I read recently that the budgets are getting cut back so much at Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue, that senior staffers are being told to ride the subway instead of being driven around Manhattan. 

Can you imagine Anna Wintour, Vogue editor since 1988, riding the subway?  Did you know she gets her trademark bob trimmed every day?  There is no way she got to work this morning hanging from a strap.

Vogue is a lot more venerable than a lot of people realize.  It was founded as a weekly magazine in 1892 and bought by Conde Nast in 1909.  It incorporated photography in 1913, pioneering the fashion photo spread.  

Vogue has always been popular during hard times when nobody can afford the fashions in it - subscriptions surged in the Great Depression and again during World War II.  During the 1960's under the hand of Diana Vreeland the magazine began to appeal to younger women with a focus on contemporary fashion and young models. 

More than any other fashion magazine, Vogue has historically had the power to make a model a household name.  The success of models like Twiggy, Lauren Hutton, Suzy Parker and Verushka paved the way for the supermodels of the 1980s. 

Under the leadership of Anna Wintour, she of the bob and indoor sunglasses, Vogue has taken a position of leadership in discovering and promoting new designers and concepts in fashion.  Wintour's presence at your fashion show is an indication that you're going somewhere as a designer - sometimes Fashion Week coverage reads like a copy of her Outlook calendar.  

Today, Vogue has a plethora of worldwide editions.  Local Vogue is published in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK.  There's also a general Latin America edition.  Theseoffshoot publications all have their own Web sites, and they are awesome.  Vogue India is my favorite so far.  

Of course, you can come and read the current issue in the Periodicals department, but did you know we also have microfilm of this title back to 1950?  We do!  Better yet, we have it bound through the 60s and 70s, so you can see the fashions and ads in full color.  Come by and take a look!