La Commode en laque. Robe du soir de Worth (pl.49, La Gazette du Bon ton, 1914 n°5)

Original color print heightened with gold, printed on laid paper, signed at bottom left of the plate.
Original engraving created to illustrate La Gazette du bon ton, one of the most beautiful and influential fashion magazines of the 20th century, celebrating the talent of French creators and artists at the height of the Art Deco movement.
Famous fashion magazine founded in 1912 by Lucien Vogel, La Gazette du bon ton was published until 1925 with an interruption during the War from 1915 to 1920, due to the mobilization of its editor-in-chief. It consists of 69 issues printed in only 2000 copies and is notably illustrated with 573 color plates and 148 sketches representing models by great couturiers. From their publication, these luxurious publications "addressed bibliophiles and worldly aesthetes" (Françoise Tétart-Vittu "La Gazette du bon ton" in Dictionnaire de la mode, 2016). Printed on fine laid paper, they used a typeface specially created for the magazine by Georges Peignot, the Cochin character, later adopted in 1946 by Christian Dior. The prints were made using the metal stencil technique, enhanced in colors and some highlighted with gold or palladium.
The adventure began in 1912 when Lucien Vogel, a man of society and fashion - he had already participated in the magazine Femina - decided to found with his wife Cosette de Brunhoff (sister of Jean, father of Babar) the Gazette du bon ton whose subtitle was then "Art, modes et frivolités". Georges Charensol reported the words of the editor-in-chief: "En 1910, observe-t-il, il n'existait aucun journal de mode véritablement artistique et représentatif de l'esprit de son époque. Je songeais donc à faire un magazine de luxe avec des artistes véritablement modernes [...] J'étais certain du succès car pour la mode aucun pays ne peut rivaliser avec la France." ["In 1910, he observed, there was no truly artistic fashion magazine representative of the spirit of its time. I therefore thought of making a luxury magazine with truly modern artists [...] I was certain of success because for fashion no country can rival France."] ("Un grand éditeur d'art. Lucien Vogel" in Les Nouvelles littéraires, n°133, May 1925). The magazine's success was immediate, not only in France, but also in the United States and South America.
Originally, Vogel brought together a group of seven artists: André-Édouard Marty and Pierre Brissaud, followed by Georges Lepape and Dammicourt; and finally his friends from the École des beaux-arts including George Barbier, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, and Charles Martin. Other talents quickly joined the team: Guy Arnoux, Léon Bakst, Benito, Umberto Brunelleschi, Chas Laborde, Jean-Gabriel Domergue, Raoul Dufy, Édouard Halouze, Alexandre Iacovleff, Jean Émile Laboureur, Charles Loupot, Maggie Salcedo. These artists, mostly unknown when Lucien Vogel called upon them, would later become emblematic and sought-after artistic figures. These same illustrators created the drawings for the Gazette's advertisements.
The plates highlighted and sublimated the dresses of seven creators of the era: Lanvin, Doeuillet, Paquin, Poiret, Worth, Vionnet and Doucet. The couturiers provided exclusive models for each issue. Nevertheless, some of the illustrations featured no real model, but only the illustrator's idea of contemporary fashion.
La Gazette du bon ton was a decisive step in the history of fashion. Combining aesthetic demands and plastic unity, it brought together for the first time the great talents of the worlds of arts, letters and fashion and imposed, through this alchemy, a completely new image of woman: slender, independent and audacious, also carried by the new generation of couturiers Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, Marcel Rochas...
Taken over in 1920 by Condé Montrose Nast, La Gazette du bon ton would largely inspire the new composition and aesthetic choices of the "dying little magazine" that Nast had bought a few years earlier: Vogue magazine.