Anna 'memoir' sets off buzz
Chatter among fashionistas is that Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is preparing to release her memoir after 23 years at the helm of the Condé Nast fashion bible.
Sources said Wintour was interviewing authors to collaborate on the project as early as last spring. Other insiders speculate Vogue fashion news director Mark Holgate, Wintour's right hand on various editorial projects, would collaborate with her.
While a Vogue rep said it's "absolutely not true" that Wintour is shopping a memoir, insiders are already anticipating it and speculating about who would have the coveted honor of writing the book's foreword.
One source told us, "She'll never choose just one designer," meaning Wintour would never favor one over another.
The famously shy Wintour has opened up significantly in recent years, letting cameras film her for a 2009 documentary, "The September Issue," a lengthy "60 Minutes" interview with Morley Safer, and a recent profile in WSJ Magazine.
Wintour's longtime creative director, Grace Coddington, was working on her own memoir with former Men's Vogue writer Jay Fielden, but put the project aside once Fielden became editor-in-chef of Town & Country. Wintour was in Europe this week to attend the Paris Couture fashion shows, but she and the rest of Vogue's editors skipped French designer Azzedine Alaia's presentation Thursday morning.
Wintour instead attended the London premiere of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," starring Emma Watson, Vogue's July cover girl.
Alaia has been at war with Wintour in recent years. Last month, sounding bitter, she told Virgine magazine, "American women love me; I don't need her support at all . . . Other people think like me but don't say it, because they are afraid that Vogue won't photograph them. Anyway, who will remember Anna Wintour in the history of fashion? No one." A rep for Vogue had no comment on Alaia.
