In 1950, Cosmopolitan magazine looked a lot different than today's Cosmopolitan, but the audience seems to have been the same then as it is now: young, single women without a lot of money. Unlike Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, which catered to women who had, or at least aspired to, charge-o-plates at Bergdorf's, Cosmopolitan was aimed at the working class woman. I already had a Harper's Bazaar from 1938 that was chock full of perfume ads. How would Cosmopolitan treat perfume twelve years later?
If my issue is any indicator, perfume was a luxury item to Cosmopolitan's readers. It was exotic, expensive, and less important than a fully stocked bar, routing Communism, or finding a husband…
