Constantin Alajálov was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in 1900 to an Armenian family. In 1917, the Red Revolution broke out, interrupting Alajálov's time at the University of Petrograd. Unable to stay, Alajálov joined a government organized group of artists. Traveling the countryside, they painted large propaganda murals and posters for the revolution. After this, Alajálov emigrated to Persia and again started painting for a revolution until no longer safe.

After his stay in Persia, Alajálov headed to Constantinople, his last stop before he emigrated to America at age 23. Getting a job was hard, but he finally landed one, painting wall murals at a restaurant about to be opened by Russian Countess Anna Zarnekau. Within three years, Alajálov was selling his paintings to The New Yorker magazine, where his first cover appeared on September 25, 1926. He went on to create more than 70 covers for the magazine. He also designed rugs for New York artist and entrepreneur Ralph Pearson.

Alajálov's first cover for the Saturday Evening Post appeared on October 6, 1945; this was unusual in that he was also doing covers for The New Yorker at the time, and both publications ordinarily required exclusivity of their artists. His final cover was for the December 1, 1962, issue. That final cover portrayed an accomplished bridge player awakened from a dream, still analyzing her bridge hand. Many of his Saturday Evening Post cover paintings can be viewed at the American Illustrators Hall of Fame in Indianapolis.

Alajalov died in New York in 1987. His papers are at Syracuse University, and the Archives of American Art. He bequeathed funding for a scholarship in his name to Boston University, which also maintains a collection of his photographs and scrapbooks. The Boston University holdings include a painting of Alajálov by George Gershwin.

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

The first version of Vanity Fair was published from 1913 to 1936. The imprint was revived in 1983 after Conde Nast took over the magazine company. Vanity Fair currently includes five international editions of the magazine. The five international editions the magazine is United Kingdom (since 1991), Italy (since 2003), Spain (since 2008), France (since 2013), and Mexico (since 2015). As of 2018, the Editor-in-Chief is Radhika Jones.

Condé Montrose Nast began his empire by purchasing the men's fashion magazine Dress in 1913. He renamed the magazine Dress and Vanity Fair and published four issues in 1913. It continued to thrive into the 1920s. However, it became a casualty of the Great Depression and declining advertising revenues. Nonetheless, its circulation at 90,000 copies was at its peak. Condé Nast announced in December 1935 that Vanity Fair would be folded into Vogue (circulation 156,000) as of the March 1936 issue. Vanity Fair celebrates its 95th anniversary in 2008, as well as its 25th anniversary as a relaunched publication. The National Portrait Gallery in London has mounted an exhibition called "Vanity Fair Portraits, 1913–2008", which will travel to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia, to celebrate the magazine's photographic heritage. Vanity Fair: The Portraits, a special jubilee issue and hardback book, will be published in the fall of 2008.

Vanity Fair is notably a fictitious place ruled by Beelzebub in the book Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Later use of the name was influenced by the well-known 1847–48 novel of the same name by William Makepeace Thackeray.