Anna Wintour

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Anna Wintour

Wintour during Fashion Week 2005, wearing her trademark sunglasses.
Born	November 3, 1949 London, England
Occupation	Editor
Title	Editor-in-chief, American Vogue
Salary	$2 million (reportedly)
Predecessor	Grace Mirabella
Boards on	Metropolitan Museum of Art
Children	Charles and Katherine

Anna Wintour (born November 3, 1949) is the Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. edition of Vogue, a position she has held since 1988.

Contents 1 Family background 1.1 Parents 1.2 Siblings 1.3 Other relatives of note 2 Early life 3 Career 4 Personal life 4.1 Marriages and children 4.2 Philanthropy 5 Criticism 5.1 The Devil Wears Prada 5.2 PETA campaign 5.3 Elitism 5.4 Responses 6 References 7 External link

[edit] Family background

[edit] Parents

Her father, Charles Vere Wintour, CBE, was a former editor of The Evening Standard and her American mother was his first wife, Eleanor ("Nonie") Trego Baker, the daughter of a Harvard law professor, whom he married in 1940 and divorced in 1979. She was named after Baker's own mother Anna Gilkyson, a prominent Main Line socialite in her native Philadelphia.^[1] Her stepmother is Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded such publications as Honey and Petticoat.

[edit] Siblings

She had four siblings, three of whom survive: James Charles, the managing director of Gravesham Borough Council^[2]; Nora Hilary, who works at an international organization in Geneva^{[citation needed]}; Patrick Walter, who started as labour correspondent at The Guardian in 1983 and rose to become the political editor for both it and the The Observer in 2006,^[3] The oldest brother, Gerald Jackson Wintour, died as a child in 1951 when he fell out a window of the then-family home in St. John's Wood.^[4]

[edit] Other relatives of note

Her aunt, Cordelia Wintour, married Sir Eric James, who was granted a life peerage as Baron James of Rusholme.

[edit] Early life

The young Wintour was educated at North London Collegiate School, where she frequently rebelled against the dress code by wearing her skirts so that the hem was higher than allowed.^[5]. At the age of 14 she began wearing her hair in the bob that has since become her trademark. As London began to swing, she became a dedicated follower of fashion, in the form of Cathy McGowan's television show, and her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market. In her later teens, she began dating gossip columnist Nigel Dempster and became a fixture on the London club circuit with him.^[6]

[edit] Career

After her class finished at North London Collegiate, Wintour chose not to go to college but instead entered a training program at Harrod's. At her parents' behest, she also took some fashion classes at a nearby school, but soon dropped out, telling her friend Vivienne Lasky that "you either know fashion or you don't".^[7] At Harrod's, she continued dating well-connected older men, in this case Peter Gitterman, the stepson of London Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Georg Solti.

She entered the field of fashion journalism in 1970 when Harper's Bazaar merged with Queen to become, for a time, Harper's & Queen. There, she discovered model Annabel Hodin, a former North London classmate, and used the connections she had built up to secure locations for some striking, innovative shoots.^[8] One recreated the works of Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots.^[9] After a short stint at a small magazine named Savvy,^[10] Wintour would move on to become a junior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar in New York in 1975,^[9] where she lasted less than a year before being fired.^{[citation needed]} Anna went on to become editor in charge of fashion at Viva.^[10] According to Jerry Oppenheimer's biography Front Row, she would later omit mention of the magazine in her career because of its connections to Penthouse.^{[citation needed]} After three years, she moved on to become fashion editor at New York.^[9]

She became editor of British Vogue in 1986 and House & Garden the following year. At the former, she told her father's old paper, the Evening Standard, she wanted to reach "a new kind of woman out there. She's interested in business and money. She doesn't have time to shop anymore. She wants to know what and why and where and how." ^[10]

At the latter, she was so fond of putting couture in photo spreads that industry wags began to refer to the magazine as House & Garment.^[11] She managed to turn around and increase circulation of British Vogue but her couture photo spreads turned off subscribers to House & Garden such that it would eventually close down after she left(later, it would be revived by Conde Nast).

She was expected to do the same at American Vogue, when she took over in 1988. It had, under her predecessor Grace Mirabella, become more focused on lifestyles as a whole and less on fashion.^[11] Industry insiders worried that it was losing ground to the upstart ELLE^[11], which had been introduced to America from France in 1985.^[10] Wintour made her mark early on with a shift in the cover pictures. Whereas Mirabella had preferred tight headshots of well-known models, Wintour's covers showed more of the body and were taken outside, in natural light, instead of the studio, echoing what Vreeland had done years earlier.^[10] She used less well-known models, and mixed inexpensive clothes with the high fashion — the first issue she was in charge of, in November of that year, featured a young Israeli model in a $50 pair of faded jeans and a bejeweled T-shirt by Christian Lacroix worth 200 times that. Eight months later, another model was shown in wet hair, with just a terrycloth bathrobe and apparently without makeup.^[11] She also made a point of seeing to it that photographers, makeup artists and hairstylists got as much credit for the images as the models.^[10]

Under her editorship, the magazine renewed its focus on fashion and returned to the prominence it had held under Diana Vreeland. The September 2004 issue boasted a record 832 pages, the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time.^[11] As a result, she has become one of the most powerful women in fashion, setting trends and anointing new designers - The Guardian has called her the "unofficial mayoress" of New York City.^[12]

Wintour is an avid champion of the fashion industry. She has played a great part in the success stories of the designers John Galliano (of Christian Dior) and Michael Kors, and her protégée at Vogue, Plum Sykes, became a successful novelist, drawing her settings from New York's fashionable élite.

Her salary is reported to be $2 million a year and she also receives generous perks including a $25,000 clothes budget, a chauffeur and a suite at the Hôtel Ritz Paris while attending European Fashion Week.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Personal life

[edit] Marriages and children

She married child psychiatrist David Shaffer in 1984^[10] and has two children by him, Charles (Charlie) and Katherine (known as Bee). The couple divorced in 1999; tabloid newspapers and gossip columnists speculated that it was an affair with millionaire investor Shelby Bryan that ended the marriage, but Wintour has refused to comment.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Philanthropy

Despite her infamous icy facade, Wintour is also a noted philanthropist. She serves as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.^[9] Wintour began the CFDA/Vogue Fund in order to encourage, support and mentor unknown fashion designers. She has also raised over $10 million for AIDS charities since 1990, by organizing various high profile benefits.^[9]

[edit] Criticism

While her success at turning Vogue around, support of the fashion industry and charity work is universally acknowledged, plenty of observers have found fault with Wintour. Most tends to center on accounts of her personality. She has often been described as a perfectionist who routinely makes impossible, arbitrary demands of those who work for or under her and treats them unkindly ... "kitchen scissors at work", in the words of one commentator.^[11] She reportedly once made a junior staffer look through a photographer's trash to find a picture he had refused to give her.^[10] In 2003, a former intern, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the bestselling roman á clef The Devil Wears Prada, whose antagonist Miranda Priestly was widely believed to be based on Wintour.

She is also believed to exert great control over her public image. When she took over as Vogue editor, gossip columnist Liz Smith reported rumors that she had gotten the job by having an affair with Conde Nast chairman Si Newhouse. Wintour was reportedly furious and made her anger the subject of one of her first staff meetings.^[10]

In 2005, Wintour was the subject of an unauthorized biography by Jerry Oppenheimer, Front Row: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor In Chief, that drew on many unnamed sources, often with grudges, to paint a similar portrait of the real woman. According to Oppenheimer, Wintour not only declined his requests for an interview but directed others not to cooperate.^[13]

That image has lent support to accusations that she has imposed a similarly elitist aesthetic on the magazine, making demands that even prominent subjects change their image before being featured in its pages. The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has also traded on her image as unfeeling to make her a central target of its anti-fur campaign (ironically, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has been described as similarly overbearing by former employees.^[14])

Critics of Wintour's management style also point to a May 11, 2004 ruling by a New York court in a case brought against Wintour and Shaffer by the state Workers' Compensation Board. It sought to recover $140,000 in costs it had incurred when a former employee of the couple who had been injured on the job turned out not to have had the necessary insurance coverage. Wintour and Shaffer repeatedly failed to make payment, forcing the suit. The two were ordered to pay $104,403; an additional $32,639 was levied against Wintour herself.^[15]

[edit] The Devil Wears Prada

Weisberger's novel is told in the voice of Andrea "Andy" Sachs, a young woman fresh from college with literary ambitions who knows little about fashion when she starts a year at Runway magazine, working as the junior assistant to legendary editor Miranda Priestly, who among her other similarities to Wintour is British, has two young children and serves on the Met's board. Priestly is depicted as a tyrant who makes impossible demands of her subordinates, gives them almost none of the information or time necessary to comply and then berates them for their failures to do so (for example, Andy is sent out to buy tampons for Miranda, who then faults her for getting the wrong size^[16]). Similar charges have long been made about Wintour herself by (usually unnamed) former employees. Prior to its publication, Wintour told the New York Times "I always enjoy a great piece of fiction. I haven't decided whether I am going to read it or not".^[17]

While it has been suggested that the setting and Priestly were based on Vogue and Wintour, Weisberger denies this, and even gives Wintour herself a cameo appearance near the end of the book. Yet it is almost universally believed that the book's success was due to the real-life angle. Neither Vogue nor any other Conde Nast publications, nor many other popular women's magazines, reviewed Weisberger's book. The New York Times did, but never identified either Wintour or Vogue as Weisberger's onetime superior and place of employment when it reviewed both the film and the book.

During production of the movie in 2005, Wintour was reportedly pressuring prominent fashion personalities, particularly designers, not to make cameo appearances in the movie lest they be banished from the magazine's pages, at least temporarily.^[18] She denied it through a spokesperson who said she was interested in anything that "supports fashion". But, while many designers are mentioned in the film, only one, Valentino, actually appeared as himself.^[18]

In mid-2006, the film version was released to great commercial success. Wintour attended the premiere wearing Prada. In the film, actress Meryl Streep plays a Priestly different enough from the book's to receive critical praise as an entirely original (and more sympathetic) character (although Streep's office in the film bears some striking similarities to Wintour's^[19]). Streep denies that her portrayal was based on Wintour, whom the actress says she only met at the first benefit screening of the film. She stated she had no interest in doing a documentary on the Vogue editor, preferring to draw her inspiration from an amalgam of überbosses she's met over the years.

While Wintour may have borne the film and those involved in it no malice, the same may not be true regarding Weisberger. When Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove reported shortly before the film's release that the author was having enough trouble with her third novel (after disappointing sales of her second, Everyone Worth Knowing) that her editor suggested she completely start over, there was enough bitterness left that Wintour's spokesman Patrick O'Connell suggested she "should get a job as someone else's assistant".^[20]

[edit] PETA campaign

She has often been the target of various animal rights organizations such as PETA who are angered by her use of fur in Vogue, her pro-fur editorials and her refusal to run paid advertisements from animal rights organizations. Undeterred, she continues to use fur in photo spreads. She is routinely assaulted by activists over this matter.

In Paris in October 2005, she was hit with a tofu pie while waiting to get into the Chloé show.^[21] She herself said she has been physically attacked so many times she's "lost count."^{[citation needed]} She and Vogue's publisher Bob Galotti once retaliated for a protest outside the Conde Nast offices during the company's annual Christmas party by sending down a plate of steaming, freshly cooked roast beef.^[22]

[edit] Elitism

Some critics have charged that instead of models, celebrities are becoming the face of Vogue.^{[citation needed]} Indeed, a wide range of prominent women have graced the front cover of Vogue during Wintour's tenure, from Oscar-winning actresses (Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Angelina Jolie) to celebrities (Melania Trump) and politicians (Hillary Clinton).

According to insiders, however, she has not been content to let celebrities appear on the cover, but has demanded they bow to her standards as well. Oprah Winfrey was reportedly told she would not be photographed for the cover until she lost weight, and Clinton would not appear until she stopped wearing navy blue suits as much as she had been.^[11]. Another writer for the magazine complained that Wintour excluded ordinary working women, many of whom are regular subscribers, from the pages. "She's obsessed only about reflecting the aspirations of a certain class of reader," the writer says." "We once had a piece about breast cancer which started with an airline stewardess, but she wouldn't have a stewardess in the magazine so we had to go and look for a high-flying businesswoman who'd had cancer."^[11]

[edit] Responses

Wintour has rarely, if ever, personally responded to criticisms of her, and most who have have been her employees or others with something to gain by remaining in her favor. But there have been a few defenses from other quarters. Amanda Fortini at Slate said she was just fine with Wintour's elitism since that was intrinsic to fashion and, ultimately, good for the magazine's readers:

In a sea of women's glossies that purport to be about fashion but publish earnest articles chronicling the author's quest for self-actualization, Vogue stands apart. The voluminous fashion pages are arty, original, and sophisticated, shot by talented photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, and Stephen Meisel. Most of us read Vogue not with the intention of buying the wildly expensive clothes, but because doing so educates our eye and hones our taste, similar to the way eating gourmet food refines the palate. This is a pleasure enabled by Wintour's ruthless aesthetic, her refusal to participate in the democratizing tendency of most of her competitors. To deny her that privilege is to deny her readers the privilege of fantasy in the form of beautifully photographed Paris couture.[11]

Responses to horror stories about her treatment of employees have frequently been met with charges of sexism, that similar behavior from a male boss would seem unremarkable. Blogger Steve Gilliard faulted Weisberger for failing to appreciate "how hard Wintour worked to get and keep her job in a business where men still had the whip hand".^[23] "Powerful women in the media always get inspected more thoroughly than their male counterparts", concurred the New York Times in a piece about Wintour shortly after the film's release.^[24]

Some of her defenders have even seen her as feminist whose changes to Vogue have actually in a small way reflected, acknowledged and reinforced advances in the status of women. In a nominal review of Oppenheimer's book in the Washington Monthly, managing editor Christina Larson notes that Vogue, unlike many other women's magazines, doesn't play to its readership's sense of inadequacy:

Unlike its glossy peers on the newsstand, it isn't loaded with tips to flatten your abs, flaunt your cleavage, or squeeze into your thin jeans by Friday; it assumes you need no help mastering love moves no man can resist. It doesn't purport to solve problems, to help you feel less guilty. Instead, it reminds women to take satisfaction, parading all manner of fineries (clothes, furniture, travel destinations) that a successful woman might buy, or at least admire. While it surely exists to sell ads — which it does remarkably well — it does so primarily by exploiting ambition, not insecurity.[10]

She contrasts Wintour's Vogue with Vreeland's by noting how the former treated female beauty as something innate, whereas Wintour showed how it could be created. "She shifted Vogue's focus from the cult of beauty to the cult of the creation of beauty ... Beyond whisking models off their pedestals, the concept that grace is a construction, and not merely a gift, allows that it can be enjoyed longer, well past the age of 40 or 50".^[10] To her, the focus on celebrities is a welcome development as it means that women are making the cover of Vogue at least in part for what they have accomplished, not just how they look. "Wintour's Vogue allows women to imagine a world, increasingly an attainable one, in which the pursuit of beauty reinforces rather than overshadows female authority", she concludes.^[10]

Even The Devil Wears Prada is not without some admiration for Wintour/Priestly. Weisberger, through Andy, notes that she does manage the difficult task of putting together a major fashion magazine every month all by herself and that she does have genuine class and style.^[25]

[edit] References

[edit] External link

• Vogue sucks: PETA anti-Wintour site