Vanity

Vanity (pronounced van-i-tee)

(1) An excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc; character or quality of being vain; conceit.

(2) An instance or display of this quality or feeling.

(3) Something about which one is vain or excessively proud.

(4) Lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness.

(5) Something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

(6) A small case, usually used for make-up items.

(7) A usually small dressing table used to apply makeup, preen, and coif hair. Normally quite low and similar to a desk, with drawers and one or more mirrors on top.  Often paired with a bench or stool to sit upon.

(8) A type of bathroom fitting, usually a permanently-fixed storage unit including one or more washbasins.

(9) An alternative name for a portfolio maintained as a showcase for one's own talents, especially as a writer, actor, singer, composer or model.

(10) Any idea, theory or statement entirely without foundation (UK only, now obsolete).

1200-1250: From Middle English vanite, borrowed from Old French vanité (self-conceit; futility; lack of resolve) derived from the Classical Latin vānitās (emptiness, aimlessness; falsity (and when used figuratively "vainglory, foolish pride”), root of which was vānus (empty, void (and when used figuratively "idle, fruitless”).  A more precise equivalent in Latin was probably vanitatem (emptiness, foolish pride).  Root was the primitive Indo-European wano-, the suffixed form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).  English also absorbed many synonyms and related words: egotism, complacency, vainglory, ostentation, pride, emptiness, sham, unreality, folly, triviality, futility.  Except in religious texts, the old meaning (that which is vain, futile, or worthless) faded from general use, the modern meaning (self-conceited), which endures to this day, is attested from the mid-fourteenth century.  The first reference to furniture was the vanity table, dating from 1936, a use adopted by manufacturers of bathroom fittings in the later post-war period.  The first vanity table seem to have been advertised in 1936.

The Old Testament

Vanity of vanities, said the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

The word translated as vanity appears 37 times in Ecclesiastes, more than in the entirety of the rest of the Old Testament so is clearly a theme of the text.  The meaning of vanity is used here in its original form of something that is transitory and quickly passes away.  In that it’s a literal translation of the Hebrew hebel, best understood in this context as meaning breath of wind, something which, whatever its immediate effects, is soon gone.  Unfortunately for nihilists, emos and other depressives trawling texts for anything confirming the pointlessness of life, biblical scholars agree the phrase is not an assertion that life is meaningless or that our labors in this fallen world are ultimately useless.  Instead, it’s a saying to help people put their lives in the proper perspective.  Ecclesiastes is not saying all our efforts are worthless, just observing that all we do in our three score and ten years upon this earth is but a brief prelude to our eternal existence and much of life escapes our understanding, for we cannot comprehend how everything fits into the grand story of creation.

All very poetic but, perhaps sadly, improbable.  It’s more likely the universe is a violent, doomed, swirl of matter and energy, life is pointless, right or wrong are just variable constructs, everything is meaningless and all any can hope for is a fleetingly brief false consciousness which might make us feel happy.

Vanity Fair

Published in 1678, John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of the Christian’s spiritual journey through the sins and temptations of earthly existence to the salvation of the Kingdom of Heaven; a symbolic vision of an English worthy’s pilgrimage through life.  In the village of Vanity is a perpetual fair, selling all things to satisfy all desires and Vanity Fair represents the sin of man’s attachment to and lust for transient worldly goods, a critique echoed later in secular criticisms of materialism.

Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), although making no mention of Bunyan or his work when he published Vanity Fair in 1848, could rely on his readers being well acquainted with the symbolism of the earlier allegory.  By the mid-nineteenth century when Thackeray’s portrait of British society was published, the term had become laden too with secular and class-conscious meanings, suggesting the imagery both of self-indulgent playground and the sense of that stratum of society where the only habitué are the idle and undeserving rich.  Thackeray explored both.

Lindsay Lohan. Vanity Fair Italia, August 2011

Over the years, on both sides of the Atlantic, a number of periodicals have used the masthead Vanity Fair.  The current one has its roots in Condé Nast’s purchase in 1913 of a men's fashion journal called Dress, and Vanity Fair, a magazine devoted to performing arts with an emphasis on theatre.  After a brief, unsatisfactory foray as the combined title Dress and Vanity Fair, in 1914 he re-launched as Vanity Fair and success was immediate, continuing even until well into the depression years of the 1930s.  Curiously different to the vicissitudes of the digital age, although revenue from advertising had collapsed, by the time Condé Nast in 1936 folded Vanity Fair into his companion title Vogue, circulation had reached an all-time high.  The problem was the cover price of an issue wasn’t sufficient profitably to cover production and distribution costs; advertising was essential.  In a situation familiar to newspaper publishers in their halcyon days, it wasn’t advantageous to achieve higher sales.

Condé Nast Publications revived the title, February 1983 the first issue.  Like most print publications, its advertising revenue has declined but, critically in this market, so have newsstand sales.  Its subscriber base is said to be stable but Condé Nast doesn’t release data indicating the breakdown mix and it’s thus unknown how much of this is made up from less lucrative bundled packages.  Newsstand sales of single-issue copies are a vital metric in this market, editors judged by monthly sales, a school of analysis now devoted to deconstructing the relationship between the photograph on an issue’s cover and copies sold; editorial content, while not ignored, seems less relevant.

The magazine’s future is thus uncertain as are the options were it not to continue as a distinct, stand-alone entity with a print version.  It’s a different environment from 1936 when it was absorbed into Vogue and different even to the turn of the century when Mirabella, a similar publication facing similar problems, closed.  The now well-practiced path of ceasing print production and going wholly digital may become attractive if circulation continues to suffer.  While it true Condé Nast already has digital titles which would seem to overlap with Vanity Fair, that’s less of a concern than cannibalization in print where the relationship of production and distribution costs to individual sales is different; both are marginal in gaining additional digital subscriptions.

Vanity Cases

The vanity case is an ancient accessory, one, three-thousand years old, made from inlaid cedar containing ointment, face-paint, perfume and a mirror of polished metal, was discovered during one of Howard Carter’s (1874–1939) archaeological digs.  Well known in something recognizably modern from the fourteenth century in France and Italy, they became fashionable in England only during the 1700s and then for men, as a small box called a “dressing case”, designed to fit into larger “dressing case”.

Enamel vanity case by Gérard Sandoz, Paris, circa 1927 (left) and cigarette case by Cartier, Paris, circa 1925 (right).  During the 1920s, the modern styles evolved.  Most exquisite were the art-deco creations designed as companion pieces to the cigarette cases newly fashionable with women as the social acceptability of young ladies smoking became prevalent.