This definitive biography of Anna Wintour follows the steep climb of an ambitious young woman who wouldwith singular and legendary focusbecome one of the most powerful people in media. [130], In the novel, Priestly has many similarities to Wintouramong them, she is British, has two children,[131] and is described as a major contributor to the Met. "There's a new kind of woman out there", she told the Evening Standard. In 2010, Wintour decided she wanted an interview with Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrias dictator president, whose look she apparently liked. Furious at having been passed over for promotion at Harpers, five years later she headed to New York with her then boyfriend, where she eventually landed the role of fashion editor at a magazine owned by Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse. But it is a wonderful opportunity to be able to help others, and for that I'm extremely grateful. In the fall, Vogue Living was suspended indefinitely, and Men's Vogue cut back to two issues a year as an outsert or supplement to the women's magazine. [123], Lauren Weisberger, a former Wintour assistant[124] who left Vogue for Departures along with Richard Story, wrote The Devil Wears Prada after a writing workshop he suggested she take. [166] On another occasion, an activist dumped a dead raccoon on her plate at a restaurant; she told the waiter to remove it. All Vogue interviews are basically puff pieces, and this one, published just as the Arab spring was beginning, was no exception; Buck wrote breathlessly that Assad had won his countrys election with a startling 97% of the vote. [153], She has said she admired her father Charles, known as "Chilly Charlie"[66][118] for being "inscrutable". [99] In addition, she receives several perks, such as a chauffeured Mercedes S-Class (both in New York and abroad), a $200,000 shopping allowance,[78] and the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris while attending European fashion shows. Furious at having been passed over for promotion at Harpers, five years later she headed to New York with her then boyfriend, where she eventually landed the role of fashion editor at a magazine. [111] "I don't think Vreeland had that kind of concentration", says Women's Wear Daily publisher Patrick McCarthy. "[A]rt in this instance is only a poor imitation of life." A number of other editors also left to assume the top jobs at other publications. [33] A few months later, Bradshaw helped her get her first position as a fashion editor, at Viva, a women's adult magazine started by Kathy Keeton, then wife of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. Yes, Vogues staff were uncomfortable at being expected to do similarly, but they were also, thank goodness, able to make one extraordinary step toward self-care by wearing flats rather than heels in case they had to run down the stairs. Anna Wintour - IMDb She co-hosted fundraisers for Obama's campaigns with Sarah Jessica Parker, with one being a 50-person, $40,000-per-person dinner at Parker's West Village town house with Meryl Streep, Michael Kors, and advertising executive Trey Laird among the attendees. "Maybe what she thinks is a beautiful dress, I wouldn't think was a beautiful dress", he said. "[145], Oppenheimer suggests The Devil Wears Prada may have done Wintour a favour by increasing her name recognition. Many designers are mentioned in the film. [122] Wintour endorsed Joe Biden for the 2020 United States presidential election. Anna Wintour biography: Andr Leon Talley, friends reveal Vogue editor Edna Mode's similar hairstyle in The Incredibles has been noted,[80][149] Johnny Depp said he partially based the demeanour of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Wintour. This strait-laced portrait fails to unpick Vogues famously frosty editor-in-chief Anna Wintour or even poke fun at some of her more ludicrous behaviour. Or even imagine it! She has also raised over $10million for AIDS charities since 1990, by organising various high-profile benefits. They'd be happy to hire me, right' Sure. [17] She developed an interest in fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!,[18] and from the issues of Seventeen which her grandmother sent from the United States. [101] In her later teens, she dated gossip columnist Nigel Dempster and the two became a fixture on the London club circuit. Animal rights activists have attacked her for promoting fur, while other critics have charged her with using the magazine to promote elitist views of femininity and beauty. [178] When Morley Safer asked her about complaints about her personality, she said, I have so many people here, Morley, that have worked with me for 15, 20 years, and, you know, if I'm such a bitch, they must really be a glutton for punishment because they're still here. Manohla Dargis at The New York Times said that Priestly had helped humanise Wintour, and "the documentary continues this". They had failed to pay the $140,000 judgement against them by a former employee of theirs (not the magazine) injured on the job, who did not have the necessary insurance coverage. [24] She told her co-workers that she wanted to edit Vogue. On a 60 Minutes profile, she said she would not retire. [98], Her salary was reported to be $2 million a year in 2005. For all those who have occasionally wondered just what might lie behind the eternal sunglasses of the famously scary Anna Wintour, the author of a new biography of the longstanding editor-in-chief of American Vogue has momentous news: it seems that there is, after all, a person there (as opposed, you understand, to a robot programmed by the ghost of Oscar de la Renta). Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and Cond Nast's global chief content officer, has been planning the Met Gala for nearly 30 years Noam GalaiGC Images/Getty Images By Amy. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anna-Wintour, The Business of Fashion - Biography of Anna Wintour. [95], Through the years, she has come to be regarded as one of the most powerful people in fashion, setting trends, and anointing new designers. [138], The film was released, in mid-2006, to great commercial success. [66], Betts was one of several longtime editors to leave Vogue around the new millennium. The Devil Wears Prada (2004), the best-selling novel by Lauren Weisberger that in 2006 was adapted into a popular film starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, is an account of the comic travails of one of the personal assistants of the fictional fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly. As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest . This New Biography Tries to Find Out Where did Anna's ice queen reputation come from? Industry insiders worried that under Mirabella, the magazine was losing ground to the recently introduced American edition of Elle. She learned through her work on a cover involving Rachel Ward how effectively celebrity covers sold copies. Apparently not. Her reportedly aloof and demanding personality has earned her the nickname "Nuclear Wintour". [150] Fey Sommers in the Ugly Betty television series was also likened to Wintour, from the trademark bob and sunglasses, to Wintour's last name homophonous with 'Winter', while Sommers' is homophonous with 'Summer'. [176] Wintour has nevertheless continued the association with the pair.[177]. "[159], Peter Braunstein, a former Women's Wear Daily media reporter convicted of sexually assaulting a coworker, allegedly planned to kill Wintour because of perceived slights. "[H]er animosity intensif[ied] after her father married Slaughter. This is something different.' Devil Wears Prada: Anna Wintour Didn't Remember Assistant - IndieWire Now she's having fun again. Anna Wintour | Biography, Vogue, & Facts | Britannica [49] "There are times I get quite angry", she admitted in The September Issue. Wintour, who is noted for her characteristic pageboy hairstyle and black eyeglasses, has . In 2009 Wintour appeared in The September Issue: Anna Wintour & the Making of Vogue, a documentary film about the creation of the September 2007 issue of the magazine. [102], Wintour married child psychiatrist David Shaffer in 1984, and they had a son named Charles (born 1985) and a daughter named Katherine (born 1987) before divorcing in 1999. [86] Wintour starred in The Fashion Fund, which aired on Ovation TV that year as well;[87] she was named the 39th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. "Anna happens to be a friend of mine", says Barbara Amiel, "a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet. Wintour is seemingly the only person on earth who knows how to run a steady print operation in 2016 At 10 years old, Miranda Priestley is iconic but ever-so-slightly out of date. On the June 1989 cover, model Estelle Lefebure was shown in wet hair, with just a bathrobe and no apparent makeup. [77] Cond Nast responded by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times defending her record. It looked easy, casual, a moment that had been snapped on the street, which it had been, and which was the whole point. Anna Wintour - Wikipedia She has been called a feminist whose changes to Vogue have reflected, acknowledged, and reinforced advances in the status of women. Amazon.com: Anna: The Biography eBook : Odell, Amy: Kindle Store Anna: The Biography. [12], She had four siblings. "[22] Another older boyfriend, Richard Neville, gave her her first experience of magazine production at his popular and controversial Oz. She doesn't have time to shop anymore. Eat your heart out, Gloria Steinem. "You have to feel it coming off the page. As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but, seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. A former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 bestselling roman clef The Devil Wears Prada, later made into a successful 2006 film starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a fashion editor, believed to be based on Wintour. With 'Anna: The Biography,' Amy Odell Demystifies One of Fashion's If the pages (and pages) she devotes to Wintours assistants young women who must not want to be writers and whose job it is to make sure that her full-fat latte and blueberry muffin (an item usually left uneaten) are waiting on her big, white desk every morning are comprehensive to the point of tediousness, its hard not to laugh at her utmost seriousness, even when dealing with the mad and the risible. "[78] A documentary film, The September Issue, by The War Room producer R.J. Cutler, about the production of the September 2007 issue, was released in September. "[182], Oppenheimer, 99. "Anna wants what she wants right away. Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs also benefited from Wintours patronage. Amy . [88], On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of The Devil Wears Prada's release, in 2016, The Ringer noted how Wintour's personal image had evolved since that film's depiction of Miranda Priestley. [37] In a deleted scene from The September Issue, she complains about the "horrible white plastic buckets" of ice behind the bars at the CFDA's 7th on Sale AIDS benefit and moves them out of sight. It was the first time a Vogue cover model had worn jeans;[39] when the printer saw it they called the magazine's offices, thinking it was the wrong image. "Miranda was as far as I could tell, a truly fantastic editor. Edward Enninful is leaving his role as editor-in-chief of British Vogue after six years at the top magazine. [16] At the age of 14, she began wearing her hair in a bob. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Priestly character was widely believed to have been a caricature of Wintour, for whom Weisberger once worked. In 2011, when Vogue put its entire archive online, Wintour was quoted as saying, "I just said, 'Well, let's just try this.' "[156], She has often been described as a perfectionist who routinely makes impossible, arbitrary demands of subordinates: "kitchen scissors at work", in the words of one commentator. "[127] While it has been suggested that the fashion magazine setting and Miranda Priestly character were based on Vogue and Wintour, Weisberger claims she drew not only from her own experiences but those of her friends as well. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. She assumed some of the responsibilities of Si Newhouse, the company's longtime chairman, who, in his mid-80s at the time, was retreating from his role at Cond Nast to oversee managing Advance Publications, its parent company. "She's obsessed only about reflecting the aspirations of a certain class of reader", she says. ANNA WINTOUR: The Biography - amazon.com [30], In her new home, she became a junior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar in New York City in 1975. Anna Wintour's Biography Is the Uninvited Guest at the Gala - The New They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. [41] A former colleague arranged for an interview with Vogue editor Grace Mirabella that ended when Wintour told Mirabella she wanted her job. Having noted, for instance, that after the 9/11 attacks, Wintour went back to work immediately, she quickly adds that this was hardly unusual: after a facelift in 2000, she returned to the office even more amazing! The printers called to make sure that was supposed to be the cover, as they thought a mistake might have been made. Dolce & Gabbana said Italian fashion was getting short shrift and Milan was becoming a "circus without sense". At the end of the year, December's cover highlighted a disparaging comment Jennifer Aniston made about Angelina Jolie, to the former's displeasure; media observers began speculating that Wintour had lost her touch. Earlier in her career, she mixed fashionable t-shirts and vests with designer jeans. [78] "I don't find her to be accessible to people she doesn't need to be accessible to", agrees Vogue publisher Tom Florio. Wintour, the editor says, routinely requests to be seated out of sight of competing editors at shows. Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell, Hardcover - Barnes & Noble [20] Her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market. Anna Wintour, in full Dame Anna Wintour, (born November 3, 1949, London, England), British editor who, as the longtime editor in chief (1988 ) of American Vogue magazine, became one of the most powerful figures in fashion. At staff meetings, she earned Wintour's respect as the only person who publicly challenged her. Anna Wintour: The biography tells the story of Dame Anna Wintour, an American and British journalist was the editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988 and the Global Chief Content Officer of Cond Nast since 2020; she is also the Cond Nast Artistic Director and the Global Editorial Director . Her staff claim she reads everything written for publication,[59][60] but former editor Richard Story has claimed she rarely, if ever, reads any of Vogue's arts coverage or book reviews. [44] Cond Nast president S.I. "To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the 'villa in Tuscany' story", Horyn added. Just her office is very intimidating. Amy Odell's definitive Anna Wintour bio balances criticism with understanding and stories of true sadism: Imagine telling Oprah to lose 20 pounds for a cover.". After an introduction by Wintour in 2007, the menswear designer Thom Browne successfully launched his collection into 90 Brooks Brothers stores. Teen Vogue has published more ad pages and earned more advertiser revenue than either Elle Girl and Cosmo Girl, and the 164 ad pages in the dbut issue of Men's Vogue were the most for a first issue in Cond Nast history. [11] She is a niece of Cordelia James, Baroness James of Rusholme (daughter of Fitzgerald Wintour). The word would come with all the wit and understatement of vintage Maison Margiela were it not for the fact that it is used completely without irony. "[57], "Wintour's approach hit a nervethis was the way real women put clothes together (with the likely exception of wearing multi-thousand-dollar T-shirts)", one reviewer says. Wintour with the Queen during London fashion week, February 2018. Britain's Queen Elizabeth with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour during London Fashion Week in 2018. [46] They married in 1984. [68] AdAge named her "Editor of the Year" for this brand expansion. [39] She once made a junior staffer look through a photographer's trash to find a picture he had refused to give her. This one broke all the rules. "[169], Another common criticism of Wintour's editorship focuses on Vogue's increasing use of celebrities on the cover, and her insistence on making them meet her standards. Since her first days as editor, she has required that photographers not begin until she has approved Polaroids of the setup and clothing. Fashion journalist Peter Braunstein wrote in his manifesto that she would go to a hell guarded by large rats, where it would be so warm she would not need to wear fur. She returned to London and was the editor of British Vogue between 1985 and 1987. [112], Wintour says she wakes up at 5:30a.m., plays tennis, gets her hair and makeup done, and then arrives at the Vogue offices at 7:30a.m. She always turns up at fashion shows well before their scheduled start, stating, "I use the waiting time to make phone calls and notes; I get some of my best ideas at the shows. I haven't decided whether I am going to read it or not. A co-worker at Harpers & Queen said that she would eat "smoked salmon and scrambled eggs" every single day and that "she would eat nothing else". [61] Earlier in her career, she often left writing of the text that accompanied her layouts to others; former coworkers claim she has minimal skills in that area. [128] Wintour herself makes a cameo appearance near the end of the book,[129] where it is said she and Miranda dislike each other. [78][155] In a 1999 profile, journalist Kevin Gray observed that one staffer appeared "panic stricken" when she realised she would have to be in the elevator with Wintour. [69], Queen Elizabeth II appointed her Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Anna: The Biography review how Anna Wintour became a tastemaking tyrant She eventually accepted after a bidding war that doubled her salary, becoming the magazine's first creative director, a position with vaguely defined responsibilities. The 51-year-old is . [144] When it was reported that the novelist's editor told her to start her third novel over, Wintour's spokesman suggested she "should get a job as someone else's assistant. [39][111][170][171] She reportedly told Oprah Winfrey to lose weight before her cover photograph. "[84], In January 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art named its Costume Institute complex after Wintour;[85] First Lady Michelle Obama opened it in May of that year. Eventually, she left, complaining to The New York Times that Wintour had not even sent her a baby gift. Send your resume over to Anna Wintourthey've never liked each other very much. Anna Wintour: The biography tells the story of Dame Anna Wintour, an American and British journalist was the editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988 and the Global Chief Content Officer of Cond Nast since 2020; she is also the Cond Nast Artistic Director and the Global Editorial Director of Vogue. [49] Those editors who were retained began to refer to the period as "The Wintour of Our Discontent". A new biography of the . She tells you what she thinks. In 2004, a court ruled that she and Shaffer were to pay $104,403, and Wintour herself an additional $32,639, to settle a lawsuit brought against them by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board. [28] There, the fashion spreads and photo shoots she had been putting together for years finally began attracting attention. I didn't realise it was a . "[89], But since then, "Wintour isn't just redeemed. "A decade ago this summer, Wintour became a living, breathing avatar for a certain kind of bossthe terrible kind, with 'great' a halfhearted asterisk", wrote Alison Herman. [140][141] (Streep's office in the film was similar enough to Wintour's that Wintour reportedly had hers redecorated. The general public knows her mostly from the character played by Meryl Streep . [136] "I never for one second didn't know it was an amazing opportunity to assist Anna", Weisberger said in 2008. While it surely exists to sell ads it does so primarily by exploiting ambition, not insecurity. [5], Anna Wintour was born in Hampstead, London, to Charles Wintour (19171999), editor of the Evening Standard, and Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker (19171995), an American, the daughter of a Harvard Law School professor. [37] It sought to appeal to career-conscious professional women who spent their own money,[38] the readers Wintour would later target at Vogue. It was just very natural. The book, written without the Vogue editor's direct participation, was dismissed by its subject. "She's honest. [115] Wintour was listed as "one of the 50 best-dressed over 50s" by The Guardian in March 2013. This led to complaints. She is never going to be friends with her assistant. [92], Following the murder of George Floyd, Wintour was reported to have issued an apology to staff for Vogue's complicity in racism, stating the magazine had "not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators". According to Amy Odell in her semi-authorised biography, Anna (Wintour herself did not contribute, but Odell thanks her "for allowing me into her world"), the answer is sexism: "It is. [She] was now known and talked about over Big Macs and french fries under the Golden Arches by young fashionistas in Wal-Mart denim in Davenport and Dubuque. According to Oppenheimer, Wintour not only declined his requests for an interview but discouraged others from talking to him. [108] She declined to comment. [14] James and Nora Wintour have worked in London local government and for international non-governmental organisations, respectively. "She ignited the entire industry. [4] With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and dark sunglasses, Wintour has become an important figure in much of the fashion world, praised for her eye for emerging fashion trends. Anna Wintour is still the boss"[89], In a May 2017 ceremony at Buckingham Palace, Wintour was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to fashion and journalism.
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