Harper's Bazaar's Representation of American Style in the 1950s.

Abstract

"Harper’s Bazaar’s Representation of American Style in the 1950s.”

This is the title of my thesis, and it perfectly summarizes its content. Harper’s Bazaar – the oldest of all American fashion magazines acts as a “Repository of Fashion, Pleasure and Instruction” as the cover of the first issue dated November 2, 1867, reports. To our reading, though, its importance also lies on the fact that it acts as a significant key to understand the audience it was addressed to. In Harper’s Bazaar’, therefore, ‘style’ does not only imply concern for fashion or elegance: it also deals with people’s bearing, manners and habits, thus influencing the private sphere of its readers. As a consequence my thesis stems from some considerations on the origin of the magazine and its development, moving to the presentation of its most prominent personalities, to focus the attention on its relevance during the 1950’. – The analysis is based on the studies of some of the most noticiable semiologists and sociologists who debated the phenomenon of fashion and its intrinsic relation to the social system: Harper’s Bazaar as refined literature, Harper’s Bazaar as language: Harper’s Bazaar as a very powerful cultural key to get a glimpse of women’s reality in the middle of the Twentieth Century.