Garden in 1911, and four years later took it over completely. Nast transformed the magazine from an architectural journal into an authority on interior design, thereby establishing another example of a specialized publication. Around this time, Condé Nast refined his ideas about this approach to magazine publishing. In 1913 Nast told a group of merchants: "Time and again the question of putting up fiction in Vogue has been brought up; those who advocated it urging with a good show of reason that the addition of stories and verse would make it easy to maintain a much larger circulation. That it would increase the quantity of our circulation we granted, but we were fearful of its effect on the 'class' value."

In 1914, Nast introduced Vanity Fair, a magazine that became an entertaining chronicle of arts, politics, sports, and society. Over a period of 22 years, Vanity Fair was a Jazz Age compendium of wit and style but attracted fewer than 100,000 readers a month. Perhaps because it was too eclectic for its time, the original Vanity Fair eventually failed altogether (and merged with Vogue in 1936). After a 46-year absence, however, CNP revived the magazine in 1983, with a thick, glossy, and "self-consciously literate" format. After nearly a year of stumbling through an identity crisis, Newhouse brought in the 30-year-old British editor Tina Brown (who later served as editor of The New Yorker), who remade Vanity Fair into a successful guide to high-rent popular culture, featuring celebrity worship, careerism, and a glossy peek inside the upper class.

In general, Condé Nast magazines were innovative not only for their content but also for their format. In order to have the preeminent printing available at the time, Condé Nast decided to be his own printer in 1921, through the purchase of a small interest in the now defunct Greenwich, Connecticut, Arbor Press. Despite the hard times that followed the 1929 stock market crash, Condé Nast kept his magazines going in the style to which his readers were accustomed. Innovative typography and designs were introduced, and within the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House & Garden, color photographs appeared. In 1932, the first color photograph appeared on the cover of Vogue.

Glamour was the last magazine Condé Nast personally introduced to his publishing empire (1939), but the growth did not end there. In 1959, a controlling interest in what was now Condé Nast Publications Inc. was purchased by S.I. Newhouse. Later that same year, Brides became wholly owned by CNP, and CNP acquired Street & Smith Publications, Inc., which included titles such as Mademoiselle and the Street & Smith's sports annuals (College Football, Pro Football, Baseball, and Basketball). Twenty years later, Gentleman's Quarterly (popularly known as GQ) was purchased from Esquire, Inc., and Self was introduced. Gourmet was acquired in 1983, the same year that saw the revival of Vanity Fair. Rounding out the collection, CNP added Condé Nast Traveler in 1987, Details in 1988, Allure in 1991, Architectural Digest and Bon Appetit in 1993, Womens' Sports and Fitness (originally Condé Nast Sports for Women) in 1997, and Wired magazine in 1998. Advance Publications (the holding company that owns CNP) acquired sole ownership of The New Yorker in 1985, but it did not become a member of the CNP clan until 1999. In 1999, CNP moved into its international headquarters in the Condé Nast Building, located in the heart of Manhattan's Times Square. Additionally, there are number of branch offices throughout the United States for the more than 2,400 employed in CNP domestic operations.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 2002 Gale Group.