Real fashion fantasy

The September Issue takes you into the
world behind the glossy pages of Vogue

STYLE WARRIOR: Anna Wintour

by SACHA JACKSON

Since Meryl Streep’s turn as the fear-inducing ice queen editor in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, fashion-savvy audiences have wanted a glimpse at its inspiration, Vogue editor Anna Wintour. R.J. Cutler’s documentary, The September Issue, lets us see the usually camera-shy Wintour as she and her team put together the year’s most important issue. And it’s as fabulous as you’d expect.

Filming in 2007, Cutler captured the publication’s glory days, a time when publisher Condé Nast would tolerate the scrapping of a $50,000 photo shoot. The issue was the biggest in the magazine’s history, topping out at 840 pages (a total they’re unlikely to reach again—the current economic climate and the erosion of print media have led to a recent shake-up at Condé Nast, including layoffs at Vogue just this past week).

There are scores of TV shows that focus on fashion’s bottom feeders, but this film gives you a view from the top of how this behemoth magazine comes together, from the editing (we’re talking photos, not words—articles don’t exist here), to the photo shoots and runway shows, down to Wintour’s kitchen (where she chides her daughter for dressing dowdy).

The film shows a duality between fantasy (the shoots, the trips) and reality (the retailers’ breakfast, the meetings) through interviews with Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington. Coddington is utterly charming—an artist at heart, she fearlessly states her opinion and almost single-handedly puts the issue together. Her approach is romantic and antiquated, unaffected by budgets and celebrities.

Wintour is the brains, the decisive businesswoman who, it seems, is a little embarrassed about her work (her siblings are “amused” by her job; her daughter wants to be a lawyer). You get the impression she’s fought to make fashion important. Early in the film, she’s called “the single most important person in fashion.” Is she? Probably not (that title should go to the owner of a fashion conglomerate), but she’s likely the most powerful woman in the business. There are few epiphanies here—Wintour doesn’t turn out to be a warm, generous, surrogate aunt—but it does restore some of the humanity that the tabloids and Devil took from her.

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 23