Le Cerf-volant. Blouse d'été (pl.52, La Gazette du Bon ton, 1914 n°6)

Original double print, printed on laid paper, signed lower left on the plate. One of the rare double plates in portrait format.
Original engraving created for the illustration of 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 during the flourishing of Art Deco.
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 illustrated notably with 573 color plates and 148 sketches representing models by great couturiers. Upon their publication, these luxurious publications "addressed bibliophiles and fashionable 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 created using the metallic stencil technique, heightened in colors and some highlighted in gold or palladium.
The adventure began in 1912 when Lucien Vogel, 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" ["Art, fashion and frivolities"]. Georges Charensol reports the editor-in-chief's words: « 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 was therefore thinking of creating a luxury magazine with truly modern artists [...] I was certain of success because in 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 such as George Barbier, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, or Charles Martin. Other talents quickly joined the team: Guy Arnoux, Léon Bakst, Benito, Boutet de Monvel, Umberto Brunelleschi, Chas Laborde, Jean-Gabriel Domergue, Raoul Dufy, Édouard Halouze, Alexandre Iacovleff, Jean Émile Laboureur, Charles Loupot, Charles Martin, 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 period: Lanvin, Doeuillet, Paquin, Poiret, Worth, Vionnet and Doucet. The couturiers provided exclusive models for each issue. Nevertheless, some of the illustrations featured no actual model, but only the illustrator's idea of contemporary fashion.
La Gazette du bon ton was a decisive step in fashion history. Combining aesthetic excellence and visual unity, it brought together for the first time the great talents from 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, the Gazette du bon ton would largely inspire the new composition and aesthetic choices of the "dying little magazine" that Nast had purchased a few years earlier: Vogue magazine.