Visual StudiesSarah Burd
ADVERTISING HIGH SOCIETY
Deemed an indicator of high society, one might presume that the New Yorker magazine's advertising would be representative of high-end consumerism, on the leading edge of style and cultural change. Through observation and analysis of text, image, and content in the Tiffany & Co., Saks Fifth Avenue, and Brooks Brothers advertisements in the New Yorker magazine from 1926 to 2006, I have found the evolution of the New Yorker's advertising has not followed the changes in the rest of the advertising world. Where a steady rising presence of the image and fall of words has been common in most advertising, the advertisements in The New Yorker remained stagnant from the 1920s to the 1990s, before making a drastic leap toward the dominance of the image.