Colloque “Consuming Culture : women and girls in print and pixels”, 5-6 June 2015, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Des chercheurs français dans un colloque international sur l’histoire et la sociologie de la presse féminine (et la mode). Impossible ? Si, la preuve à Oxford ce week-end au colloque “Consuming Culture : women and girls in print and pixels“
Session 4B: vendredi, 17h-18h30
“The internationalization of the women’s press”
Room G534
Chair: Jane Potter
The aim of this panel is to examine the feminine press as a significant tool of the circulation of people, commodities, and ideas from the XVIIIth to the XXIth century. Led by historians of dress, communication, media and business, it will take an interdisciplinary approach and employ various methodologies, from visual and textual analysis to sociological theory and cultural studies. Following the approach of global history, this session will show how the press has functioned on several different levels and related to wider cultural issues.
An early case of press’ internationalization: the French women’s Magazine from XVIII to XXI centuries
Karine Taveaux-Gradpierre, université Paris 13, LabSIC
Nowadays international editions are common, especially from the 1980’. This trend seems to begin with the press intend for women, as Vogue UK in 1912 or Cosmopolitan. Surprisingly the globalization did not start with multinational mass media groups such as Hearst or Condé Nast. Moreover, it did not start from North America to Europe but, on the contrary it borned in Europe. Indeed, in 1749 a french women’s magazine start the internationalization of the press. This Magasin français, littéraire et scientifique circulated both in France and England. The Journal des Dames confirmed the trend and spread also in Europe and United States. Finally, in 1797, the Journal des dames et des modes introduced the publishing in several countries by deals with local publishers. In the first part of this paper we will analyse the launch of women’s press in France and England. Then we will study how it circulated in Europe and America. Finally we will also measure the impact of forgery magazine, in lack of copyright. The second part will be devoted to the internationalization and industrialization of feminine press. In the last part we will see how concentration of magazines into Hearst, Condé Nast produced a new pattern that spread from America to Europe. We will finally understand how this pattern came back to the United States in 1985 by the way of a new French model coming from the internationalisation of ELLE-France thanks to Bloomingdale and Lagardère, a French media company. The international editions of this magazine were sold to Hearst in 2011, confirmed that the pattern goes back to United States.
A Transatlantic Collaboration: Exploring Editorial Exchanges between French and American Fashion Magazines in the Interwar Period, 1920-1940
Sophie Kurkdjian, Université de Paris I-Sorbonne
This paper traces the transatlantic development of two fashion magazines between 1920 to 1940 in light of an ongoing dialogue between Lucien Vogel, French publisher of La Gazette du bon ton (est. 1912) and the Jardin des modes (est. 1920), and Condé Nast of American Vogue (est. 1892). After their initial meeting in 1915, the publishers established an ongoing dialogue, which included regular meetings in Paris and New York and the exchange of memorandum, until Nast’s death in 1942. Through the careful study of journals as well as the private and professional correspondence between the two publishers, this paper illuminates an important collaboration.
Specifically, La Gazette du bon ton of Vogel greatly influenced Nast in the 1910’s in terms of fashion illustration while Vogue played a major role in the shift in editorial styles— notably the adoption of the magazine format, characterized by a large number of advertisements and a particular way to address to the reader—in the French press in the 1920s and 1930s. This dialogue resulted in a joint editorial project—La Gazette du bon ton was published in the United States in 1915 while Vogue was available in French in June 1920— and greater editorial consistency in terms of format, graphics, the visualization of garments, and ideas on the role of fashion magazines that would last throughout the century. Finally, this paper shows how this dialogue between the two publishers brings to light a secondary conversation between artists and photographers as well as between the fashion industries of the two cities.
Food for Thought: A feminist approach to the relationship between feminine beauty and food perfection in French and Canadian magazines
Reisa Klein and Michèle Martin, Carleton university, Ottawa
This paper looks at beauty as a powerful communication tool, largely due to the images distributed by the media, and particularly magazine ads produced by the beauty industry. Although beauty has been studied from various angles, to our knowledge, 1) its role in the food industry and 2) its influence on food and women alike has never been done. The food industry uses various techniques (e.g. wax on fruits, laser) to improve the look of their produce, while the beauty industry also offer techniques (e.g. wax of legs, laser) to improve the appearance of women. Yet, beauty has also ‘contaminated’ both ‘actors’ in paradoxical, if not contradictory ways where sometimes it is necessary to make the product or consumer ugly in order to reach perfection.
Beauty is usually associated with women, but Brook (2008) shows an increasing link between the beauty of women and food. She asserts that in women’s magazines, food, beauty products and women are considered similarly, namely women, as objects, are products to be consumed. On the other hand, some TV channels and magazines concentrate on ‘food porn’ and the beauty of food.
The paper proposes to use a critical feminist approach that will help to understand the paradoxes and contradictions related to beauty, as a tactic of power (Foucault 1976) based on structural elements attached to the industries and on a distinction of class and taste (Bourdieu 1979). It will use beauty magazines and food magazines to prove the case.
Le programme intégral est disponible ici : http://openbrookes.net/consumingculture/
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Sophie Kurkdjian (5 juin 2015). Colloque “Consuming Culture : women and girls in print and pixels”, 5-6 June 2015, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Cultures et Histoires de Mode. Consulté le 18 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/pn98



