Those of us who still remember cigarette ads on television will recognize the tagline that heads this blog–“You’ve come a long way, baby,” was the jingle for Virginia Slims–which in 1968 was a new, thin cigarette from Phillip Morris marketed specifically to women.
The campaign launched by the Leo Burnett Agency sought to make Virginia Slims an “aspirational” brand for the liberated woman of the Swinging 60s…
Forty years earlier, the folks at Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company also thought they could trade on the image of the Jazz Age’s liberated woman with this famous ad from 1926:
Although the woman in the ad was not smoking, a taboo had been broken by merely suggesting she might be a smoker. The New Yorker first explored this topic in their July 24, 1926 issue, with this item in “The Talk of the Town”…
In the Oct. 29, 1927 issue they returned to the topic in the “Talk” column, now that advertisers had gone a step further and actually depicted women with lighted cigarettes between their fingers:
The Oct. 29, 1927, New Yorker itself featured ads with women smokers, including this installment in a series for Old Gold by cartoonist Clare Briggs…
…and this ad for the the tipless Smokador ashtray, which was featured in many issues of the New Yorker…
What Flattery Will Get You
In addition to women smokers, the New Yorker was also agog about a visit to the city by the great French fashion designer Paul Poiret, who upon his arrival proclaimed American women to be the best-dressed in the world:
Perhaps Poiret’s flattery of American women could be attributed to the fact that his designs had lost popularity in France after World War I, and his fashion empire was on the brink of collapse. (Indeed, his fashion house would close in 1929). However today he is recognized as the first great modernist in fashion design, often compared to Picasso in terms of the contributions he made to his field.
The New Yorker took advantage of his visit to the city by featuring him in a lengthy profile in the Oct. 29 issue, written by Paris correspondent Janet Flanner under the pseudonym “Hippolyta.” Despite Poiret’s diminished presence in France, Flanner nevertheless understood his enormous contribution to modern fashion design. She concluded her profile with this observation:
Something Fishy
The New Yorker appealed to young, upscale urban dwellers, so it was no wonder that Harper’s Bazar advertised in the magazine, including this ad in the Oct. 29, 1927 issue that announced the debut in its pages of the English artist known as “Fish”…
Anne Harriet Fish (1890-1964) was famed for her witty depictions of high society in Condé Nast’s Vanity Fair and The Tatler, where she began work in 1914. A rival “smart set” magazine, Harper’s Bazar, was eager to boast that it had finally “landed” the Fish.
* * *
Broadway Ballet
The Oct. 29 “Talk of the Town” noted that Albertina Rasch and her ballet dancers were making quite a splash on Broadway. Her success in staging dances for Flo Ziegfeld’s “Follies” and George White’s “Scandals” would lead to a career in Hollywood, where she would be instrumental in elevating the role of dance director to what we now call a choreographer. Among her many firsts, she is credited with helping to establish Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” as a popular standard by incorporating it into a dance in the 1935 film Jubilee.
* * *
Where Were You Last Year?
Writing under the pseudonym “Constant Reader,” Dorothy Parker penned a vigorous defense of Ernest Hemingway’s short fiction in the “Books” section of the Oct. 29 issue. Specifically she took issue with critics who continued to rave about Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, but mostly ignored a collection of short stories he had previously published under the title In Our Time.
And finally, Barbara Shermund explored the intersection of high culture and flapper culture in this cartoon…
Next Time: Death Avenue Days…
A New Yorker State of Mind 