British born Anna WIntour has held the coveted position of Editor-In-Chief of American Vogue for over 20-years. For the first time she has allowed cameras to follow her as she edits her magazine. As one of the most revered yet feared people in the industry, the resulting documentary will be a fascinating account of someone at the top of their game.
Throughout her two decades at American Vogue, Wintour has established herself as one of the most important players in the fashion industry. She can make or break a designers career. For example, she champoined young design duo Proenza Schouler, featuring the unknown desingers on the pages of her magazine and that was all they needed - along with design talent - to be successful in the industry.
Rising To The Top
Anna Wintour comes from a publishing background. Her father, Charles Wintour was editor of London newspaper, The Evening Standard. From an early age, Anna WIntour had steely determination and ambition. She left school at 16 with no qualifications, as she had her heart set on becoming editor of American Vogue and didn't feel being at school would help her get there.
She instead started making friends, through her fathers contacts, with influential players in the magazine industry. This led to her first job at Harpers & Queen magazine, followed by fashion jobs at Viva, Sassy and New York magazines. Wintour then held editorships at House & Garden and British Vogue magazines before climbing all the way up the editorial ladder to land her dream job in 1988.
The Devil Wears Prada
Anna Wintour is generally a private person, who famously emits no emotion while watching fashion shows from behind her large dark glasses. Letting people know what she is thinking is a big fashion faux-pas, which is the reason that this documentary is all the more interesting. Wintour is giving us a glimpse into her thoughts and we get to see the way she works, giving an insight into why she has stayed at the top of her game for the last 20-years. That alone is no mean feat in the ever-changing, fickle, fast-moving fashion industry.
Director R.J Cutler followed Wintour and her staff for eight months and shot over 300 hours of footage of them as they created the September 2007 issue of American Vogue. The fall issue is traditionally the biggest and highest selling of the year. This particular issue was touted as being Vogue's biggest ever issue. The magazine featured British actress and style icon Sienna Miller on the cover, it weighed almost 5lbs and contained 840 pages, of which 727 were adverts.
The trailer indicates that with this documentary, Wintour is doing nothing to dispell her ice queen persona that was widely depicted in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada. The author of the book - which was then made into the film - Lauren Weisberger, never actually admitted the lead character was Anna Wintour but seeing as she worked as Wintours assistant at Vogue in the past, it isn't that hard to come to a conclusion.
The September Issue is released in September 2009 and will provide a very interesting insight into the usually concealed world of arguably the most powerful woman in the fashion industry. Watch the trailer here.
Sources:
- Front Row: Anna Wintour by Jerry Oppenheimer
 |
