Vanity Fair is an American monthly magazine of popular culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast in the United States.

[3] The first issue was released in February 1983 (cover date March), edited by Richard Locke, formerly of The New York Times Book Review.

Regular writers and columnists have included Dominick Dunne, Sebastian Junger, Michael Wolff, Maureen Orth and Christopher Hitchens.

The April 1999 issue featured an image of actor Mike Myers dressed as a Hindu deity for a photo spread by David LaChapelle: after criticism, both the photographer and the magazine apologized.

[7] The magazine was the subject of Toby Young's book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, about his search for success in New York City while working for Graydon Carter's Vanity Fair.

It was announced in November 2017 that Radhika Jones, editorial director of The New York Times books section, would succeed Carter as Editor-in-Chief on December 11, 2017.

[14][15] In 2018, Vanity Fair received accolades for removing actor James Franco from a cover shoot following sexual harassment allegations.

[16][citation needed] In 2020, Dario Calmese became the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of a Vanity Fair issue; his subject was Viola Davis.

[24] As a successor to a similar invitation-only event annually held by the late agent Irving Paul Lazar, the first Vanity Fair Oscar Party took place in 1994.

[36][37] In recent years, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg have hosted an after-party at the French ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. following the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

[34] In 2005, Vanity Fair was found liable in a lawsuit brought in the UK by film director Roman Polanski, who claimed the magazine had libelled him in an article by A. E. Hotchner published in 2002.

[39] The trial began on July 18, 2005, and Polanski made English legal history as the first claimant to give evidence by video link.

[46] Some parents expressed outrage at the nature of the photograph, which a Disney spokesperson described as "a situation [that] was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old to sell magazines".

[47] In January 2014, Vanity Fair was under fire for allegedly altering the appearance of a celebrity featured in its pages for its February issue, Lupita Nyong'o, an actress known for her role in 12 Years A Slave.

[48] Shortly before the Nyong'o case, Vogue magazine, a partner and buyer of Vanity Fair in 1936, was accused of altering actress Lena Dunham's photos.

[49][50] In 2015, Vanity Fair had to update the account it had published by the NBC News correspondent Richard Engel about the disputed circumstances of his 2012 kidnapping in Syria, stating that he had misidentified his captors.

[51] In 2019, former contributing editor Vicky Ward said her 2003 profile of Jeffrey Epstein in Vanity Fair had included on-the-record accounts of Annie and Maria Farmer (who filed the earliest known criminal complaints about Epstein), but that they were later stricken from Ward's article after Bill Clinton pressured the magazine's editor Graydon Carter.