Vogue called upon the talented French illustrator Pierre Brissaud, who had a special knack for drawing fashion in interiors, to dream up a cover for the Spring Shopping Number of March 15, 1924. The artist seemed to have taken inspiration not from the Paris collections featured within, but from “Shopping in the Side Streets of New York”—a “Vogue-conducted tour,” in words and sketches, of small specialty shops. “Not so much the kind that are catholic in their tastes,” noted the author, “as those that are kept by people who know one line to fanaticism.” In Brissaud’s charming drawing, set in a bijou boutique, a fashionable and obviously delighted customer happily tests umbrellas and painted parasols; the latter, at the time, were all the rage in Palm Beach.
