The Woman
A biography of Jessica Daves (1894-1974) partially excerpted and adapted from the book, “1950s in Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962,” by Rebecca C. Tuite. Includes a full and complete list of publications authored by Jessica Daves herself.
— JESSICA DAVES —
Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, 1952-1962
A biography of Jessica Daves partially excerpted and adapted from the book, 1950s In Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962 by Rebecca C. Tuite (Thames & Hudson, 2019). All text copyright © Rebecca C. Tuite, 2021.
Early Life
““If I had not been valedictorian my parents simply would not have understood it.””
Jessie Daves (as she was known in childhood and the early days of her career, and would continue to be called by her husband, friends, and longstanding industry colleagues) was born in Cartersville, Georgia, to a highly educated and religious family. Daves’s grandfather, Isaac S. Hopkins (1841–1914), was an Emory graduate, a physics professor, Emory President (1884–88), the first President of Georgia Tech University (1888–96), and a Methodist minister; while both Daves’s mother, Annie (Hopkins) Daves, and grandmother, Mary Hinton, were early graduates of Wesleyan College (Class of 1881 and 1868, respectively). Daves was one of seven children, including a brother, Francis Daves, who would go on to become a well-known Atlanta-based architect.
A consistently excellent student, she was, unsurprisingly, valedictorian of her high school class, and went on to attend Agnes Scott College. Following her graduation from Agnes Scott, Daves spent a brief two years as a schoolteacher back in Cartersville. However, remaining staunchly confident in her conviction that she wanted to write advertising copy, Daves took up a position as an advertising copywriter in Detroit. Not too long after this move to Michigan, however, a visit to Manhattan to spend time with her librarian aunt, Jessica Hopkins, would change everything.
Manhattan Calls
““[Jessica Daves has] been excited about clothes and created excitement about them ever since she came to New York from Atlanta and began to work for Mary Lewis at Best and Company. Her eagle eye and calm authority... made her an international fashion power.””
Daves moved to New York City in 1921, and landed a copywriting position at Best & Co. Daves then progressed to copywriter and director of fashion promotion at Kurzman, before finally taking a position in the same fashion promotion role at Saks Fifth Avenue. Daves swiftly established herself as an industry expert, so much so that in 1928, she was one of the seventeen women, along with Eleanor Roosevelt and Carmel Snow, that then-Vogue editor-in-chief, Edna Woolman Chase, had invited to the Mary Elizabeth Tea Room to form what would become the Fashion Group International. Personally, too, Daves was fortunate in New York: In 1930, she married the writer (and, at the time, secretary of the Pulitzer Prize board) Robert Allerton Parker.
A Vogue Idea
While working at Saks Fifth Avenue, Daves met Marion Taylor, Vogue’s merchandise editor, who offered her a job writing advertisements at Vogue. It was the editor-in-chief, Edna Woolman Chase, who invited Daves to join Vogue’s editorial department in 1933, giving her the position of a fashion merchandise editor, with a particular responsibility for the footwear market. In 1936, Daves became managing editor, spending a decade in the role before being promoted to what she called “active editor.” At this point, Daves became the head of the office the majority of the time, since Chase, while credited as editor-in-chief of all three editions of Vogue (U.S., U.K., and Paris) and still wielding power, was spending more and more time away from the office though not yet officially retired from the masthead. Finally, in 1952, Daves’s nineteen years at Vogue and some twelve years of copywriting and fashion promotion officially earned her the editor-in-chief’s office at 420 Lexington Avenue.
““In our fashion merchandising department there were several able women, but the one on whom I began calling most frequently for editorial discussions was Jessica Daves. No matter how late I was in my office (and I was often very late) I could always find Miss Daves in hers. She had the same love for the job that I had, and I found I could talk over all my problems with her. Shortly after Carmel left [for Harper’s Bazaar] I asked Jessica to come into the editorial department, and I began to count on her more and more. She had an excellent pen, wrote not only good advertising and promotion copy, but had original and practical ideas as well.” ”
Editor-In-Chief
““Sharpen your perception of what people need and want. This will give you ideas.””
As editor-in-chief of Vogue, Daves and her team kept a mission of “service” firmly in mind. New “service-oriented” developments in fashion reporting included Daves writing her own bi-annual Paris fashion reports and becoming the first editor to truly embrace a “high/low” blend of fashions in Vogue’s pages. In marketing and merchandising innovations, Daves’s Vogue served the industry and the general readership. Prior to assuming the editor-in-chief’s office, Daves had created the store guide (a small, front-of-book section in the advance trade edition that directly addressed retailers, offering inspiration and advice on how to sell the clothes featured in the issue, and detailing precisely when featured items would be available across the country) and this “How to Use This Issue of Vogue” feature would continue to flourish through the 1950s. Daves also broke new ground in her work to facilitate communication between all sectors to ensure the timely availability and delivery of fashion. For the industry at large, Daves’s Vogue upheld the advertiser-heavy “Must-List,” liaised with Seventh Avenue retailers, designers and companies to continue to improve business, and boldly supported fashion and beauty brands in some iconic advertising and advertorial plans. Vogue also showcased enhanced “buyer’s guides,” maintained and honed the “Shop Hound” advertorial section, and debuted new, user-friendly layouts, where accurate prices and store information appeared directly on the page in smart captions next to the clothing.
““[Jessica Daves] went beyond reporting on fashion to enrich women’s minds with articles of intellectual interest. She wanted the magazine to reflect her feeling that a woman’s world was not just frills and clothes, but included many substantial concerns.””
Beyond the more business-oriented developments, however, Daves also worked tirelessly to ensure the magazine was a “vehicle to educate public taste.” This included, of course, featuring fashion photography and illustration by some of the most iconic twentieth-century figures (including Erwin Blumenfeld, Henry Clarke, Horst P. Horst, William Klein, Clifford Coffin, Norman Parkinson and John Rawlings, to name but a few). However, this new high standard in Vogue’s pages was also achieved by elevating the written content of the magazine: Daves’s diversification of the kinds of stories, writers, artists, actors, and political figures featured in the magazine created a new cultural landscape for Vogue.
Life After Vogue
““If you systematically expose yourself only to the best, ultimately you will find yourself responding only to the best.””
Immediately after exiting Vogue, Daves maintained a desk and a secretary at Condé Nast, and first across her new desk was the job of editing, with Alexander Liberman and two editors from Viking Press, a seventy-year anthology of the best in Vogue’s history, The World in Vogue (1963). This book was quickly followed by The Vogue Book of Menus and Recipes for Entertaining at Home (1964), which she edited with Vogue contributing editor, Tatiana McKenna. That same year, Daves also launched a newspaper column in the Chicago Tribune, called “The Sophisticated Slant,” co-written with Candace A. VanAlen, who had been a contributing editor to Vogue in the late fifties and sixties.
From 1964 until the following year, Daves was President of the Fashion Group International, and she would also publish a survey of the Paris collections between 1947 and 1967 for the Group (1967). Also in 1967, Daves’s solo book, Ready-Made Miracle: The American Story of Fashion for the Millions (1967) was published and particularly well received: As Virginia Pope, fashion editor of Parade declared, this was “the first time the American public has been given a complete picture of this fantastic American industry.”
Jessica Daves died of cancer at her Park Avenue home in 1974.
““I respect fashion … it is exciting … but I am annoyed at people who treat it as a joke, who constantly take sledge-hammers to it … it’s a very serious business.””
SELECT REFERENCES
Rebecca C. Tuite, 1950s in Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019).
Genevieve Pou, “Her World Of Fashion,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 13, 1970.
Alden Whitman, “Jessica Daves of Vogue is Dead,” New York Times, September 24, 1974.
Alberto Oliva and Norberto Angeletti, In Vogue: An Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous Fashion Magazine (New York: Rizzoli, 2012).
For a full and complete list of references, sources and further reading, please refer to 1950s in Vogue: The Jessica Daves Years, 1952-1962 by Rebecca C. Tuite (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019).
PUBLICATIONS
The World in Vogue
Edited by Jessica Daves and Alexander Liberman of Vogue, with Brian Holme and Katharine Tweed of Viking Press
(Viking Press, New York, 1963)
An anthology of writing, illustrations and photographs from the first seventy years of Vogue’s history, 1893-1963.
From Jessica Daves’s introduction to the book:
“Vogue has sometimes been called a civilizing force. If that is true, perhaps it is because a civilization, to endure, needs voices to sing its praise. ‘They had no poet and they died,’ is Gogarty’s epitaph for the lost treasures of the unrecorded past. A part of civilization is a regard for the gifted, an admiration of beauty, and understanding of the arts – the arts of daily living as well as the arts of painting or sculpture, writing or music or architecture. Civilization has in it, too, respect for the boldness of the frontiersmen in the sciences and in all the worlds of abstract ideas. These things Vogue has recorded, dramatized, applauded. Some of the best of the record is in the pages of this book.”
““[The World in Vogue] is a jewel - a parure - a whole pirates’ chest of glittering treasures. Covering seven decades, it sparkles with generations in the theatre, the arts, society, literature, sports, world affairs, as well as fashion. Everything that has added gaiety to nations and color to our era is here recorded in pictures... and sharply pointed words.””
““‘The World in Vogue’ is 6 pounds and 12 ounces of solid social commentary on the past 70 years, years marked by most drastic changes in upper-crust living.””
The Vogue Book of Menus and Recipes for Entertaining at Home
by Jessica Daves, with tatiana mckenna & the editors of vogue
(Harper & Row, New york, 1964)
From the publisher’s description:
“Not only does The Vogue Book of Menus have the benefit of Vogue’s experienced editors, but many of the menus are published as they have been served by famous American and European hostesses. The planning of the food and the suggestions about service (or the lack of it) are all governed by the same standards that generations of Vogue readers have relied on. […]
Through the years, Vogue has been an authoritative source of information about smart menus and interesting food. Distinguished hosts and hostesses have given their ideas and helped plan features obtainable in no other way. This unique treasury is the foundation for this book: each recipe has been tested and edited by Tatiana McKenna, who has also provided a number of her own recipes. The result is a practically foolproof collection, useful alike to the experienced hostess and to the young hostess with her first dinner party.”
““One mark of a good party is that the guests go away feeling more attractive than when they came.”
”
“The Sophisticated Slant” Newspaper column in the Chicago Tribune
by jessica daves and candace vanalen
(1964 onwards)
In 1964, Daves launched a newspaper column in the Chicago Tribune, called “The Sophisticated Slant,” co-written with Candace A. VanAlen, who had been a contributing editor to Vogue in the late fifties and sixties. The column was to be the perfect platform for everything Daves valued as a writer and an editor: The two women would offer their dual-approach or opinions on every subject that might be of interest to their women readers. Each column would share a similar helpful title, “How to…,” or “Everybody Is Doing…”, or “Why not…?” Examples of published columns include, “How to Have Fun at Your Own Party,” “How to be Very Lazy in an Efficient Way,” and “How to Keep a House Full of Fragrance.”
““Mrs. Daves and Mrs. VanAlen aim to reach that ever-increasing group of women readers who want to know how to enjoy the refinements of civilized living in this affluent age.””
1947-1967 Fashion Group French Shows: Twenty Years of French Fashions As Shown by the New York Fashion Group
By Jessica Daves
(The Fashion Group Inc., New York, 1967).
From Jessica Daves’s introduction to the book:
“This small book is put together to record for you in essence the fashions from the semi-annual French collections as shown by The Fashion Group in New York for the past twenty years. These fashions have been presented twice yearly at luncheon fashion shows for The Fashion Group members and their invited guests. […] We believe this book outlines the most influential of these Paris ideas from 1947-1967 […] Because of the unique quality and scope of these showings, this concentration from the original 2,800 photographs gives you something definitive for your records – twenty dramatic years of French fashions – to hold in your hand.”
““Historically, this is unique; nowhere else in the world has there been assembled (or we daresay could there have been assembled) fashion shows of this variety, this scope. In the twenty years, every great Paris house has been represented; we do not need to tell you that only at The Fashion Group in New York could so many fashions from the Paris great houses be shown together.””
Ready-Made Miracle: The American Story of Fashion for the Millions
by jessica daves
(G. P. Putnam’s sons, new york, 1967)
From the publisher’s description:
“From bustles to mini skirts, from hoops to silver sheaths, the fantastic history of the American fashion industry is told in Ready-Made Miracle by one of its great authorities – Jessica Daves, former editor of Vogue.
Here is the story of how a $3,000 original can be copied with all its original flair for a woman who can’t spend more than $25. Here is the story of style and fashion – a phenomenon of change that has multiplied with tremendous energy each year since the invention of the sewing machine. Ready-Made Miracle presents the designers, producers, buyers, models, photographers – all the dynamic, creative people who gauge the inclination and shape the taste of millions of women who will buy, or reject, the clothes brought each season to market.
All who are a part of the industry, all those interested in fashion, and all American women will want to follow the story of ready-mades. Great personalities have built the ready-made fashion business to where it is now the third largest in this country, and Miss Daves writes from firsthand knowledge of their special qualities. There is practical information, too, for every woman who buys clothes – about values in different price ranges, how to choose the best in design and quality, and how to be in style regardless of the budget. No one need feel shut out of the fashion world after reading Ready-Made Miracle.”
““Jessica Daves, a former editor of Vogue Magazine, had a front-row seat as American fashion developed into a giant. Her book unfolds like a well-planned meal; from an appetizer history of Seventh Avenue to a meaty entree on the phenomenon of mass-produced clothes and the people behind them, and on to a light dessert of what the future may hold.””
““The first time the American public has been given a complete picture of this fantastic American industry.””
““Wonderful reading and something to keep for reference. Good books about fashion form the largest vacuum in any library. This one is by an international fashion power.””
““The most interesting history of American fashion that I have ever read. Jessica Daves, long-time editor-in-chief of Vogue, knows the subject and she knows how to write!””
