Abstract
The New York Times has described Anna Wintour as one of the most powerful women in magazine publishing. She became editor of Condé Nast’s British Vogue in 1985 (giving birth in January and taking up the post three months later), moved on to American Vogue in 1988, and now has the Orwellian titles of Vogue’s global editorial director, Condé Nast’s global chief content officer, and artistic director, overseeing magazines such as Bon Appetit, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.
She is, in short, The Boss – not just of print and digital but also as an adviser, influencer supreme, mentor to favoured young designers, philanthropist, fundraiser for the Democratic Party, and deal-breaker in a global fashion industry which, according to industry website The Business of Fashion, is worth $2.4 trillion. In May this year, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch told The New York Times that it is “no longer a magazine company”. Print is almost dead, long live the internet, clicks and subscriptions. In this endeavour, Lynch said, Wintour isn’t the “old guard”, she’s ”an agent of change”. But is she?
Amy Odell has interviewed more than 250 people (not Wintour, who did offer contacts) to analyse how and why she is considered a one-woman brand, an icon. The dark glasses, bob haircut, androgynous figure and imperious manner all captured in The Devil Wears Prada, first a book and then a 2006 film, starring Meryl Streep as a character loosely built on Wintour.
“I’m so bored by me,” Wintour is quoted as saying, and ploughing through 450 pages, one can begin to see why. The book provides granular detail of Wintour’s micromanaging, her refusal to listen to advice, and her practice of rarely staying anywhere long – her fleeting presence presumably enough to sanctify the occasion. Anna is up at 5.30am, tennis, hair and make-up , chauffeur-driven car to the office, where one of three assistants has a latte and blueberry cupcake at the ready. Wintour , according to Odell’s many interviewees, has fashioned her staff so they know what she wants and how to stay in their job by supplying it without question, putting up with her “hazing”, nitpicking, humiliating and pitching one against the other, “a fight club”.
If journalism is about the chemistry of bringing bright, inquisitive, challenging minds together, that is not the Wintour formula. Vogue is a place without wrinkles (Wintour demanding that the creases on a baby’s neck be removed in one photograph), black attire, fat or chewing gum. No garlic, parsley, onions or chives are served at the increasingly ridiculous annual Wintour-organised May benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Anna Wintour Costume Center. Over the years, it has raised millions but accentuated the absurd wealth of those willing to pay up to $300,000 for a table to see Sarah Jessica Parker wearing a nativity on her head.
Anyone with even a foot in journalism will have known of Anna’s father, Charles “Chilly” Wintour, editor of the London Evening Standard. He had friends who gave his daughter her first jobs in journalism, while the family of her mother, Nonie, provided a trust fund that paid for Wintour’s early assistants.
“Many people interviewed for the book had a hard time explaining why she is so powerful,” Odell writes, “and what her power amounts to.” The pull of her power lies in Wintour’s unchanging personal brand and the world she created – very thin, very white, fur-loving, highly privileged, very exclusive. All of which worked when it worked. Under her tenure, Men’s Vogue, Vogue Living and HG all closed as the heyday of print faded.
Wintour had failures but also antennae that worked better on some occasions than others. She supplanted supermodels with celebrities and, in the late 1990s, she understood the potential of websites. “She deserves a lot of credit…for taking a wild risk to use her name and reputation to push a very unwilling fashion industry into the digital age,” says Joan Feeney, first editor of Vogue.com.
Ironically, the internet and social media also allowed a whole new array of talent to emerge, non-white, Gen Z, millennials, “fed up and fired up”, a world Wintour didn’t understand. She appointed three editors to Teen Vogue, including Elaine Welteroth, only the second black woman to be made a Condé Nast editor. Welteroth later angrily resigned, pointing out that politically progressive Teen Vogue was “editorialising values that were not reflected in the company culture”. She had been made editor without the office, salary or respect to match. In 2020, 18 non-white Condé Nast employees complained to The New York Times about discrimination and prejudice. The #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter revealed further Condé Nast failings. “Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement?” the paper asked.
Now, the gifted Ghanaian-born Edward Enninful is editor-in-chief of British Vogue and Condé Nast European editorial director, delivering black faces on covers and “a diversity of perspectives”. Running Condé Nast in a digital age, with gutted budgets in a time of political discord and rightful challenges from the many marginalised for too long, is the new game Wintour has to play with a style of management that appears antiquated, authoritarian and out of touch. “Anna has built her own kingdom,” Odell writes. What happens now that her kingdom is crumbling might have made for a richer, more focused biography.
