Vanity Fair at 100

Vanity Fair celebrates its 100th anniversary this month with a special issue starring Kate Upton and featuring a new logo.

Designed by Christian Schwartz at Commercial Type, the logo uses a condensed version of the Didot font Schwartz recently developed for the magazine, and is the final part in design director Chris Dixon’s gradual redesign of the magazine.

Inside there is much celebration of old and new, with the magazine’s first issue reproduced (above, note title Dress & Vanity Fair) alongside a recreation of the charming front cover illustration (even the green background of the birthday cover seems to have been taken from that first issue). It’s fascinating, too, to see the 1936 illustration of Josephone Baker by Paolo Garetto (below). It looks thoroughly contemporary.

VF editor Graydon Carter has published a book to mark the birthday too. ‘From the Jazz Age to Our Age’ is published next month.

Read an excerpt from my interview with Dixon for Eye magazine.