's cover for the April 1921 issue of
Vanity Fair. Condé Nast began his empire by purchasing the men's fashion magazine
Dress in 1913. He renamed the magazine
Dress and Vanity Fair and published four issues in 1913. Nast paid $3,000 for the right to use the title "Vanity Fair" in the United States, granted by the magazine
The Standard and Vanity Fair, "the only periodical printed for the playgoer and player", published weekly by the "Standard and Vanity Fair Company, Inc", whose president was Harry Mountford, also General Director of the
White Rats theatrical union. The magazine achieved great popularity under editor
Frank Crowninshield. In 1919
Robert Benchley was tapped to become managing editor. He joined
Dorothy Parker, who had come to the magazine from
Vogue, and was the staff drama critic. Benchley hired future playwright
Robert E. Sherwood, who had recently returned from
World War I. The trio were among the original members of the
Algonquin Round Table, which met at the
Algonquin Hotel, on the same West 44th Street block as Condé Nast's offices. Crowninshield attracted some of the best writers of the era.
Aldous Huxley,
T. S. Eliot,
Ferenc Molnár,
Gertrude Stein, and
Djuna Barnes all appeared in a single issue, July 1923. In 1915, it published more pages of advertisements than any other U.S. magazine. It continued to thrive into the 1920s. Starting in 1925,
Vanity Fair competed with
The New Yorker as the American establishment's top culture chronicle. It contained writing by
Thomas Wolfe, T. S. Eliot and
P. G. Wodehouse, theatre criticisms by Dorothy Parker, and photographs by
Edward Steichen;
Clare Boothe Luce was its editor for some time. However, it became a casualty of the
Great Depression and declining advertising revenues, although its circulation, at 90,000 copies, was at its peak. Condé Nast announced in December 1935 that
Vanity Fair would be merged with
Vogue (circulation 156,000) as of the March 1936 issue. ==1983 revival==