The January Vogue has a neat retro 1960s feel thanks to the “Youthquake 2010” banner headline and a wide array of stories and pictures focusing on the way pop culture and fashion are mixing today. It’s a breath of fresh youthful air that will introduce the magazine’s readers to bands such as Vampire Weekend (above), The Horrors and Chester French (bottom); rising actors Aaron Tveit and Carey Mulligan; and the hot L.A. chef Travis Lett.
It was Vogue under the leadership of Diana Vreeland in the 1960s that helped shepherd the counterculture into the mainstream when the brilliant and eccentric editor decided to youthen up a somewhat stodgy magazine.
Vreeland coined the term “Youthquake” when she took over Vogue in 1963. She was referencing the pop culture boom in England — fueled by the young and the hip — that was revolutionizing film (“Tom Jones,” “From Russia with Love”), music (The Beatles) and fashion (Twiggy, Mary Quant).
Within a few years, however, the “Youthquake” would be shaking this country’s pop world down to its foundation thanks to the San Francisco music (and hippie) scene; what was happening in downtown Manhattan with Andy Warhol and his followers (below); and the Woodstock music festival in 1969.
Because the massive baby boom generation was just moving into its teens, there were major commercial considerations at work in a shift to stories and photos aimed at much young readers than the mass circulation magazines of a decade earlier.
In place of the stars of the previous generation who tended to be in their 30s or 40s at the peak of their fame (Doris Day, John Wayne), most of the “Youthquake” stars were in their 20s.
Vreeland risked alienating her older readers when she put Twiggy and Edie Sedgwick on the cover of Vogue in the 1960s, but she brought new consumers into the tent.
Vreeland had photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn turn their lenses on The Beatles, Barbra Streisand and Mia Farrow among other icons of that long ago era.
The baby boomers have been more or less in charge of pop culture for the past 40 years, but that is all changing thanks to aging and new technologies that much of the over-50 crowd still can’t get their heads around.
The current youth generation might not be as big as the baby boomer demo — or have its 1960s and 1970s buying power — but they have a new and immense pop culture networking clout that they are literally holding in their hands.
How smart of Vogue and photographers Steven Meisel and Norman Jean Roy to recognize a major cultural shift in the January issue of the brand new decade.
