Google is letting you dig through the treasured Vogue image archive
If you have a proclivity to flick through vintage issues of Vogue, fawn over archival Dior collections, or appreciate the long history of what we now recognize as fleeting TikTok trends, it's your lucky day: the Vogue Archive, a celebration of Vogue with the help of Google, opens today.
Google Arts and Culture worked with Condé Nast, the publishing powerhouse behind Vogue, to build an online archive telling the story of the magazine and its impact across fashion and culture. The platform holds over 15,000 newly-digitized archival images spanning over 600 issues across decades.
Like other cultural exhibitions by Google, the site is clustered by stories, highlighting different eras and achievements by Vogue. The lineup is impressive and extensive, including cover art and illustrations from as far back as the '50s. Other stories are deep-dives into specific moments that defined culture across the years: the birth of the miniskirt, for example; how Vogue captured the art and lives of painters like Frida Kahlo and writers Joan Didion and Truman Capote; and, the history of the "It Girl", with pages dedicated to generationally recognizable faces like Yasmeen Ghauri, Jane Birkin, and Iman.
Special tributes also focus on photographers and designers, from Irving Penn, to Prada and Issey Miyake. Elsewhere, trends are captured across the years, organized by TikTok-esque terms but archiving images dated decades ago: think Barbiecore and balletcore.
In a blog post, Ivan Shaw, Condé Nast’s corporate photography director, describes the site as "the essential destination to learn about the people and moments that made fashion history and helped shape our world."
"It’s a place to hear the stories behind the imagemakers, designers, models, writers and personalities that helped drive culture for over 100 years," writes Shaw.
If nothing else, the site is an aesthetic treat, opening the doors to thousands of images and creating easy access for fashion aficionados. It's the ultimate moodboard, and if you don't know where to possibly start, you can browse all the images under one page.