Fashioning Readers: The avant garde and British Vogue , 1920-9

Mahood explores both the work of modern writers and work about modern writers as published in British Vogue during the 1920s. She demonstrates how a familiarity with trends in modern literature was presented as but one of the de rigeueur activities of the modern woman au fait with contemporary tastes. In doing so, the role of non-literary, or non-specialist, magazines in contributing to the rise of a common reader familiar with the practitioners and practices of modernist art is examined. Furthermore, she shows how the perceived 'restricted' value (or appeal) of modernism, in addition to the movement's palpable concern with modernity, became the very means by which modernism entered into the literary and cultural mainstream during the 1920s.

Keywords:

• Avant
• Garde
• Conde Nast
• Edith Sitwell
• Fashion
• Magazines
• Modernism
• Richard Aldington
• Vogue
• Women'S Magazines