Delineator magazines of the 20s and 30s

As always, moving house means that you must sort, pack, then un-pack all of your worldly goods. Sometimes you come across items that you haven’s seen for a while, as I did with my precious ‘Delineater’ magazines from the 20s and 30s. It was with glee that found a group of 4 many years ago in a tiny out of town antique store, and I love them to bits, but I had carefully stored them away and had almost forgotten I had them!

As a designer, I adore Delineator cover art in all it’s elegant art deco simplicity and the wonderful fashions portrayed, so I thought I’d go on a hunt for some more online. For those unfamiliar to the magazine, Delineator (A Journal of Fashion, Culture, and Fine Arts) was launched in 1873 by Ebenezer Butterick – yes, that Butterick.  In the early 20s, the magazine published the work of romance novelists  and many famous illustrators worked on staff. The magazine later merged with William Randolph Hearst’s Pictorial Review in 1937.

          

The Delineator was originally a magazine of women’s fashion, with dressmakers patterns, as well as articles covering women’s issues, women in sport and in cultural life. In 1920, it hosted ‘more advertising than was ever inserted in any magazine published for women at any time, anywhere’, thanks to it’s 1 million readers and I believe it was published in many languages. Well, 4 of them found their way to a little store in country town Australia … so there you are!

I hope you enjoy these beautiful covers. I would never part with my copies.