Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
NameConde Montrose NAST, 4795
Birth1873
Death1942
Spouses
Marriage1928
ChildrenLeslie , 4745
Notes for Conde Montrose NAST
He was founder of Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines.

Condé Montrose Nast (March 26, 1873 – September 19, 1942) was the founder of Condé Nast Publications, a leading American magazine publisher known for publications such as Vanity Fair, Vogue and The New Yorker.
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Background[edit]

Named after his uncle Condé L. Benoist, Condé Montrose Nast was born in New York City to a family of Midwestern origin. His father, William F. Nast (son of the German-born Methodist leader William Nast) was an inventor who had served as U.S. attaché in Berlin. His mother, the former Esther A. Benoist, was a daughter of pioneering St. Louis banker Louis Auguste Benoist and a descendant of a prominent French family that emigrated to Canada and then to Missouri.
He had three siblings: Louis, Ethel, and Estelle.

Nast's aunt financed his studies at Georgetown University, where he graduated in 1894. He went on to earn a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1897.

Career[edit]


Nast did not take well to law, and upon graduation he got a job working for a former Georgetown classmate, Robert Collier, as advertising manager for Collier's Weekly (1898–1907). Over the course of a decade he increased the advertising revenue 100-fold. He published books and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine with Robert M. McBride (McBride, Nast & Co.). After leaving Collier's, Nast bought Vogue, then a small New York society magazine, transforming it into one of America's premier fashion magazines.

He then turned Vanity Fair into a sophisticated general interest publication, with the help of his friend Frank Crowninshield, who was editor and a major influence for more than 20 years. It published many new and high quality writers, as well as displaying reproductions of modern art.

Nast eventually owned a stable of magazines that included House & Garden, British, French, and Argentine editions of Vogue, Jardins des Modes, and Glamour (the last magazine added to the group while he was alive). While other publishers simply focused on increasing the number of magazines in circulation, Nast targeted groups of readers by income level or common interest. Among his staffers were Edna Woolman Chase, who served as the editor in chief of Vogue; and Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.
Nearly ruined in the Great Depression as many others were, Nast spent his last years struggling to regain his early prosperity.

Marriages[edit]

Nast was married twice. His wives were:

(Jeanne) Clarisse Coudert, a Coudert Brothers law-firm heiress who became a set and costume designer. Married in 1902, separated in 1919, and divorced in 1925,[1] they had two children, Charles Coudert Nast and Natica Nast,[2] an artist (who married Gerald F. Warburg, a banking heir and professional cellist and conductor).[3] After her divorce from Nast, Clarisse Coudert Nast married J. V. Onativia. (See photographs of Clarisse Nast on Wikimedia Commons.)


Leslie Foster, whom he married in 1928; a granddaughter of Gov. George White Baxter of Tennessee, the bride was 20, the groom was 55. Divorced circa 1932, they had one child, a daughter, Leslie (who married firstly, Peter George Grenfell, 2nd Baron St Just,[4][5] and secondly, Lord Bonham Carter): after their divorce, Leslie Foster Nast married Lt. Col. Sir Reginald Benson.
Between 1932 and 1936, Nast's companion was the Vanity Fair writer Helen Brown Norden Lawrenson, author of The Hussy's Handbook (1942), Latins are Still Lousy Lovers (1968), and Stranger at the Party (1975).
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