Calificación y Certificación energética

The third publication I analyze is Harper’s Bazar, founded in 1867 in New York by Harper and Brothers. This was the last of the three to come on the scene and was heavily influenced by both its German and French predecessors. Like La Mode Illustrée, Harper’s Bazar was run by a female editor, Mary Louise Booth, who oversaw the

magazine until her death in 1889. Harper’s Bazar changed ownership soon thereafter – in 1902 – and subsequently changed its name to the current version of Harper’s Bazaar.

Initially, however, the magazine, just like its name, was closely modeled after the

90 Ibid., 33.

61 German Der Bazar. Once more, the masthead is revelatory in its highlighting of these connections. The masthead of Harper’s Bazar appeared as a near carbon copy of Der Bazar, with only a slight difference in name and a minor variation on the female figure resting in the first capital letter. The subtitle of Harper’s Bazar reads “A repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction.”

In her work Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper’s Bazar, 1867-1898, Stella Blum elaborates on the meaning of this subtitle and the intended focus of the magazine. She writes, “according to its first editorial, its aim was to be a publication which would combine the useful with the beautiful. Although it would include everything that would be interesting to the family circle, it was largely intended for ladies.”⁹¹ The first editorial went on to explain: “In this connection, the fashions are naturally an important subject: three hundred millions of dollars being annually expended in this country for dry goods, the making up of which is executed or superintended almost wholly by the female portion of the household.”⁹² The magazine’s editors recognized from the outset that women were the primary consumers of the period and the obvious target audience for a magazine featuring domestic goods, fashion, and material items of all sorts ready to be acquired. The editorials continued to explain that “special

arrangements have been made with leading European journals, particularly with the German Der Bazar whereby Harper’s Bazar would receive fashion designs in advance

91 Stella Blum, Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper’s Bazar, 1867-1898. (New York: Dover Publications, 1974), v.

92 Ibid.

62 and publish them at the same time that they appeared in Paris, Berlin, and other European cities.”⁹³

The first editorial of Harper’s Bazar makes it sufficiently clear that the magazine relied heavily on its German counterpart in providing the latest fashion news and product information stemming from Europe to the American consumer. Not only did the

American magazine depend on its German sister publication for images and information, but it also employed Mme Emmeline Raymond, the editor of La Mode Illustrée, as its foreign correspondent from Paris.⁹⁴ Thus, cultural exchange taking place between these three publications became increasingly convoluted and complex. As already noted, Der Bazar was first to come on the market. La Mode Illustrée came second, mirroring much of the German magazine’s content and visual layout, suggesting that the French

publication looked to the German one as its model. The German publication, however, used French fashion jargon and terminology prolifically throughout its issues, a rhetorical move that highlighted the leading role of French fashion and culture at the time. Der Bazar often featured fashions and trends emerging from Paris and wrote of the latest fads dominating Parisian culture. The American Harper’s Bazar used lithographs and

materials compiled for the reading audience of Der Bazar and relied on the contributions of the French magazine’s editor for information on trends in Europe. Thus, cultural exchange intersected on many levels as evidenced in these periodicals, making it difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct a linear trajectory of cultural influence in the publications targeting the nineteenth-century female reader.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., 3.

63 Not only was the sharing of materials between the different fashion magazines made plain with the obvious overlap in content and images, the fact of collaboration was touted to endorse and promote the American magazine’s worth on the North American market. Its alliance with the European publication Der Bazar is presented as placing the magazine a step ahead of its competitors. But the path of influence did not only lead from Europe to America. Sections of the American Harper’s Bazar suggest that it also

conversely influenced the German and French publications. This influence is illustrated by the fact that the 1876 issues of Harper’s Bazar already featured multi-page classified advertisement sections exactly like the ones to come to Der Bazar in 1881 and to La Mode Illustrée in 1889. The January 1876 issues of Harper’s Bazar offered sewing machines, toys, “Ivin’s patent hair crimpers”, “hand-sewed shoes”, and services such as treatments for cancer and opium habits.⁹⁵ This suggests that the American market was using women’s fashion magazines and print advertisements to promote consumerism before it became common practice in France or Germany. This suggests that the German Der Bazar derived its model for its advertisement section from Harper’s Bazar, which later influenced the French La Mode Illustrée as well. As noted, the trajectory of the cultural transfer taking place between these three publications is thus difficult to trace and likely without a clear point of origin. Rather, it appears that communication between the fashion magazines of these three Western nations intersected on multiple levels and prompted the sharing of ideas (particularly on the role and space allotted to the middle and upper class woman) from a mix of national perspectives and ideologies.

VII. Conclusion: Distinguishing the National from the International

95 Harper’s Bazar, January 1876.