Anna Wintour

Anna Wintour has been editor-in-chief of the U.S. edition of Vogue since 1988. She is widely believed to be the inspiration for the Miranda Priestly character in the novel and film The Devil Wears Prada.

By

• You either know fashion or you don't.

• Reported by childhood friend Vivienne Lasky, quoted by biographer Jerry Oppenheimer in Front Row: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor In Chief, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-3123-231-07, p. 51 .

• 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.

• Reported, quoted by Emma Brockes; May 27, 2006; "What lies beneath"; The Guardian; retrieved March 23, 2007.

About

• She would go to the opening of an envelope.

• Lasky on Wintour's days on the nightlife circuit in Swinging London; quoted by Oppenheimer at 51

• Anna happens to be a friend of mine, a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet.

• Barbara Amiel; July 2, 2006; "The 'Devil' I know"; Daily Telegraph; retrieved February 6, 2007

• At some stage in her career, Anna Wintour stopped being Anna Wintour and became "Anna Wintour", at which point, like wings of a stately home, she closed off large sections of her personality to the public.

• Brockes.

• The notion that Anna would want something done "now" and not "shortly" is accurate.

• Amiel, on Wintour's reputation for being difficult to work for.; June 30, 2006; "This devil isn't Anna"; MacLean's; retrieved February 8, 2007.

• Anna's not someone who takes you in hand. It's more she throws you in the water and and you'll either sink or swim.

• Laurie Schechter, a former assistant; Oppenheimer at 192.

• When I was a media reporter, there were many high-profile editors, and God knows they had big egos, but you could still get them on the phone ... Remnick, Carter, Fuller, even Martha Stewart. But Wintour? She just never talked to peons like us ... It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking, "Who is this skank?" She plays up this aristocratic, Marie Antoinette "Let them eat cake" routine, but, excuse me, can I get some proof that she holds a title of nobility that goes back to the 13th century? No. All she does is edit a magazine. That's it. So what's with the royalty routine? . . . I mean, for Christ's sake, the woman slept with Bob Marley, one of the most soulful people ever to walk the face of the earth. If that didn't spiritualize her, nothing would ... Wintour will be escorted by eunuchs to a place in hell run entirely by large rats.

• Peter Braunstein, former fashion media reporter for Women's Wear Daily, in a "personal manifesto" introduced as evidence during his trial for the sexual abuse of a former coworker, as reported by Laura Italiano in "'Devil'ish Plot To Murder Wintour"; New York Post, May 15, 2007.

• 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 Steven 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

• Amanda Fortini, "Defending Vogue's Evil Genius", Slate; February 10, 2005.

• [Her] unwavering ability to look as if she lives within the pages of her magazine has a sort of honesty to it, proof that, whatever one thinks about it, the lifestyle peddled by Vogue is at least physically possible.

• Brockes