2 - Fashion Journalism at Ullstein House

Summary

ON JANUARY 29, 1933, on the eve of one of the most fateful days in German history, the day on which Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the huge banquet halls of Berlin's Zoological Gardens were hosting the annual Press Ball. As described by Hermann Ullstein, a participant and one of the most influential figures of the German press, this was the culminating event of the capital's social life. All halls were packed with “illustrious peoplee … : ministers of state, politicians, members of Parliament and the press, artists, poets, and the intellectual leaders of both the theater and film worlds.” Before Ullstein proceeded with the insider's succinct analysis of the press “dancing on the edge of the volcano,” he took a moment to describe a glittering facet of this annual gathering and to make a peculiar observation:

The men [are] wearing multicolored uniforms with rows of medals, or evening dress with white ties, and the women [are] in dazzling evening dress. Indeed, it does not occur to one of these society ladies to appear in anything but fashion's last creation. For such is the tradition of the Press Ball. Nor will their ambition be satisfied until they have read in the morning papers a detailed description of their appearance by a leading fashion expert.

This cursory remark, coming from one of the masterminds of the modernized, highly popular, and commercially prosperous illustrated press, deserves more than passing attention. On the one hand it describes the enormous scale of the spectacle known as the Press Ball: organized traditionally in Berlin since 1872, it was an event attended sometimes by close to 6000 guests, and it was eagerly anticipated and widely covered in the press, which characterized it as “the high point of social life,” “the big theater of fashion,” and “the biggest fashion show.” On the other hand, Ullstein's remark emphasizes that the real, physical public space in which women paraded their fashionable outfits was really nothing without the imaginary public realm of the print media, where women's heightened selfconsciousness about clothes, hairstyles, and general appearance was openly articulated. Women's reading and writing on fashion was arguably as essential a facet of their experience of fashion as the actual display of it in public.