Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

Vogue : something in fashion, as at a particular time

Vogue Magazine is an incredibly successful global magazine whose foundations

were laid as long ago as 1892 an eternity ago in terms of young minds. It was
created by Arthur Turnure as a weekly newspaper in the United States. According
to "The Early Years of Vogue Magazine" (Emily Esfahani Smith - 26 June 2013) the
intention was to create a publication that celebrated the "ceremonial side of life";
one that "attracts the sage as well as debutante, men of affairs as well as the
belle."

From its inception, the magazine targeted the New York upper class. It has never
wavered from the concept that its readership should come from the educated
classes and that it should be read and discussed by the movers and shakers of
American society. It has now become published in 21 countries, not as a US
entity but an international version including a British Vogue in 1916 and Vogue
Arabia as recently as February 2017. This brand allows in-country editors to
provide readers with local news and interest stories whilst still being true to the
global Vogue brand, including stylesheets, colour schemes, fonts (where
possible) and styling.

Vogue is a very sophisticated magazine. Vogues target audience is a very

specific one which has changed over the course of 100 years, years that have
included great wealth, depression, war and peace. However, one thing that has
stayed constant, whilst the world has changed, is the type of information that
Vogue brings to its readers. This is why they address the audience by using
words, colours, images and fonts aligned to their brand, something they take

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

into deep consideration when they are writing their articles and are about to
publish each copy of their magazine.
The Vogue font itself is unique. The header of the magazine has changed little
over the years and is a striking and well known graphic. The Vogue magazine
logo has evolved over time, but it has consistently used fonts in the Didone
style of typeface maker Firmin Didot. As of 2015, the style of sans-serif lettering
used for the cover text was designed for Vogue magazine in 2004 by Terminal
Design Group. The font design group has maintained a relationship with the
magazine, updating the font style in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
From creating my surveys about the type of target audience vogue has, I have
discovered that vogues readers are now usually woman aged between 16 and
30. The desire of the original editors for a large scale male readership has been
replaced by an equivalent (in terms of wealth, power and influence) female
readership. The type of people would also be of a high class and highly educated
not just because Vogue carries intelligent articles, but it is an expensive
magazine. Readers need to be able to afford it every month, and from what the
survey said about younger woman buying the magazine, they dont have the
inclination to spend the money nor read a thick paper magazine.

Vogue have been aware of slow sales to the teenage demographic and have
launched their Vogue Teens website and respective social media channels which
has become a very popular site. It has been important for Vogue to change with
the times, and whilst they are synonymous with Style and Fashion and
money, they are all too fully aware that they have become a cradle to grave
advisor, providing fashion advice from teenage years all the way through
motherhood, to chic grandmother and beyond. Their readers are loyal and stay
for the journey.
Vogue has always tried to attract a specific, higher class, reader. The type of
woman who would be reading it would be either a successful or beautiful woman
(or both!), who is has a big interest in fashion and beauty. These women are
mostly wealthy but Vogue have always challenged the accessibility of beauty
purporting the idea that high fashion is accessible to all, not only for the rich.
Anybody can be beautiful but that its important to celebrate beauty, style and

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

success. The readers have different lifestyles, processions, hobbies, interests and
life values, but they all share a common interest in beauty and fashion. This
magazine offers a range of different articles that are presented to give women
information about the latest news on fashion trends and what events are
happening in the world of fashion.
Back in 1932 vogue was one of the first
magazines to print a cover that contented
a coloured picture and since then its
covers have become collectors items and
ground breaking in their choice of covers.
This is the original cover form 1892. You
can already see the representation of
beauty and style, and the simplicity of the
design.

This was the first colour image This was a controversial cover of a
for the British Vogue from 1932. beautiful woman of known sexual
ambiguity. She later became a spy
against the germans a typical Vogue
woman - Strong and determined.

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

During the 20th century Vogues covers symbolised many revolutions, for
example, it changed from having curvy older models to lanky, androgynous
teenagers driving the new standard in fashion. Vogue also become the first
magazine to publish the first cover presenting an African- American model,
promoting chic.
The magazine has never forgotten its roots and fills its pages not just with
fashion advice and beauty tips, but with detailed interviews with the most
famous designers, models and people related to the fashion world. All the
interviews in vogue are very interesting and are always rather personal; they are
filled with facts and even unknown facts about well-known people.
The magazine encourages the readers to find out more about their favourite
stars making them so intrigued in the lives of famous people, that they buy the
magazine. This is not just all about fashion though. Vogue uses its undoubted
popularity to focus on and celebrate success, and in particular - successful
women first ladies, Prime ministers, business leaders and rulers across the
globe are interviewed. This has long stopped being just about fashion and
beauty, it is about success. Vogue plugs itself into the success of women and
drives through the message that all women can be successful, no matter what
your background which is a very powerful and creditable message, and one
that women relate to.
Every woman wants to know how these high flying women cope with life, where
every day is different, where each day is a new challenge, it inspires them.

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

Vogue also uses people like the lady Stone above who is perfect to inspire the
17-20 year old girls a normal, pretty and clever girl but quirky allowing
young girls who read this to know that quirky is ok. Being different is good.
Usually conformity is key but for Vogue its about being yourself a wonderful
message to be telling young women.
Vogue uses celebrities and well-known names on the covers of their magazines
to help bring in their target audience. Vogue have taken the mantel of a
champion of womens rights and womens place in society not 100 miles away
from where they came from, but an incredibly clever message for a magazine
primarily involved in fashion, supposedly the enemy of womens rights.
Target audience is critical to Vogue though they are more fortunate than most
in being so well defined in their offering. Celebrities and controversy on the cover
of the magazine is one that target audience likes. Vogues identity has been
crucial in being able to have controversial covers, and their target audience love
it. The more outrageous the cover, the more likely they are to buy the magazine.
The more powerful the woman on the cover, the higher the sales, the target
audience yearning to read more about them and to identify parts of their lives,
that are similar to their own. Where there is no similarity then it becomes a form
of escapism, allowing the reader to fantasise about what life could be like, but
giving them an important sense that it can be done.
Vogue advice their audience on what to wear, what to wear when youve no
money, how to incorporate sexuality into what they are wearing. They advise on
money, on holidays, on lovers, on children they advise on life.

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

They know that what they say, and how they say it, has a huge impact on what
young girls and woman are wearing, but not just that they influence the way
people think, and help them aspire for more, for a better life. Vogue and its
armies of super models, have helped teach young woman to love themselves
and their bodies and to also have respect for themselves and other woman. It
cannot be compared to Hello or OK or the other trashy publications who revel
as much in the fall of the celebrity, when our icons fail, when they put weight
on, when they are unhappy and suffering, or when life deals a bad hand, as
much as they do on the positive. They destroy as many celebrities as they help
to create.
Vogue is different to that Vogue is thoughtful it is chic, it is not a negative
publication drawing on the lowest common denominator, its drive is to promote
women in a positive way. Vogues controversies arent paparazzi photographs
taken of hardly heard of celebrities naked on private beach but of thought
provoking covers and commentary designed to help change the way people
think.
A perfect example of this is that Vogue have put on
their cover Michelle Obama, the ex-first lady. She
was not a model, she was not a celebrity she is a
mother, a working woman, and the wife of the first
black president of the USA. She is a woman of,
charm, wit, intelligence and has become an
incredible inspiration to young girls and women all
over the world, desiring to be more like her.

Women and men the world over purchased the

magazine to read about how she has copied with
being first lady. The readers of the magazine read
how strong she is to be able to take on such a big
responsibility and felt inspired to be more like her.

The style of Vogue is crucial to its message. The positive, vibrant messages that
it conveys need to be delivered using bright colourful stylesheets. The type of
colours that Vogue uses throughout the magazine need to support their overall
image and cement their reputation as a classy magazine.
The use of colours, and of simple imaging is also a good way of grabbing the
attention of the target audience, by using more exciting colours to stand out
from other magazines. Vogue uses bright and vibrant colours to help portray the
stories and images within the magazine. If you look at the colours on the above
cover of Michelle Obama the magazine has been very clever in its use of colour.
The word Vogue is in black, and all the other words are white drawn along the
racial lines that so divides America still. However, Michelle is in a wonderful
bright pink/purple dress giving the impression that she is breaking out of the
black and white rules of the past. She is a splash of colour, a mass of positive
energy helping the country and the readers see beyond skin colour. The use of
enlarged font for the words Super Powers also give a reader an immediate
impression of greatness, and would make even the least interested passer-by,
want to pick it up and read it.

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

The positivity of colours, and the use of larger or emboldened fonts attract the
reader, catches their eye and draws them in. These themes are continued
within the covers of the magazine, so that the readers mind set is pulled in and
given a similar ride within. Where controversial covers are printed the reader,
likewise, will appreciate that the contents of the magazine will also follow the
same controversial route.
The immediate impact of the imagery on the cover is something that Vogue are
renowned for, and one that pulls the reader into the purchase. Vogue has an
incredible relationship with models, and has helped to launch the career of many
into the world of supermodel stardom. Typically though the models of Vogue are
not the heavily made up caricatures of other magazines but the brutal natural
beauty of the likes of Twiggy, Helen Christensen, Kate Moss and many others.
Vogues photographers are also encouraged to experiment, to take models out of
their comfort zone, and in some cases quite simply to make them look weird.
These photos provoke thought, they take the viewer into the same
uncomfortable places that the model appeared in, and provide an incredible tool
in the art of making the audience think.
Even if they are made to feel uncomfortable by the imagery on the front cover,
readers are drawn in by the concept of why? and are equally eager to
purchase the magazine as they would a happy, smiling face with white teeth and
lovely clothes on the front. They know that Vogue will be informing them of
something worthwhile. Vogue has worked hard to get to that trusted point.
Vogue are one of the worlds oldest regular publications and yet they still enjoy
being at the top of the pile of fashion magazines, in a unique and quite
remarkable place. What other publication could launch during one of the most
hideous and violent wars of the past 100 years, and yet still survive ? The British
Vogue (1916) has gone from strength to strength and remains one of the most
respected fashion publications in the World. Its imagery and style, born out of the
lives of the beautiful and rich in 1890s New York are still relevant and alive in
todays society and whilst logos, fonts and styling have been tweaked over
the years, and the sporting articles have diminished with time. The magazine
fundamentally remains the same a magazine designed for the Belle for the
lady high up in society lifecelebrating the success of women no matter their
colour, creed or background. It has inspired its target audience of the millions of
young impressionable women in the past and continues to do so today and it
remains an important publication identifying with, and inspiring women all over
the globe.

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Vogue Magazine 1892-Present day. Target Audience.

Kim & Kanye, their fashionable life and surreal times demonstrates that the
magazine is aimed at woman who will find celebrities like Kim Kardashian and
Kanye west interesting. It is also using language which shows it is aimed at a
younger, probably not upper class, audience.