Magazine

Magazine (pronounced mag-uh-zeen)

(1) A publication that is issued periodically, usually bound in a paper cover, and typically contains essays, stories, poems, etc., by many writers, and often photographs and drawings, frequently specializing in a particular subject or area, as hobbies, news, or sports.

(2) A room or place for keeping gunpowder and other explosives, as in a fort or on a warship.

(3) A building or place for keeping military stores, as arms, ammunition, or provisions.

(4) A metal receptacle for a number of bullets or cartridges, inserted into certain types of automatic and semi-automatic weapons which, when empty, is removed and replaced by a full receptacle in order to continue firing.

(5) In broad or narrowcast media (radio, TV, social etc), a production consisting of several, usually short, segments in which various subjects are examined, usually in greater detail than on a regular newscast.  In the jargon of the industry: the magazine format.

(6) A device for continuously recharging a handling system, stove or boiler with solid fuel.

(7) A storehouse or warehouse (now rare).

(8) A collection of war munitions.

(9) A rack for automatically feeding a number of slides through a projector.

(10) In film-stock photography, an alternative name for cartridge.

(11) A city regarded as a marketing centre (archaic).

1581: From the Middle French magasin (warehouse, store), from the Italian magazzino (storehouse), from the Arabic مَخَازِن‎ (makhāzin) (plural of مَخْزَن‎ (makhzan) (storehouse)) noun of place from خَزَنَ‎ (khazana) (to store, to stock, to lay up); from the same Arabic source came the Spanish almacén (warehouse) and it's an example of European languages borrowing from an Arabic in plural form to create a singular form.  The original Arabic plural مخازن (maxāzin) was from the singular noun مخزن (maxzan) (storehouse; depot; shop).  A magazinette was  a small or short magazine (in the sense of a periodic publication), based on the notion of a novella or operetta.  Such things do still exist but the term has fallen from use.  In the early days of the commercial availability of semi-automatic firearms, at least one manufacturer did label those used with handguns "magazinette", the idea being they were a small version of the "magazines" supplied with larger weapons but the four syllable suggestion seems almost instantly to have been replaced by "clip".  The informal noun describing the industry publishing magazines was magazineland.  Magazine, magaziner & magazinette are nouns and magazinelike (and magazine-like) is an adjective (magazinesque seems to be non-standard); the noun plural is magazines.

Lindsay Lohan, Vogue magazine (Spanish edition), August 2009.

The original general sense of “storehouse” is almost obsolete except for military purposes and in naval history, magazines feature frequently because their detonation (usually as a result of attack but sometimes accidents too) was often the cause of ships being sunk, often with a high death-toll.  As used to describe books figuratively as “storehouses of information”, the form emerged circa 1640, the first application to a "periodical journal" was the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731.  Over the years magazines have appeared in a variety of formats with paper stock of different sizes and quality and have been as small as a single sheet or have run to hundreds of pages.  Although high-end publications were often lavish, it was only after the 1970s that the use of glossy paper became the industry standard after for years often appearing only on covers.  In the West, the the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s were the golden decades for magazines (and newspapers), the general trend of rising prosperity and the attractiveness of the medium to advertisers meaning growth of the sector was assured and the ease with which new entrants could appear was enhanced by the rise of desktop publishing, meaning entire editions could be composed with equipment which cost a tiny faction of what was required even a generation earlier.  There was churn because many came and went and the periodic recessions claimed some but during those decades the trend was more and not less.

Jarre 10-Shot Pinfire "Harmonica" pistol with 10 chamber magazine.

The early pistols were essentially small-scale muskets with the same, single-shot capability but there was for decades a quest to find a reliable and economical to manufacture design which increased this capacity and the “harmonica” design was an early invention, breech loaded with a steel slide magazine which contained chambers for the projectiles.  The capacity was determined by the size of the magazine although, obviously, the design inherently precluded carrying one in a conventional holster were the magazine in place.  The earliest known examples date for the 1740s.

Ruger Single-Nine .22 Magnum revolver (9-round cylinder) in stainless-steel with fibre-optic front sight (left) and Desert Eagle .50 Magnum Semi-Automatic (7 round magazine) in stainless steel (right).

At various points in the nineteenth century, for volume production, the industry settled on (1) revolvers with a "revolving" cylinder containing the cartridges and (2) semi-automatics with the shells held in a magazine (or “clip”) housed usually in the grip.  The two designs each have advantages and disadvantages: In their favour, revolvers are reliable and, with fewer moving parts, are less prone to jamming, (2) are easy to use (basically “point & fire”), (3) are easy to clean and maintain, (4) are available in a variety of calibres (although the larger the bore, the lower the cylinder’s capacity, the range from 5 x .50 to 9-12 x .22) and (5) can be fired even if pressed against an object.  The drawbacks include (1) slower reloading, (2) bulk (revolvers tend to be wider and heavier due to the cylinder) and (3) many revolvers have an inherently heavier trigger pull.  Semi-automatic often offer (1) a higher capacity for a given calibre than most revolvers, (2) faster reloading (assuming one has a replacement clip), (3) a thinner profile, (3) lighter trigger pulls (especially single-action units) and (4) a remarkable range of accessories including rails for lights, lasers and optics.  The drawbacks include (1) complexity and a greater number of moving parts, thus increasing the risk of jams or misfeeds, (2) steeper learning curve for users because of the more complex construction and operation, exacerbated by there being greater structural variation between manufacturers than with revolvers, (3) greater sensitivity to exactitude in load specification and (5) if pressed against an object, the slide can slightly move, preventing fire.

The early days of the internet, when most interactions happened on desktops or laptops, appears to have had little effect on the magazine publishing industry and may even have stimulated demand but it was in the early 2010s the near simultaneous arrival at scale of bandwidth, social media and smartphones which created a vicious cycle of (1) increasing volumes of content moving from established publishers to social media & (2) the advertising revenue following the viewers who followed the content.  The decade was littered with publications which either moved on-line or folded entirely but nothing compared with the sudden hit in 2020-2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic when titles which had for a generation or more been staples of the industry ceased to be.  However, some subsequently were revived and what seems to have happened is that many non-specialist titles (such as fashion magazines) have been re-invented as niche players designed to appeal to a small market with the interests and disposable income (the famous A1 & A2 demographic) which will attract advertisers.  A kind of pre-packaging of the audiences micro-marketers crave, this segment of the magazine business can be compared with narrowcasting and for some, the glossy magazine is something desirable and just another form of technology albeit one which can be a more pleasant and more convenient way to consume content and prices has risen so such things can also be flaunted as a status symbol, the sense of exclusivity sometimes not wholly illusory because some titles do restrict certain content to their print editions.  In the West, it's unlikely the glossies will ever again be the mass-market force they once were but as the revival of vinyl records demonstrated, where ongoing demand exists for something technically obsolete, provided a business model can be found profitably to provide supply, niches can survive and thrive.

The Economist's editors' choice of the ten covers which seemed best to define 2016.  At the time, 2016 seemed a ghastly year but worse was to come. 

However, being something that looks like a glossy magazine and sits in the shop on the shelf with other magazines does not guarantee that it is a magazine.  The English weekly The Economist (published since 1843) certainly ticks all the boxes for the criteria of what most people would think constitutes a magazine yet it has always described itself as a "newspaper".  That probably seems strange to many given the structure and nature of the content is more closely aligned with other specialist publications labelled "magazines" than with almost all "newspapers".  The explanation is relates to the the way the word "newspaper" was understood in 1843 and until 1971 it was printed in a broadsheet format (the change to the modern form in no way affecting editorial content).  Just to add some typically Economistesque precision, the editor in 2016 clarified the position further by explaining "perfect-bound" publications (the binding process used) were in 1843 called "newspapers".  If that sounds a highly technical point, so it should because economics remains, by definition and habit, the publication's meat & drink and economics is a technical business.  Whether it is or can ever be a science is one of those amusing arguments in which minds are never changed.

The Economist is renowned also for its cartoons and the dry, occasionally sardonic captions which accompany the photographs and illustrations used lend color or context to articles.  A rough guide to Hell appeared on the cover of the 2012 Christmas double issue (December 2012).  Theologically dubious, as a piece predictive of the decade ahead, it proved remarkably prescient.

Politically, The Economist is best classified as belonging to "the fiscally conservative, socially liberal faction of the rational centre-right" and one perhaps surprising quirk revealed in a survey conducted by a US university was the high number of readers who turn first to the weekly obituary, the subjects of which are an eclectic lot: In addition to the expected popes, politicians & potentates, criminals, Cassanovas & courtesans and musicians, mandarins & megalomaniacs (there's some overlap with other categories), there are lives recorded which might otherwise be forgotten such as the man who spent decades gathering and storing all the typefaces used by the world's typewriters.  Nor are non-humans neglected, Alex the African Grey (science's best known parrot) & Benson (England's best-loved fish), both granted the valedictories they doubtlessly deserved.

Vogue

Vogue (pronounced vohg)

(1) Something in fashion at a particular time or in a particular place.

(2) An expression of popular currency, acceptance, or favor.

(3) A highly stylized modern dance that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene in the 1960s, the name influenced by the fashion magazine; one who practiced the dance was a voguer who was voguing.

(4) In Polari, a cigarette or to light a cigarette (often in the expression “vogue me up”).

1565–1575: From the Middle English vogue (height of popularity or accepted fashion), from the Middle French vogue (fashion, success (literally, “wave or course of success”)), from the Old French vogue (a rowing), from voguer (to row, sway, set sail), from the Old Saxon wegan (to move) & wogōn (to sway, rock), a variant of wagōn (to float, fluctuate), from the Proto-Germanic wagōną (to sway, fluctuate) and the Proto-Germanic wēgaz (water in motion), wagōną (to sway, fluctuate), wēgaz (water in motion) & weganą (to move, carry, weigh), from the primitive Indo-European weǵh- (to move, go, transport (and an influence on the English way).  The forms were akin to the Old Saxon wegan (to move), the Old High German wegan (to move), the Old English wegan (to move, carry, weigh), the Old Norse vaga (to sway, fluctuate), the Old English wagian (to sway, totter), the Proto-West Germanic wagōn, the German Woge (wave) and the Swedish våg.  A parallel development the Germanic forms was the Spanish boga (rowing) and the Old Italian voga (a rowing), from vogare (to row, sail), of unknown origin and the Italianate forms were probably some influence on the development of the verb.  Vogue & voguer are nouns (voguette an informal noun), voguing is a noun and adjective, vogued is a verb and vogueing & voguish are adjectives; the noun plural is vogues.

All etymologists seem to concur the modern meaning is from the notion of being "borne along on the waves of fashion" and colloquially the generalized sense of "fashion, reputation" is probably from the same Germanic source.  The phrase “in vogue” (having a prominent place in popular fashion) was recorded as long ago as 1643.  The fashion magazine (now owned by Condé Nast) began publication in 1892 and the young devotees of its advice are voguettes.  In linguistics, vogue words are those words & phrases which become suddenly (although not always neologisms) popular and fade from use or becoming clichéd or hackneyed forms (wardrobe malfunction; awesome; problematic; at this point in time; acid test; in this space; parameters; paradigm et al).  Because it’s so nuanced, vogue has no universal synonym but words which tend to the same meaning (and can in some circumstances be synonymous) include latest, mod, now, rage, chic, craze, currency, custom, fad, favor, mode, popularity, practice, prevalence, style, stylishness, thing, trend & usage.

Lindsay Lohan cover, Vogue (Spanish edition), August 2009.

In Cornwall, the hamlet of Vogue in the parish of St Day gained its name from the Medieval Cornish vogue word for a medieval smelting furnace (blowing house); producing much smoke, vogue was also a word used to mean “fog or mist”.  Clearly better acquainted with law than geography, in early 2022 counsel for Condé Nast sent a cease and desist letter to the inn-keeper of the village’s The Star Inn at Vogue pub, demanding the place change its name to avoid any public perception of a connection between the two businesses.  The pub’s owners declined the request and Condé Nast subsequently apologized, citing insufficient investigation by their staff.

1981 Range Rover In Vogue from the first run with the standard stylized steel wheels (left) and a later 1981 In Vogue with the three-spoke aluminum units.

Much of the 1970s was spent in what to many felt like a recession, even if there were only some periods in some places during which the technical definition was fulfilled and the novel phenomenon of stagflation did disguise some of the effects.  Less affected than most (of course) were the rich who had discovered a new status-symbol, the Range Rover which, introduced in 1970 had essentially created the luxury four-wheel-drive (4WD) segment although the interior of the original was very basic, the car’s reputation based on the excellence of the engineering.  So good was the Range Rover, both on and off-road that owners, used to being cosseted in leather and walnut, wanted something closer to that to which they were accustomed and dealers received enquiries about an up-market version.

Lindsay Lohan at the opening of the Ninety years of Vogue covers exhibition, Crillon Hotel, Paris, 2009.

That had been Rover’s original intention.  The plan had been to release a basic version powered by four cylinder engines and a luxury edition with a V8 but by 1970 time and development funds had run out so the car was released with the V8 power-train and an interior so utilitarian it could be hosed out, something which was touted as a competitive advantage although it’s doubtful it was a feature many owners chose to exploit.  However, if the rich were riding out the decade well, British Leyland (which owned Rover) was not and it lacked the resources to devote to the project.  Others took advantage of what proved a profitable niche and the rich could choose from a variety of limited-production and bespoke offerings including long-wheelbase models, four-door conversions, six wheelers and even open-topped versions from a variety of coach-builders such as Wood & Pickett and low-volume manufacturers like Switzerland’s Monteverdi which anticipated the factory by a number of years with their four-door coachwork.

Rendez-vous à Biarritz, Vogue magazine, March 1981.

However, British Leyland was soon subject to one of the many re-organizations which would seek (without success) to make it a healthy corporation and one consequence was increased autonomy for the division making Range Rovers.  No longer forced to subsidize less profitable arms of the business, attention was turned to the matter of a luxury model, demand for which clearly existed.  To test market reaction, in late 1980, the factory collaborated with Wood & Pickett to design a specially-equipped two-door model as a proof-of-concept exercise to gauge market reaction.  The prototype (HAC 414W) was lent to Vogue magazine, a crafty choice given the demographic profile of the readership and the by then well-known extent of women’s own purchasing power and influence on that of their husbands.  Vogue took the prototype to Biarritz to be the photographic backdrop for the images taken for the magazine’s co-promotion of the 1981 Lancôme and Jaeger fashion collections, published in an eight-page advertising spread entitled Rendez-vous à Biarritz in the March 1981 edition.  The response was remarkable and while Lancôme and Jaeger’s launch attracted polite attention, Vogue’s mailbox (which then was letters in envelopes with postage stamps) was overwhelmingly filled with enquiries about the blinged-up Range-Rover.

Vogue's Range Rover In Vogue (HAC 414W) in Biarritz, 1981, all nuts on board or otherwise attached.

Rover had expected demand to be strong and the reaction to the Vogue spread justified their decision to prepare for a production run even before publication and the Range Rover In Vogue went on sale early in 1981, the limited-edition run all replicas of the photo shoot car except for the special aluminum wheels.  The three-spoke wheels (based on the design Ford had used on the 1979 (Fox) Mustang) had actually proved a problem in Biarritz, the factory supplying the wrong lug nuts which had a tendency to fall off, meaning the staff travelling with the car had to check prior to each shoot to ensure five were present on each wheel which would appear in the picture.  Not until later in the year would the wheels be ready so the In Vogue’s went to market with the standard stylized steel units, meaning the brochures had to be pulped and reprinted with new photographs.  Quite how many were made remains unclear.  The factory said 1000 would be built, all in right hand drive (RHD) but many left hand drive (LHD) examples seem to exist and it’s thought demand from the continent was such that another batch was built although this has never been confirmed.  The In Vogue’s exclusive features were:

Light blue metallic (the model-exclusive Vogue Blue) paint with twin broad coach-lines in two-tone grey
High-compression (9.35:1) V8 engine
Transfer box with taller (0.996:1) high ratio
Air conditioning
Polished-wood door cappings
Stowage box between front seats
Map pockets on back of front seats
Fully carpeted load area
Carpeted spare wheel cover and tool kit curtain
Custom picnic hamper mounted in rear load-space
Stainless steel tailgate capping
Black centre caps for the wheels

Condé Nast would later describe the In Vogue’s custom picnic hamper as the car’s piece de resistance.  Demand for the In Vogue far exceeded supply and production runs of various volumes followed before the Vogue in 1984 became the regular production top-of-the-range model for many years (although when sold in the US it was called the Country).  For both companies, the In Vogue (and the subsequent Vogues) turned out to be the perfect symbiosis.

Vogue, January 1925, cover art by Georges Lepape.

From the start, Vogue was of course about frocks, shoes and such but its influence extended over the years to fields as diverse as interior decorating and industrial design.  The work of Georges Lepape (1887-1971) has long been strangely neglected in the history of art deco but he was a fine practitioner whose reputation probably suffered because his compositions have always been regarded as derivative or imitative which seems unfair given there are many who are more highly regarded despite being hardly original.  His cover art for Vogue’s edition of 1 January 1925 juxtaposed one of French artist Sonia Delaunay’s (1885–1979) "simultaneous" pattern dresses and a Voisin roadster decorated with an art deco motif.

One collector in 2015 was so taken with Pepape’s image that when refurbishing his 1927 Voisin C14 Lumineuse (literally “light”, an allusion to the Voisin’s greenhouse-inspired design which allowed natural light to fill the interior), he commissioned Dutch artist Bernadette Ramaekers to hand-paint a geometric triangular pattern in sympathy with that on the Vogue cover in 1925.  Ms Ramaekers toook six months to complete the project and the car is now being offered at auction.

Voisin's extraordinary visions:  1934 C27 Aérosport (left), 1934-1935 Voisin C25 Aérodynes (centre) & 1931 C20 Mylord Demi Berline (right).

There are few designers as deserving of such a tribute as French aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin (1880–1973) who made military aircraft during the First World War (1914-1918) and, under the name Avions Voisin, produced a remarkable range of automobiles between 1919-1939, encapsulating thus the whole inter-war period and much of the art deco era.  Because his designs were visually so captivating, much attention has always been devoted to his lines, curves and shapes but the underlying engineering was also interesting although some of his signature touches, like the (briefly in vogue) sleeve valve engine, proved a mirage.  Also a cul-de-sac was his straight-12 engine.  Slow-running straight-12 (there is even a straight-14 which displaces 25,340 litres (1,546,000 cubic inches) and produces 107,290 hp (80,080 kW)) engines are known at sea where they’re used in big container ships but on the road (apart from some less than successful military vehicles), only Voisin and Packard ever attempted them, the former making two, the latter, one.  Voisin’s concept was simple enough; it was two straight-6s joined together, end-on-end, the same idea many had used to make things like V12s (2 x V6s) straight-8s (2 x straight-4s) H16s (two flat-8s, one atop another) and even V24s (2 x V12s) but the sheer length of a straight-12 in a car presented unique problems in packaging and the management of the torsional vibrations induced by the elongated crankshaft.

1934 Voisin C15 Saloit Roadster.

The length of the straight-12 meant an extraordinary amount of the vehicle’s length had to be devoted to housing just the engine and that resulted in a high number for what designers call the dash-to-axle ratio.  That was one of the many reasons the straight-12 never came into vogue and indeed was one of the factors which doomed the straight-8, a configuration which at least had some redeeming features.  Voisin must however have liked the appearance of the long hood (bonnet) because the striking C15 Saloit Roadster (which could have accommodated a straight-12) was powered by a straight-4, a sleeve valve Knight of 2500 cm³ (153 cubic inch).  The performance doubtlessly didn’t live up to the looks but so sensuous were those looks that many would forgive the lethargy.

Using one of his trademark outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler SP250, wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.  The image appeared on the cover (left) of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959, the original's (right) color being "enhanced" in the Vogue pre-production editing tradition (women thinner, cars shinier).  The "wide" whitewall tyres were a thing at the time, even on sports cars and were a popular option on US market Jaguar E-Types (there (unofficially) called XK-E or XKE) in the early 1960s.  The car on the Vogue cover was XHP 438, built on prototype chassis 100002 at Compton Verney in 1959; it's the oldest surviving SP250, the other two prototypes (chassis 100000 & 100001 from 1958) dismantled when testing was completed.  XHP 438 was the factory's press demonstrator and was used in road tests by Motor and Autocar magazines before being re-furbished (motoring journalists subjecting the press fleet to a brief but hard life) and sold.

More Issues Than Vogue sweatshirt from Impressions.

The Daimler SP250 was first shown to the public at the 1959 New York Motor Show and there the problems began.  Aware the little sports car was quite a departure from the luxurious but rather staid line-up Daimler had for years offered, the company had chosen the pleasingly alliterative “Dart” as its name, hoping it would convey the sense of something agile and fast.  Unfortunately, Chrysler’s lawyers were faster still, objecting that they had already registered Dart as the name for a full-sized Dodge so Daimler needed a new name and quickly; the big Dodge would never be confused with the little Daimler but the lawyers insisted.  Imagination apparently exhausted, Daimler’s management reverted to the engineering project name and thus the car became the SP250 which was innocuous enough even for Chrysler's attorneys and it could have been worse.  Dodge had submitted their Dart proposal to Chrysler for approval and while the car found favor, the name did not and the marketing department was told to conduct research and come up with something the public would like.  From this the marketing types gleaned that “Dodge Zipp” would be popular and to be fair, dart and zip(p) do imply much the same thing but ultimately the original was preferred and Darts remained in Dodge’s lineup until 1976, for most of that time one of the corporation's best-selling and most profitable lines.  The name was revived between 2012-2016 for an unsuccessful and unlamented compact sedan.

Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (pronounced koz-muh-pol-i-tn)

(1) One free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; an internationalist.

(2) One with the characteristics of a cosmopolite.

(3) A cocktail made with vodka, cranberry juice, an orange-flavored liqueur, and lime juice.

(4) Sophisticated, urbane, worldly.

(5) Of plants and animals, wildly distributed species.

(6) Common name for the vanessa cardui butterfly. 

1828:  An adoption in Modern English, borrowed from the French cosmopolite (citizen of the world), ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek kosmopolitēs (κοσμοπολίτης), the construct being kósmos (κόσμος) (world) + politēs (πολίτης) (citizen); word being modeled on metropolitan.  The US magazine Cosmopolitan was first published in 1886.

An aspect of Soviet Cold War policy under comrade Stalin

The phrase rootless cosmopolitans was coined in the nineteenth century by Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848), a Russian literary critic much concerned about Western influences on both Russian literature and society.  He applied it to writers he felt “…lacked Russian national character” but as a pejorative euphemism, it’s now an anti-Semitic slur and one most associated with domestic policy in the Soviet Union (USSR) between 1946 and comrade Stalin’s death in 1953.  Stalin (1878–1953; leader of the USSR 1922–1953) liked the phrase and applied it to the Jews, a race of which he was always suspicious because he thought their lack of a homeland made them “mystical, intangible and other-worldly”.  Not a biological racist like Hitler and other rabid anti-Semites, Stalin’s enemies were those he perceived a threat; Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) and Lev Kamenev (1883–1936) were disposed of not because they were Jewish but because Stalin thought they might threaten his hold on power although the point has been made that while it wasn’t because he was Jewish that Trotsky was murdered, many Jews would come to suffer because Stalin associated them with Trotsky.

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

It was the same with institutions.  He found disturbing the activities of Moscow’s Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and did not approve them being accepted by Western governments as representing the USSR.  Further, he feared the JAC’s connections with foreign powers might create a conduit for infiltration by Western influences; well Stalin knew the consequences of people being given ideas; the campaign of 1946-1953 was thus more analogous with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) opposition to the Falun Gong rather than the pogroms of Tsarist times.  Authoritarian administrations don’t like independent organisations; politics needs to be monolithic and control absolute.  In a speech in Moscow in 1946, he described certain Jewish writers and intellectuals, as “rootless cosmopolitans” accusing them of a lack of patriotism, questioning their allegiance to the USSR.  This theme festered but it was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, fostering as it did an increased self consciousness among Soviet Jews, combined with the Cold War which turned Stalin into a murderous anti-Semite.

Rootless cosmopolitan Comrade Trotsky, murdered with an ice axe on comrade Stalin's orders.

Before the formation of the state of Israel, Stalin's anti-Semitism was more a Russian mannerism than any sort of obsession.  For years after assuming absolute power in the USSR, he expressed no disquiet at the preponderance of Jews in the foreign ministry and it was only in 1939, needing a temporary diplomatic accommodation with Nazi Germany, that he acted.  Having replaced the Jewish Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union 1930–1939) with Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986; USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), he ordered him to purge the diplomatic corps of Jews, his memorable phrase being "clean out the synagogue".  Concerned the presence of Jews might be an obstacle to rapprochement with Hitler, Stalin had the purge effected with his usual efficiency: many were transferred to less conspicuous roles and others were arrested or shot.

Meeting of minds: Joachim von Ribbentrop (left), comrade Stalin (centre) and comrade Molotov (right), the Kremlin, 23 August 1939.

Negotiations began in the summer of 1939, concluding with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) leading a delegation to Moscow to meet with Molotov and Stalin.  It proved a remarkably friendly conference of political gangsters and agreement was soon reached, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (usually called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) being signed on 23 August.  The pact contained also a notorious secret protocol by which the two dictators agreed to a carve-up of Poland consequent upon the impending Nazi invasion and the line dividing Poland between the two was almost identical to the Curzon Line, a demarcation between the new Polish Republic created in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) and the emergent Soviet Union which had been proposed by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; UK foreign secretary 1919-1924).  At the Yalta Conference in 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually referred to "the Curzon Line" and the UK Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed it was more common practice to call it the “Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  "Call it whatever you like" replied Stalin, "we still think it's fair and just".  Comrade Stalin rarely cared much to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.  When asked by Franklin Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) if Molotov had been to New York during his visit to the US, Stalin replied: "No, he went to Chicago to be with the other gangsters".

Whatever the motives of Stalin, rootless cosmopolitans has joined the code of dog-whistle politics, a part of the core demonology to label the Jews a malign race, a phrase in the tradition of Christ killer, Rothschild-Capitalist and Untermenschen (the sub-humans).  Despite that, there are always optimists, Jewish writer Vincent Brook (b 1946), suggesting the term could convey the positive, a suggestion the Jews possess an “adaptability and empathy for others”.  It’s not a view widely shared and rootless cosmopolitan remains an anti-Semitic trope although it's not unknown for Jews to use it ironically.

Lindsay Lohan, Cosmopolitan, various international editions: April, May & June, 2006.

Cosmopolitan Magazine was launched in 1886 as a family journal of fashion, household décor, cooking, and other domestic interests.  It survived in a crowded market but its publisher did not and within two years Cosmopolitan was taken over by another which added book reviews and serialized fiction to the content.  This attracted the specialist house founded by John Brisben Walker (1847-1931), which assumed control in 1889, expanding its circulation twenty-fold to become one of America’s most popular literary magazines.  The Hurst Corporation acquired the title in 1905, briefly adding yellow-journalism before settling on a format focused on short fiction, celebrities and public affairs.  The formula proved an enduring success, circulation reaching two million by 1940 and this was maintained until a decline began in the mid 1950s, general-interest magazines being squeezed out by specialist titles and the time-consuming steamroller of television.

It was the appointment in 1965 of Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) as editor which signalled Cosmopolitan’s shift to a magazine focused exclusively on an emerging and growing demographic with high disposable income: the young white women of the baby boom.  In what proved a perfect conjunction, a target market with (1) economic independence, (2) social freedom, (3) an embryonic feminist awareness and (4) the birth control pill, the magazine thrived, surviving even the rush of imitators its success spawned.  Gurley Brown had in 1962 published the best seller advice manual, Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan essentially, for decades, reproduced variations on the theme in a monthly, glossy package.  It was clearly a gap in the market.  The approach was a success but there was criticism.  Conservatives disliked the choices in photography and the ideas young women were receiving.  Feminists were divided, some approved but others thought the themes regressive, a retreat from the overtly political agenda of the early movement into something too focused on fun and fashion, reducing women yet again to objects seeking male approbation.

Still published in many international editions, Cosmopolitan Australia was one casualty of market forces, closed after a final printing in December 2018.  However, surprising many, Katarina Kroslakova (b 1978) in April 2024 announced her publishing house KK Press, in collaboration with New York-based Hearst Magazines International, would resume production of Cosmopolitan Australia as a bi-monthly, the first edition of the relaunched version scheduled for release in August 2024.  Other than appearing in six issues per year rather than the traditional twelve, the format is expected to be much the same, echoing Elle Australia which reappeared on newsstands in March, ending a four-year hiatus.  Both revivals would have surprised industry analysts as recently as 2023 when the conventional wisdom was the post-Covid, social media age was no longer the place for time consuming and expensive glossy titles.  Ms Kroslakova clearly sees a business model and was quoted as saying print magazines are “the new social media” which was an interesting way of putting it but she explained the appeal by adding: “We need that 15 minutes to drop everything and actually have something tangible and beautiful in our hands to consume.  If we can present content which is multi-layered and deep and has authenticity and connection with the reader – that’s a really excellent starting point.”  She may have a point because in an age where screen-based content is intrinsically impermanent, the tactile pleasure of the traditional glossy may have genuine appeal, at least for an older readership who can remember the way things used to be done, something perhaps hinted at by her “15 minutes” reference, now regarded by many media analysts as a long-term connection.  The revival of the print editions of Elle and Cosmopolitan will be an interesting experiment in a difficult economic environment which may get worse before it gets better.  Whether the novelty will attract enough of the "affluent readers" (what used to be called the A1, A2 & B1 demographic) to convince advertisers that it's a place to run their copy will likely decide the viability of the venture and while it's not impossible that will happen, Cosmopolitan is a couple of points down from the "prestige" titles which have maintained an advertising base.   

Whitewall

Whitewall (pronounced hwahyt-wawl or wahyt-wawl)

(1) A tyre (or tire), almost always pneumatic, with a sidewall with a white circular line of varying widths.

(2) Having white sidewalls (of a tyre).

(3) In US military use, a hair cut with a closely cropped back and sides and the hair on the top of the head left longer.

(4) In UK dialect (Northamptonshire), the spotted flycatcher (the bird so-called because of the white color of the under parts).

1950–1955: The construct was white + (side)wall.  White pre-dates 900 and was from the Middle English whit & hwit, from the Old English hwīt (whiteness, white food, white of an egg (and in late Old English “a highly luminous color devoid of chroma”)), from the Proto-West Germanic hwīt, from the Proto-Germanic hwītaz, from the primitive Indo-European ḱweydós, a by-form of ḱweytós (bright; shine). It was cognate with the German weiss, the Old Norse hvītr and the Gothic hweits; akin to wheat.  The idea of the “whites of the eye” was known in the late fourteenth century while the use of the term “white man” emerged in the late 1600s.  Wall pre-dates 900 and was from the Middle English wal, from the Old English weall (wall, dike, earthwork, rampart, dam, rocky shore, cliff), from the Proto-West Germanic wall (wall, rampart, entrenchment), from the Latin vallum (wall, rampart, entrenchment, palisade), from vallus (stake, post), from the primitive Indo-European welH- (to turn, wind, roll).  It was likely conflated with waw (a wall within a house or dwelling, a room partition), from the Middle English wawe, from the Old English wāg & wāh (an interior wall, divider).  It was cognate with the North Frisian wal (wall), the Saterland Frisian Waal (wall, rampart, mound), the Dutch wal (wall, rampart, embankment), the German Wall (rampart, mound, embankment) and the Swedish vall (mound, wall, bank”).  The forms white wall & white-wall are also used.  Whitewall is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is whitewalls.

Wide whitewalls on 1953 Packard Caribbean Convertible (left), narrow whitewalls on 1967 Mercedes-Benz 600 (centre) and triple whitewalls on 1966 Cadillac Coupe De Ville (right) (there were also double whitewalls).

Whitewall tyres became available in the early years of the twentieth century but it wasn’t until the 1930s they became a noted feature on luxury cars sold in the US and, in the way these things work, they were soon also an option on lower-priced models although, being relatively expensive and offering no functionality, the take-up rate was low.  The very existence of the whitewall was, stylistically, something of a throwback because the earliest pneumatic tyres were an off-white, the color of the natural rubber formula and the manufacturers soon added a zinc oxide to the mix for no reason other than producing a bright white which was more appealing in showrooms.  Given the unsealed roads of the era, the stark white didn’t long last in use and tyres quickly degenerated to a “dirty beige” and although “tyre cleaning” products were available, it was a sisyphean task and presumably few persisted.  In 1910 the BF Goodrich Company began adding carbon black to its various formulae after tests confirmed this added strength and durability to the rubber.  Rapidly the technique was adopted by the industry although because carbon black was an additional input cost, some tyres were produced with the additive used only for the portion of the rubber used for the tread surface, meaning the sidewalls remained white.  The first whitewalls were thus a product of cost-cutting and it’s an irony the look would more than a decade later be picked up as a marker of wealth and luxury although the commercial “whitewalls” would be a strip of white rubber added during the manufacturing process to an all-black carcass.  As a “discovery” the whitewall can be thought serendipitous.

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Whitewall magazine, Fall / Autumn 2012 edition.  The photograph was Lindsay Lohan V by Richard Phillips (b 1962).  By magazine standards, the predominately black & grey cover was unusually dark but this was a deliberate editorial choice.  New York-based Whitewall magazine was founded in 2006 by Michael Klug (b 1978) who remains publisher & editor at large.  Whitewall is described as a publication for creative communities, bringing together art, design, fashion & lifestyle, with a focus on sustainability and diversity, offering a platform for the queer, trans and those identifying as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Color).

Raised-letter tyre on 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 (left) and red-line (later, there would be blue-line, yellow-line etc) tyre on 1966 Pontiac GTO (right).  The BF Goodrich Radial T/A (left) was valued by road-racers because it was discovered as the tread wore it behaved with characteristics which were similar to a racing "slick".  For a while, worn T/A Radials became a handy revenue earner for tyre shops.

The whitewall became more popular in the late 1940s until the Korean War (1950-1953) caused a squeeze on rubber supplies but once the peacetime returned, so did the whitewall and the width grew, often measuring 2½-3 inches (65-75 mm), something made possible by the physical size of tyre sidewalls increasing during the 1950s.  The perception now is the fashion was very much a US taste and while there’s some truth in that, American culture in the 1950s exerted a great influence and whitewalls were seen in Europe, Australia and Japan and for some reason the Italian fashion magazines seemed particularly taken with them for their photo-shoots.  Curiously, the US industry seemed to lose interest in whitewalls between 1961-1963, just as the wild fins of the era suddenly vanished although there was a period of transition, the “standard” whitewall shrinking to a width of 1 inch (25 mm) and sometimes less.  During the 1960s, although whitewalls remained a fixture on the more up-market mainstream vehicles the preferred look for high-performance machinery (it was the “muscle-car” era) was the “raised letter” tyre which spelled out the manufacturer’s name and often model of tyre, the free advertising greatly pleasing.  At the same time, the muscle car circle developed a taste for “red-line” tyres” which featured a thin red strip.

US actress Mamie Van Doren (b 1931) cleaning her Jaguar XK120 OTS (open two seater (ie roadster) 1948-1954), paying special attention to the whitewall tyres.  For those who need advice on such matters, Longstone Tyres has published a guide.

In the collector community there are factions for whom whitewalls are a thing (for some, verging on a fetish) and according to these experts, the most common mistake is to use a product like ArmorAll’s various tyre cleaners (ArmorAll’s stuff usually a good choice for many surfaces) which, because of the chemical composition, tend to draw the carbon from the black rubber of the tyres, permanently staining the whitewalls with a yellowish hue.  For generations the preferred cleaning product was Westley’s Bleche Wite but, after a corporate takeover, the ingredients were in some way changed and the reputation suffered, the product later replaced.  Among disgruntled ex-customers, the theories explaining all this included corporate greed and some (unspecified) intervention by the EPA (Environmental protection Authority).  Containers of Westley’s Bleche Wite (those with the original chemical composition) now trade on the internet at multiples of their original price, in the manner of bottles of “original” Absinthe dating from the days when it was in many places banned although, unlike the “green fairy”, most of the cleaning spray is probably authentic.  There seems not now a consensus about what’s the nest cleaning product and some even suggest good results can be obtained by using a mix of baking soda or plain white toothpaste with warm water.

Sir William Lyons (1901–1985) presenting the Jaguar E-Type to the press pack, Geneva, March 1961 (left) and a 1961 publicity shot for the US market release (right).  In the US market, Jaguar had long made the whitewalls optional for the XK sports cars but there, most of the E-Type's (often called XK-E or XKE in the US) publicity material featured whitewalls.  The fad soon faded although narrow whitewalls were still available until 1975 when the last E-Types were sold.

Using one of his trademark outdoor settings, Norman Parkinson (1913-1990) photographed model Suzanne Kinnear (b 1935) adorning a Daimler SP250, wearing a Kashmoor coat and Otto Lucas beret with jewels by Cartier.  The image was published on the cover (left) of Vogue's UK edition in November 1959, the original's (right) color saturation being "enhanced" in pre-production editing; Vogue's artists made models thinner and cars shinier.  Although never quite as popular in Australia, the UK & Europe as they were in the US, whitewalls until the 1980s were not a rare sight in these places and buyers were seduced also by that other American intrusion, the vinyl roof, something more of a crime against good taste than any whitewall.

1952 Ferrari 212 (which the factory supplied with an up-rated 225 engine) Barchetta by Touring Superleggera (left) and 1974 Mercedes-Benz R107 (450 SL).

The Ferrari was a gift from Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) to Henry Ford II (1917–1987) and was the last non-racing Ferrari bodied by coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera.  The whitewall tyres were fitted especially for US delivery and Ford used the car during its evaluation process for the 1955 Thunderbird which picked up styling cues including the hood (bonnet) scoop and egg crate grille.  The Mercedes-Benz 450 SL illustrates just how jarring whitewalls can be if used on vehicles not suited to their presence.  On the early R107s (1971-1989) and C107s (the SLC, 1971 1981), thin whitewalls were sometime fitted to US market cars and even then there was comment about they really didn’t suit.  On the 450 SL pictured, the error is compounded by the fitting of the “chrome” wheel arch trims.  This was an unfortunate trend (which spread also to Jaguar, BMW and beyond) which began with their appearance in 1963 on the Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) but on the original they were of metal whereas the aftermarket ones were almost always anodized plastic.