Novità

Italian women’s magazine launched in 1950 by Emilia Kuster Rosselli, who was its editor until 1958. With a modest financial contribution from her family, an adaptable and very young editorial team, in a short time the magazine became very popular, becoming a point of reference for a vast female public at medium-high level, who, in the optimistic post-war years, looked for something more in their publications than fashion and so-called female skills. The intuition of the director, a woman with many interests and a great sensibility for new things, was precisely that of creating, at a time when women were discovering new roles and had new aspirations, “a practical magazine that did not yet exist, for a modern, intelligent, elegant, and curious woman, a magazine that gives her news and ideas when she lives at home and which reminds her of home when, out of necessity or desire, she lives away.” A thoroughly Italian magazine, Novità focused on fashion, interior decor, art, antiques, social problems, literature, cooking, and gardening, delicately recording the cultural interests that had sprung up again after the turmoil of the war, and the new need for elegance in clothing and living. During those years it became a sort of prototype, providing ideas for a large number of other publications supported by stronger publishers. On the death of Emilia Kuster Rosselli, the directorship passed to Lidia Tabacchi, who had been her competent and faithful alter ego for many years. Novità was acquired by Condé Nast in 1962, thanks to the prestige that Emilia Kuster enjoyed in the international publishing world, and to her friendly relations with and esteem felt by the French section of the famous American group. In 1965 the title, after gradually moving towards a more international format, became Vogue Italia.