Anna Wintour Out of Vogue Soon?

[LUXXX]

We've seen Anna Wintour in her best and worst of moods. When we bumped into her at LeBron James's party during Fashion Week she kindly fielded our questions for a whole two minutes, even peppering her replies with smiles, as if taking us in like an adorable lost puppy. But at the National Book Awards this week, she treated us like a malaria-carrying mosquito.

The Cut: There have been some rumors, and we were wondering if you had plans for retirement.


Anna Wintour: I'm so sorry, I think that's an extremely rude question. Leave me alone.


The Cut: May we ask what you would do if you did retire?


Anna Wintour: No. Just go away.


The Cut: Okay, thank you, enjoy your dinner.

But! She didn't deny it.

www.nymag.com

 

[Acid]

snap!

 

[MissMagAddict]

The Cut should be treated like like a malaria-carrying mosquito. They are the pure definition of vitriols.

 

[ponytrot]

(The Cut) That was really rude and made me uncomfortable, i mean ok. Her rumoured retirement might be a source of glee for some people, but seriously isn't there a degree of professional respect that should be observed here?

i thought that she handled Devil Wears Prada well, and she's got to handle more criticism and stereotyping.

i'm not a huge proponent of Anna Wintour, seing as i don't live in US and I never read US Vogue, but its really strange to me that it's de rigeur to mock her.

 

[Spike413]

I'm assuming that that brief interaction was meant to portray her as a fire breathing, child eating succubus or something, but honestly when someone begins a conversation by asking you to leave them alone, you're begging for bitchiness if you press further. It's just common sense.

 

[Scott]

^i agree. for chrissakes,she was at dinner! i know i've given her alot of criticism over the years,mostly her direction at vogue,but when you become that intrusive just to get a story or that clarification,it's rather disgusting.

 

[iluvjeisa]

Joan Juliet Buck would be a dream come true & she's American! I adore her

I'm surprised that you guys like her so much. I've picked up several issues from the time she was EIC of Vogue Paris and not a single one of them has contained even one page stopper.

To me, a good magazine is a magazine filled with page stoppers and solid editorials. It shouldn't be about anything political or philosophical unless it's aesthetically appealing. If I want something intellectual I have other things to read...that said, it shouldn't be poorly written and it should be amusing, which usually demands intelligence. But again, that doesn't have anything to do with content. Anything can be intelligently presented and discussed.

Anna Wintour came with change when Grace Mirabella was obsessed with health issues rather than fashion. She did a wonderful job for a few years, and after that the magazine has been no good. Once she monopolized the fashion world and drew everyone in, created the stars....she stopped working on anything but retaining her and Vogue's position of Power. She is just like most other popular culture bosses - they don't even pretend that art is important anymore, they know people will still buy and consume because they have no taste themselves (most people that is) and there is very little respect for true art. "It's a business" is still the mantra that seems to impress people. I don't see why it can't be a business that has some art to it, but apparently people are afraid of seeming like they don't know it's foremost a business if they bring up such arguments.....funny really. You would think these people were so talented it wouldn't be an effort to them. I honestly think Anna Wintour takes time out during the production of each issue to make sure there's nothing that seems like art in it, or if it does, make sure that it's mind numbingly pretentious. All for fear she wont seem businesslike if she would allow any joyous moment in her magazine. Fashion is pain, fashion is money, fashion is power, fashion is ascetic and disciplined with no fun at all. Except the fun of having the most expensive dress, of course. All very boring, isn't it?

But lets just face it - there will be no more Diana Vreelands. People don't know what's good, and what's worse, those who have the power don't care enough about their work, most of them got where they are because they are either hyperefficient or suck ups, none of which demands any artistry or brains. Vogue Paris is definitely the exception.

 

[nyc_art_style]

Just because the editorials are more interesting doesn't change the fact that those magazines are just as much about commerce as American Vogue is, they just disguise it better with good photography and a little bit of nudity.

This is what i don't understand. If all three of these Vogues are sending out the same message, then why is US Vogue so horrendous when placed next to Paris Vogue and Italian Vogue. Why can't Anna have good photography it her magazine (in every issue). She doesn't even need the little bit of nudity. It's not as though she doesn't have the funding, or that she doesn't have the access to the best photographers and stylists that fashion can offer.

Us Vogue is just frustrating.

and iluvjesia, I'm sorry but I do not agree with your last statement. There will be future Diana Veerlands. All it takes is some extreme determination, confidence, and talent. There are probably people out in the magazine world now bidding their time, and being nice to everyone until they get their chance. There are plenty of people out there who know what's good. We just have to wait for one of them to become editor in cheif of US Vogue.

 

[iluvjeisa]

This is what i don't understand. If all three of these Vogues are sending out the same message, then why is US Vogue so horrendous when placed next to Paris Vogue and Italian Vogue. Why can't Anna have good photography it her magazine (in every issue). She doesn't even need the little bit of nudity. It's not as though she doesn't have the funding, or that she doesn't have the access to the best photographers and stylists that fashion can offer.

Us Vogue is just frustrating.

and iluvjesia, I'm sorry but I do not agree with your last statement. There will be future Diana Veerlands. All it takes is some extreme determination, confidence, and talent. There are probably people out in the magazine world now bidding their time, and being nice to everyone until they get their chance. There are plenty of people out there who know what's good. We just have to wait for one of them to become editor in cheif of US Vogue.

Well, the only argument against that is 15 years of sub par American Vogue and a steadily declining state of popular culture over the last ten years. Disney produces horrible crap, Hollywood produces garbage....Vogue is no different. Why? Why now and not 20-50 years ago?

Because not only is it a business and ONLY a business, but it prides itself upon that and taste and passion are no longer qualities sought after in leaders. It's just all Goebbels and the emperor's new clothes mixed with a lethal dose PC sensibility.

 

[ysljunkie]

Is this here?
From gawker.com about the possible outing coming very soon..January 2009 to be exact!
With French Vogue's Carine as the new eic. I dont see it happening , I mean come on..I'd give her at least 5-10 more years but then again I might jus be in denial.

The Waverly Inn was crawling with Condé Nast insiders earlier tonight, some of whom had been waiting as long as 20 years for the appetizer: The hot, delicious rumor that Si Newhouse was meeting in Paris with Carine Roitfeld to work out the final details of the French Vogue editor's move to New York, where she is expected to take over flagship Vogue from Anna Wintour immediately after New Year's. It did not go unnoticed when Condé Nast overlord Newhouse departed early for his annual three-week December vacation in Vienna; it turns out he needed time for his meeting with uptight Wintour's chic Parisian counterpart.
Corporate colleagues also arched their eyebrows when Wintour told a reporter at the National Magazine Awards to "Just go away" after she asked about rumors of the editor-in-chief's impending retirement. The touchy reply added to their suspicion that Wintour, who just this past June celebrated two decades atop Vogue, was worried about being pushed out by Newhouse before she'd lined up a soft landing elsewhere. Her purported $2-million-per-year salary is seen as a hindrance, given the state of the economy, in lining up a follow-on fashion gig of the sort that seems natural, post Vogue: creative director at LVMH, that sort of thing.
Whether the palace intrigue at the world's fashion bible unfolds according to the Waverly buzz or not, it is clear the Vogue masthead is not at equilibrium. Wintour in recent years positioned herself as a sort of mini-mogul over various baby Vogues. But this fall, she's fallen back down to earth. The closure of Men's Vogue was a major personal embarrassment. It followed a possibly fatal blow to the Vogue Living experiment and the cancellation of Fashion Rocks. Worst of all, it came amid slipping numbers at Vogue itself, as competitors leveraged reality television to undermine the title's dominance over the world of fashion.
The poor performance surely undermined Wintour within Condé Nast. But even if the legendary editor-from-hell still had Si Newhouse's full support, there's the issue of personal satisfaction: Wintour could hardly be expected to content herself with a downgrade from "editorial director" of a magazine collection to mere editor-in-chief of a single title, shrinking in ad pages and influence. Even if Wintour does not yet realize that, Newhouse surely does. Thus we see the unwelcome rumors of her retirement in the tabloids. And so it may be that a French revolution comes to Vogue in January 2009.
UPDATE: As many of you noted in the comments, the rumored replacement of Wintour by her French rival puts a tragic (for Wintour) twist on a plotline specific to the film adaptation of the novel The Devil Wears Prada. The real-life French Vogue editor has said Wintour is "like a puppet." In a clip from the movie below, Wintour stand-in Miranda Priestly manages to divert her competitor Jacqueline Follet by arranging for her a job once promised to Priestly's lieutenant at Runway (aka Vogue). Her own boss is dissuaded by threats that Priestly's fashion-industry allies will blackball the magazine. That sort of loyalty seems far too posh an extravagance in an era of economic panic and powerful TV shows like Project Runway.

 

[t-rex]

Carine at American Vogue is too good to be true

 

[prosperk]

In the universe of my imagination, Joan Juliet Buck edits US Vogue and each issue seriously educates and superficially delights the reader - the two things aren't incompatible.

Does intelligent editing belong to a bygone era, driven out by the constraints of commercialism - or does the lack of such editing in US Vogue have everything to do with the lack of such an editor?

Perhaps as soon as we get someone who's culturally rich in their experience of the world - and who can shape the magazine as a door for us to step through into that wider world - we'll get a US Vogue that satisfies on more levels.

I wrote for JJB and knew her well when she was at French Condé Nast. She was certainly of the intellectual calibre one used to expect of Vogue editors and it brought her into ultimately fatal conflict with the powers-that-be.

One project she tried to push through in 1999 was a supplement focusing on Kosova, whence I had just returned with the photographer Nigel Dickenson. Joan saw it as a homage of sorts to the fact that the first Holocaust images - Lee Miller's Dachau reportage - were published in French and American Vogue. The suits scotched it, of course, claiming that readers and advertisers would not like it.

The suits were later proved wrong by some of the edgier content of VOGUE HOMMES INTERNATIONAL from 2001 to 2003. Circulation and advertising increased. But the magazine's success was its undoing because it was an embarrassment within a corporate framework where mediocrity was encouraged to the detriment of excellence. Put another way, nobody wanted anyone to ask why VHI made more money each year with two issues and a couple of supplements, put together by half-a-dozen people on a shoestring budget in a couple of boxrooms than the post-JJB French VOGUE, with ten issues, enormous budgets and a cast of hundreds.

I would say that Aliona Doletskaya is certainly in the same intellectual bracket as Joan. Well-educated editors have been largely replaced by glorified stylists, some of whom are very vacuous indeed, but the breed is not yet extinct. Almost, but not quite. Aliona may be considered too educated to take over American Vogue. SI Newhouse and his nephew are quite intellectual but this does not prevent them from promoting and selling mediocrity. After all, it is easier to fill magazines with mediocrity, and cheaper too, especially as more and more publishing houses are commissioning pulp prose from bloggers and other wasters.

PK

 

[prosperk]

I'm surprised that you guys like her so much. I've picked up several issues from the time she was EIC of Vogue Paris and not a single one of them has contained even one page stopper.

To me, a good magazine is a magazine filled with page stoppers and solid editorials. It shouldn't be about anything political or philosophical unless it's aesthetically appealing. If I want something intellectual I have other things to read...that said, it shouldn't be poorly written and it should be amusing, which usually demands intelligence. But again, that doesn't have anything to do with content. Anything can be intelligently presented and discussed.

That's fine if one is talking about fashion magazines for the sort of airheads who also read celebrity gossip rags but Vogue ought to be about excellence and trend-setting, rather than editorial mediocrity and trend-following. There is no doubt that Vogue has been degraded in recent years, with the dilution of the brand in the form of local editions, and the ousting of heavyweight editors in favour of intellectual lightweights who might get through one airport novel a year and whose literary skills extend little further than signing credit card slips.

Do such editors reflect the reading public? In my experience, I would say that the reading public will consume whatever is put in front of them and that publishers and their editors who serve their readers a diet of substandard material are failing in their moral duty not just to maintain civilised standards but to improve upon them. As I essentially said in my previous post, readers are not dumb as a general rule.

In the end, this kind of attitude, which is tantamount to patronising the reading public, has consistently been proven wrong by editors with the cojones to disregard orders from above. At one point, we even resorted to fake flat plans and books to placate interfering suits, sending the real magazine off to press at the last minute and pointing to increased circulation figures and ad revenue when the suits threw tantrums. But that was when there were real editors in the business, rather than management puppets and over-promoted fashion stylists.

She is just like most other popular culture bosses - they don't even pretend that art is important anymore, they know people will still buy and consume because they have no taste themselves (most people that is) and there is very little respect for true art. "It's a business" is still the mantra that seems to impress people.

It doesn't impress "people". It impresses businesspeople and their beancounters.

I don't see why it can't be a business that has some art to it, but apparently people are afraid of seeming like they don't know it's foremost a business if they bring up such arguments.....funny really.

It is more a question of knowing that if you genuinely venerate and argue for the cause of excellence in an environment like Condé Nast, your card will be marked and your days there numbered, as the casualty list of excellent editors and directors in recent years demonstrates.

You would think these people were so talented it wouldn't be an effort to them. I honestly think Anna Wintour takes time out during the production of each issue to make sure there's nothing that seems like art in it, or if it does, make sure that it's mind numbingly pretentious.

You may be right. After all, Anna Wintour has seen what befell other Vogue editors who failed to toe the company line. The only reason Richard Buckley got away with thumbing his nose at the corporate pukes and proving them embarrassingly wrong for as long as he did is that he is Tom Ford's partner. As soon as Ford was out of Gucci, however, Buckley was out of Condé Nast.

All for fear she wont seem businesslike if she would allow any joyous moment in her magazine. Fashion is pain, fashion is money, fashion is power, fashion is ascetic and disciplined with no fun at all. Except the fun of having the most expensive dress, of course. All very boring, isn't it?

The wind has changed and Anna Wintour seems to be about to learn that her loyalty and slavish obedience counts for very little in the Byzantine world of Condé Nast, where there are no shareholders demanding explanations for policy and management decisions that have little apparent logic to them.

But lets just face it - there will be no more Diana Vreelands. People don't know what's good, and what's worse, those who have the power don't care enough about their work, most of them got where they are because they are either hyperefficient or suck ups, none of which demands any artistry or brains. Vogue Paris is definitely the exception.

French VOGUE is certainly very well-done but I wouldn't describe it as exceptional amongst the various editions of VOGUE. However, that is simply my opinion and I probably impose more rigorous expectations in terms of overall content and presentation than some readers. I think French VOGUE lacks variety. I would say that Russian VOGUE comes closest to conforming to my apparently outmoded notions of what VOGUE should stand for.

PK

 

[vogue28]

I'd hate to think what would happen to Vogue Paris, if Carine moved to American Vogue.
But would love to see what happened with American Vogue

 

[backtawker]

http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2008/12/julia_restoin-roitfeld_said_he.html

That quote was from 21/11/08, about a week and a half ago. Lots can happen in that time frame.

 

[ysljunkie]

I'd hate to think what would happen to Vogue Paris, if Carine moved to American Vogue.
But would love to see what happened with American Vogue

I totally agree, I think it would have to get even crazier to compete with a Carine American Vogue.
ok so I'm just taking it from them again but gawker media seems spot on with their idea's on the topic. Here is a follow up to the one I just posted from jezebel.com

3 Reasons We Hope The Wintour/Roitfeld Rumor Is True

By TatianaTheAnonymousModel, 1:00 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008, 5,308 views

Ever since Anna Wintour's second decade atop the masthead at American Vogue began in June, rumors of her imminent retirement have intensified. Signs offered in support of this include the fact that her contract is ending, the shuttering and/or draw-down of spinoff titles Men's Vogue, Fashion Rocks, and Vogue Living, and the fact that competitors have been weathering the downturn better, as measured in ad pages. A new twist came in the form of news Wintour could be getting replaced. By Carine Roitfeld, her Vogue Paris counterpart. While it sounds like a tale right out of The Devil Wears Prada, if there's any merit to the rumor, big changes will be ahead for the title. An examination of the differences between the spunky Parisian and the chilly Brit, and a round-up of why la Roitfeld might just knock some cool into the stuffy luxury mag, after the jump.
1. Fewer Celebrity Covers
The formula for a typical American Vogue cover under Wintour goes like this: A celebrity, probably with a film to promote, posed in some self-conscious location, often outdoors, photographed full or 3/4 length, with an awkward expression, PhotoShopped to approach the point of plasticine unrecognizability. The styling is stagey, overproduced, and 80s.
Since Wintour took over in 1988, American Vogue began featuring more celebrity covers than ever before—a cancerous, fashion-averse trend that has since spread through the women's magazine industry. At first, the covers were said to improve sales: readers were motivated to pick up the issue to read the profile of the celeb within more than they were by cover images of models, who have always held a much more circumscribed kind of fame. You could even make the argument that for a magazine such as Vogue, which seeks out the independent, successful, working reader, giving more covers to women for what they do as opposed to what they look like was an empowering step of sorts.
But the celebrity cover has had two negative effects: firstly, it's made Vogue's fashion dumber, since celebrities inevitably go about posing for fashion magazines as though it's a promotional drudgery they only put up with for the benefit of the latest terribly important film they starred in, and they always come phalanxed with minders whose entire purpose in life is to insure that the celebrity never cede too much control of her image. It limits the creativity of all involved, and drains the resulting images of the drama and charisma that resides in the best fashion photography. Secondly, the prevalence of the celebrity cover has caused an inevitable gerrymandering of the definition of "celebrity"—meaning that instead of our magazines periodically serving up interesting in-depth profiles of only the best actresses, singers and public figures, we get puff pieces that examine the inner musings of Kate Bosworth and Jessica Simpson faster than they can think them up. And according to circulation figures, readers have grown weary of being told 23-year-old Keira Knightley's life story several times per annum.
Vogue shouldn't be a promotional arm of the film industry: it should be a luxury fashion magazine. And Carine Roitfeld understands this. Paris Vogue's covers are striking and evocative; there's no formula in evidence. Models frequently take the honors, because whose image is more easily molded to suit the story of the moment than a model's? A Hollywood ingénue, like as not, has neither the look nor the inclination to pull off, say, an all-black avant-garde ensemble. Or a wacky couture gown constructed out of 15 yards of orange silk. But you can find a model who can. And Roitfeld consistently does just that.
And when she does feature a celebrity on her cover, Roitfeld doesn't put her through the generic setting, lighting and retouching that makes American Vogue covers so sameish. Behold Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose magnificent aquiline nose would've been doubtless rhinoplastied into submission with the liquify tool over at American Vogue:
Or what about this 2004 Madonna cover? It's a vivid shot of a legitimately interesting icon — and it's not easy to find a compelling way to shoot and style a woman who's been photographed millions of times. Roitfeld, unlike Wintour, does not fear the close crop. I want to travel back in time just so I can buy this magazine.

Under Carine Roitfeld my bet is American readers would finally be treated to more interesting and more varied covers, featuring singularly striking images of whoever embodied the given moment best — not just more portraits of some pretty so-and-sos who can give empty quotes about a (probably average) movie.
2. Diversity
In March of 2007, Jennifer Hudson became the first black woman to grace a cover of American Vogue since a 2005 Liya Kebede cover. Under Wintour's leadership, readers ought not expect more than one black woman on a cover every 2-3 years. All told, 14 black women have made the cover alone, and another 4 have been included in group covers, in the publication's 116-year history.
As for Vogue Paris, I can bring to mind several very recent black cover subjects. Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss had a cover together in February.
Noémie Lenoir had a solo cover in June/July. (Half the print run featured a Laetitia Casta cover with identical lighting, styling, and pose.)
And who can forget the cover that introduced the world to André J, a bearded drag queen who was chosen after a chance meeting with Bruce Weber and Roitfeld? (Which shows the kind of freewheeling spontaneity that can go into a Vogue Paris cover, and which American Vogue's triangulated, procedural covershots under Wintour conspicuously lack.)
Obviously people of color are a part of Carine Roitfeld's conception of fashion in a way they simply aren't at American Vogue. Fashion as an industry still struggles with racism, despite the fact that black women spend more than $20 billion a year on apparel, despite the fact that closing issue after issue without a single editorial page devoted to a model of color ought to be a source of shame for any editor-in-chief, and despite the fact that it is the damn 21st century. Roitfeld's approach would be a welcome change.
3. Creative Freedom
At virtually every shoot I do, the photographer and the fashion editor come prepared with materials for inspiration. Sometimes it's as elaborate as a bulletin board covered in location snapshots, iconic art photography, historic or news shots, and tear sheets from magazines, where the images together inform the story of the shoot, or even just the mood. (Other times it's as simple as a post-it in a Tim Walker book that points to the picture the client would most like to rip off.) Either way, there are always a million magazines on set for supplementary inspiration, or just to stave off boredom. And during the hours it takes to set up, everyone flicks through the titles, searching for an image that might help inform the inchoate ideas. Fashion people are rarely highly verbal, and to aesthetes, the right picture means a lot.
At the danger of putting words in her mouth, I believe this was what Anna Wintour was getting at when she said that "If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what's going on in the world as a headline in the New York Times." One can talk all day about how fashion reflects the world; the million little tells it betrays to anyone who cares to notice, like how a certain kind of soutache embroidery became popular in Europe in 1919 only because the Communist revolution, which expelled skilled workers, temporarily depressed the wages of the Russian garment workers who produced it, or any of the other myriad ways styles have points of origins the way wines have a terroir. When you work in fashion, pictures start off being in your world, then they define your world, then they become your world. You live in pictures. You communicate in pictures. Pictures are everything.
So it's perhaps telling that, for as long as I have worked in fashion, I don't recall ever being directed to an American Vogue image as an exemplar of something to aim for.
Stylists and photographers, they thumb through Vogue Paris, Vogue Italia. British Vogue. Because what are you going to find inside an American Vogue? We already know. A Craig McDean editorial, shot in a studio with a neutral background, of Caroline Trentini jumping. A boring profile of a celebrity you cared about three years ago. A showpiece editorial shot by someone like Steven Klein or Steven Meisel where the great photographers try and work dumbed-down versions of ideas they explored at greater length and with greater freedom—more suitable props, edgier locations, maybe a surrealist touch or two, or a reference to an obscure film—seasons ago in Vogue Italia's pages. Or in Vogue Paris's. Wintour reportedly demands a full selection of images from every photographer she works with, so that she can make the final photo choices herself (it's much more normal for a photographer to do a first edit, and for the eventual images to be something of a compromise between the photographer and the magazine). This level of control has hamstrung her publication, which consequently recycles the same tiny list of models, stylists, and photographers virtually every issue. American Vogue has, for far too long, been deficient in that most fashionable quality, surprise. Carine Roitfeld would breathe in some life.
Of course, S.I. Newhouse quickly denied the Roitfeld replacement rumor through a spokesperson. And Roitfeld herself has always claimed that she is not gunning for Wintour's job: Last year, she told a reporter, “My best quality is to be stylist. I never think about this career, this big job [...] I never wanted to be what I am today, and I will not die in the position.” Roitfeld is said to dislike New York. She spends as little time in the city as possible, and her daughter says she loves her home in Paris too much to ever leave. It's also possible that Roitfeld might not be keen to sign up to fill Wintour's shoes because in the current economic climate, it's a virtual certainty that Wintour's successor will never be granted the leeway Wintour carved out for herself, which includes vast editorial control, a reported 2 million dollar salary, a $50,000 annual clothing allowance, and a personal chauffeur. When Wintour wanted to buy an apartment in Greenwich Village, Condé Nast cut her a $1.6 million loan, interest-free. S.I. Newhouse will probably never grant a single editor-in-chief such extraordinary freedoms again.
It's possible that these rumors are unfounded, and perhaps the challenge presented by American Vogue—a mass-market title with a circulation of 1.3 million—might itself wreck all it is that's so inspiring about Roitfeld's editorial vision. A Roitfeld who could not change Vogue would be instead changed by it, and not, I would wager, for the better. And Roitfeld is, after all, comfortable overseeing a small-but-mighty 133,000 circulation magazine more loved by the fashion crowd than the wider world.
But even if the next in line proves not to be Roitfeld, it will be someone else, and sooner rather than later. Anna Wintour is nearing 60; the flurry of varying replacement/retirement rumors reported in different titles from different sources might at least be pointing in the right direction. Change is long overdue.

 

[Navygreen]

A Hollywood ingénue, like as not, has neither the look nor the inclination to pull off, say, an all-black avant-garde ensemble. Or a wacky couture gown constructed out of 15 yards of orange silk.

Oh please, cry me a river..

Roitfeld doesn't stand a chance in the US market.

 

[ChrissyM]

there was an article in The Independent the other day...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-knives-are-out-for-anna-wintour-1048803.html

The knives are out for Anna Wintour

As the legendarily icy editor of US Vogue, she has ruled the fashion scenefor two decades. But now the buzz among Manhattan's media elite is that the gilded era of Anna Wintour may be drawing to a close. Ian Burrell reports
Wednesday, 3 December 2008





Anna Wintour, who is as close to royalty as it is possible for a fashionista to be, was at Buckingham Palace last week to collect an OBE in the Queen's birthday honours. As she affixed the red ribbon of her medal to the shoulder of her suit, selected from the latest Chanel autumn/winter collection, she mused that "It's a great honour, but many of my American colleagues are not quite sure what it is."
For two decades, the London-born Wintour has edited American Vogue, making it the world's most influential fashion journal, and yet, even now it not clear that many of her fellow US citizens are quite sure who she is.
Her force of personality has even close colleagues trembling in their Manolos, but she combines it with a charm that has seduced advertisers into filling 2,700 pages of advertising last year and an instinct for American culture that maintains Vogue's readership at around 10 million. It is a magazine that appeals both to the moneyed women of Manhattan and the chattering classes of the Midwest.
Yet the hat pins are still out for her, the stilettos sharpened and ready to strike. Wintour, 59, might be a leading player among the dramatis personae of the ruthlessly competitive New York media scene, but the desire to see her depart the stage, in some quarters, has grown almost palpable. With her current contract at Condé Nast coming to an end, and ahead of her 60th birthday next November, the rumours of her standing down have reached a new intensity.
The New York website Gawker claimed yesterday that Si Newhouse, the 81-year-old head of Condé Nast, had extended his annual winter vacation in Vienna in order to spend time in Paris meeting Carine Roitfeld, the slender and highly regarded editor of ParisVogue. Drooling as it speculated, Gawker punted the "hot delicious rumour" that Roitfeld was being lined up as Wintour's successor, a notion that it claimed had served as a tasty appetiser for Condé Nast colleagues dining at New York's Waverly Inn.
A week earlier, a diarist from New York magazine's fashion blog, approached Wintour at the National Book Awards and asked her bluntly if she was about to quit. "I'm so sorry, I think that's an extremely rude question. Please leave me alone," replied the editor. Undeterred, the journalist asked again: "May we ask what you would do if you did retire?" At which point, Wintour was reduced to a terse: "No. Just go away."
All this is grist to the mill to those who seek to portray the Briton as an ice woman, a real-life female version of the sort of upper-class English baddie beloved by Hollywood and acted out by Charles Dance or Christopher Lee. So frosty is this snow queen perceived to be, that she is habitually referred to by the nickname "Arctic Wintour", although once upon a time, her detractors preferred "Nuclear Wintour".
As one fashion journalist put it yesterday: "People are scared of her. I'm scared of her. She's scary, formidable and frosty."
The personal attacks peaked two years ago with the release of The Devil Wears Prada, the film adaptation of a fashion novel by Lauren Weisberger, a former personal assistant to Wintour at Vogue. Commentators did not hesitate to make the comparison between Miranda Priestly, the domineering fashion magazine editor character played by Meryl Streep, and Wintour.
"She's had to put up with an unbelievable amount of nastiness, mainly from female journalists because of jealousy," says Colin McDowell, the founder of the cutting edge festival Fashion Fringe and editor-in-chief of the website Distill (www.distilldigital.com). "Of course, all these hacks, who have crawled halfway up the ladder and then stopped, exhausted, are going to look up and say 'I don't like her'."
McDowell harbours no such feelings. He sees Wintour as being "focused on excellence", rather than ruthlessly determined. "She is the most important person in the international fashion world, more important than any designer. She leads the industry and has used American Vogue as the central industrial tool for disseminating what's important to her, which is fashion that sells," he says admiringly.
Wintour has become a target for environmentalists because of her determination to wear fur. The organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) has made her a favourite target. Peta's international president, Ingrid Newkirk, another English-American, has relentlessly pursued the editrix, once approaching her in a Four Seasons hotel and tossing a dead racoon on to her plate. Wintour discreetly covered the deceased mammal with a napkin, and placed an order for another pot of tea.
"She has stuck to her beliefs," says McDowell. "She has been attacked, had dead animals thrown at her, custard pies. She always comes away with her dignity – she never shouts, she never screams."
***

 

[ChrissyM]

part 2

The idea that Wintour might step down is not wholly fanciful. Aside from the contract issue, her predecessor Grace Mirabella left the editor's chair at the age of 59. The Englishwoman has thoroughly proved herself and, according to one Condé Nast source quoted by the New York Post last month, "She feels she has done it all and had enough."
These are not the happiest times for magazines, especially high-end titles. The pain of Wall Street has had a direct impact on the sales of the luxury goods companies that are Vogue's most important clients. As sales have declined, so have advertising budgets, with the result that Wintour's magazine has in recent months been thinner than she would have liked.
More damaging have been the failings of some ventures to which she has been closely linked. In October, Condé Nast announced that it would be cutting back the much vaunted Men's Vogue from 10 issues a year to two. Meanwhile, the music-led Condé Nast title Fashion Rocks has been put "on hiatus for 2009", to use the words of the company's president Richard Beckman, who has been alarmed by the scale of the advertising downturn. Both those titles are overseen by Wintour.
But what of the idea that Roitfeld might be tempted to cross the Atlantic and become Wintour's replacement? The role would surely appeal to the ambitious Parisian, who had previously been linked to the top job at Harper's Bazaar, the biggest rival publication to American Vogue and also edited by an Englishwoman, Glenda Bailey.
In reality, the chances of Newhouse offering Roitfeld the position appear minimal. Senior sources at Condé Nast yesterday virtually laughed the idea into touch. "I would eat my hat if such a changeover came about," said one. "It is borderline theatre of the absurd."
The reason for the disbelief is that French Vogue is a vastly different proposition from its American counterpart. Roitfeld is considered to be the most radical of all the Vogue editors. "She's allowed to do the frilly frou frou fashion in Paris, but Anna Wintour has to cater to Middle America," one fashion journalist pointed out yesterday.
***
Roitfeld's Vogue has been described as "the polar opposite" of American fashion magazines, hardly considering whether the clothes that it shows in its shoots are wearable or accessible to the readers. It has little interest in putting Hollywood actors on its cover, preferring to profile edgy musicians or the youngest, newest catwalk models. One publishing industry source yesterday described French Vogue as somewhere between other editions of Vogue and the British fashion and culture magazine Pop.
Besides, Condé Nast sources say that Roitfeld does not possess the experience to take over at American Vogue, particularly when difficult economic conditions demand stable leadership. "Not at this tricky moment would you replace a knowledgeable editor who knows the American market thoroughly with an editor from Europe who is not experienced at that type of magazine."
This is not to say that Wintour is only interested in fusty clothing. She has been pivotal in the careers of highly creative designers including John Galliano and Marc Jacobs, recognising their talents, and going out of her way to secure them backers and venues for their shows.
If Wintour is today an archetype, she has worked at it. She has worn her hair in her trademark Louise Brooks bob since the age of 14, when she was a pupil at the North London Collegiate School. Her father, Charles Wintour, edited the London Evening Standard and, just as his daughter would later become regarded as an ice maiden, was known as "chilly Charlie" because of his cool manner. He helped secure his 15-year-old daughter a job at the famous fashion boutique Biba and she was soon a fixture of London's Sixties club scene. Anna Wintour briefly dated the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster before she became a fashion journalist, beginning her career as an assistant at Harper's & Queen.
In her mid-twenties she moved to New York where, according to her biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, she worked on a women's adult magazine, Viva, hung out with Bob Marley and briefly dated Eric Idle before arriving at Condé Nast at the age of 33. Despite rivals repeatedly referring to her cold demeanour, the man described as the love of her life was the playboy Jon Bradshaw, 12 years her senior. In 1984 she married the child psychiatrist David Shaffer, with whom she has two children. The couple divorced in 1999 and Wintour now dates the millionaire communications executive Shelby Bryan. "She's ambitious, driven, insecure, needy and a perfectionist," begins the foreword to Oppenheimer's 2005 biography Front Row. "And she's considered the most powerful force in the $100bn fashion industry."
Wintour rose to the editor's chair at American Vogue in 1988, transforming it from the safe magazine she had inherited from Mirabella, who had been in the job for 17 years. She rises at 6am to play tennis and have her hair done, before arriving by 8am at the office, inside which she is known to wear sunglasses. Though designers crave her presence by their catwalks, she has never lost sight of the importance of making the clothes that appear in her magazine feel accessible to her readership, a crucial factor in her success in maintaining circulation at around 1.2 million. "The success of American Vogue," says a Condé Nast colleague, "is a reflection of the personality of Anna Wintour and the knowledge she has of American women and American society."
But though she understands her market, some Americans, it appears, still don't get Anna Wintour. While the barbed, and often anonymous comments continue to come in from fearful yet spiteful rivals, the famous editrice is hoping to soon be shown in a better light. A new documentary on the making of an issue of Wintour's Vogue, a project with which she fully co-operated, is expected to be screened as part of the next Sundance film festival. It will, she hopes, be fairer than The Devil Wears Prada. In any case, as she pointed out last week at Buckingham Palace, Wintour wears Chanel.
Always in fashion: The story of US Vogue
1892: 'Vogue' is founded by Arthur Baldwin Turnure as a bi-monthly fashion and society magazine. In 1909, it's taken over by Condé Nast.
1914: Edna Woolman Chase is appointed editor-in-chief of American 'Vogue', a position she holds for 38 years.
1963: Diana Vreeland is appointed editor and encourages the magazine to attract a younger audience fascinated by the cultural and sexual revolutions of the Sixties. Vreeland helps to make a household name of Twiggy, and discovers Edie Sedgwick.
1973: 'Vogue' becomes a monthly publication under the editorship of Grace Mirabella, who is later accused of losing potential readers to newer rival magazines such as 'Elle'.
1988: Anna Wintour's first issue as editor features a full-length image of a model in a Christian Lacroix jacket and jeans, signalling a more inclusive approach to fashion.
1990: The magazine helps to bring about the era of the supermodel, bowing to the 'Holy Trinity' of Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, who tells 'Vogue': "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day."
1992: Richard Gere becomes the first man to appear on the cover of 'Vogue', with the supermodel Cindy Crawford, then his wife. George Clooney is the second cover man, in 2000, photographed with the Brazilian model Gisele.
1998: Hillary Clinton becomes the only First Lady to appear on the cover of 'Vogue'. It has been customary, however, for the President's wife to be photographed inside the magazine ever since Eleanor Roosevelt's tenure in the White House. Michelle Obama is widely expected to become the second First Lady to grace the cover of 'Vogue'.
2003: Wintour's former assistant, Lauren Weisberger, publishes 'The Devil Wears Prada', featuring a tyrannical fashion editor, played in the film by Meryl Streep.
2008: 'Vogue' features Gisele on its April cover alongside basketball player LeBron James. Critics say the photograph, by Annie Leibovitz, perpetuates a racial stereotype. Tim Walker
Divas of distinction: How they compare
Anna Wintour
Route to the top
The Briton is the daughter of former Evening Standard editor Charles and sister to The Guardian political Editor Patrick – not to mention a former squeeze of gossip columnist Nigel Dempster – but it is fashion that has obsessed her since her early teens. In 1970 she joined Harper's Bazaar, telling colleagues that she would one day edit Vogue. Voracious for advancement, the following decades would see Wintour zip to and fro across the Atlantic, via British Vogue and House & Garden, eventually rising through the ranks of the glossiest publishing house of them all, Condé Nast. Divorced from her husband David Shaffer in 1999, the couple have two children Charlie and Bee, and Anna, 59, now steps out with millionaire Shelby Bryan – though her fondness for taking male sports stars including Michael Phelps and Roger Federer as arm candy to fashion shows has frequently been noted.
Management style
Distant, volatile, perfectionist, ruthless, brilliant – take your pick. Wintour has commanded that entire fashion weeks are scheduled around her needs. It has been said (by the British journalist Toby Young, among others), that in the Condé Nast building co-workers do not step into a lift if the diminutive editor-in-chief is inside. In 2006 even her right-hand man, the mountainous fashionista Andre Leon Talley, admitted to Oprah Winfrey that "Anna doesn't like fat people".
Rarely seen without
Giant Chanel sunglasses; bobbed hair; fur; a force-field of terror.
They say
"The notion that Anna would want something done 'now' and not 'shortly' is accurate. Anna wants what she wants right away," Barbara Amiel on The Devil Wears Prada
"One of the most frightening women in the world. I don't care what anybody says." Candace Bushnell
"The Red Sea parts when she walks through the room," André Leon Talley
She says
"I think women look better than they've ever looked. And if a woman feels bad about herself, then there's something more seriously wrong with that woman."
"In the face of my brothers' and sister's academic success, I felt I was rather a failure. They were super bright so I guess I worked at being decorative. Most of the time, I was hiding behind my hair and I was paralytically shy. I've always been a joke in my family. They've always thought I am deeply unserious."
Carine Roitfeld
Route to the top
Roitfeld, 54, the daughter of a Russian film producer and a Parisienne, grew up in the French capital and started modelling at 18. At French 'Elle', she shifted from posing to working behind the lens, as a fashion stylist. On a shoot for 'Vogue Bambini' in 1990, Roitfeld met photographer Mario Testino and the pair began a long and fruitful creative partnership. In the Nineties, another partnership, this time with Gucci designer Tom Ford propelled her into the top tier and her louche personal style inspired Ford's bestselling collections until she was poached for Paris 'Vogue' by Jonathan Newhouse in 2001. Roitfeld has been together with her partner Christopher Restoin, the founder and owner of a shirt business, for three decades, and they have two children, Vladimir and Julia – who is face of a Tom Ford fragrance.
Management style
Editorially, Roitfeld pushes the boundaries of taste. Irreverant and youthful, she'd never been a boss or worked at a desk before 2001. And don't say she's not aware of equal opps: "People always say that I weigh my staff," the pin-thin editrix has said, "And it is totally wrong. All my girls are very skinny and very chic and very beautiful. And if they are not beautiful, well, then they are very charming."
Personal style
She totters on bondage-style stilletoes (the highest manufactured), and often wears a pencil skirt and an oversized fur "chubby"; her perfectly tanned bare legs are a marvel, whatever the weather, as is her preternaturally shiny, ironed hair.
Rarely seen without
An adoring photographer on her arm, the black-clad Paris 'Vogue' stylist Emmanuelle Alt; a sun tan.
They say
Detractors have called her photographs "p*rno chic".
She says
"Me, I wear a lot of Japanese pieces mixed with a bit of classic Hermès and Prada. Even though jeans suit me, I never wear jeans."
"Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), they like to pay attention to her [Wintour], not to me," she says, "so this is good for me.
"I think my craziness and glamour come from my father. The Russians are more up and down than the French.
"The ultimate 'Vogue' to do would be the American 'Vogue', because it's 'uge... but I have more fun doing my magazine. We can smoke on the cover, we can show t*ts. I think I would be very frustrated not to be able to do all my craziness that I'm able to do here in France." Susie Rushton

 

[Mathewthew]

Maybe she's retire or somethings.........but recently all the messages are so negative....
I love Carine for sure. She's my favourite !!
But we cant deny Anna's job, She makes the American Vogue become a "fashion Bible" and lots of great jobs too...She's a really sucessful women. And I think Every era have an end. Maybe one day, Carine will be out 2......But I hope Carine can pick up her job, since she did a really great job for Vogue Paris, then the next thing I'm concern will be who 'll be the next EIC for VP...........