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Anna Wintour
Gender	female
Born	November 3, 1949 (age 57)
Birth place	London, England
Circumstances
Occupation	Magazine editor
Marital status	divorced
Title	Editor-in-chief, U.S. Vogue
Family	Patrick, James, and Norah (siblings); Charles (father)
Spouse	David Shaffer
Children	Charles and Katherine ("Bee")
Ethnicity	English-American
Salary	$2 million (reportedly)[1]
Notable credit(s)	Editorial assistant, Harpers & Queen, Harper's Bazaar; fashion editor, Viva, Savvy, New York; creative director, U.S. Vogue; editor-in-chief, British Vogue and House & Garden

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. A native of London, of English and American parentage, she became interested in fashion as a teenager and advised her father Charles, editor of the Evening Standard, on how to better make the newspaper appealing to the youth of mid-1960s London. After dropping out of school at 16, she forsook college to start a career in journalism on both sides of the Atlantic that stopped at New York and Home & Garden before she took over at British Vogue and finally the flagship magazine in New York. She succeeded in turning around a faltering product and has been widely recognized in the publishing industry for her success.

Like her predecessor Diana Vreeland, she has become a fashion icon in her own right. Her bob haircut and sunglasses have become a common sight in the front row of the most exclusive fashion shows. Away from the cameras, she has become as much an institution in the fashion world as her magazine. Universally hailed for her keen eye for fashion trends and support for younger designers, her aloof and demanding persona has earned her the nickname "Nuclear Wintour". A former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 bestselling roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada, later made into a successful film starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a fashion editor widely believed to be based on Wintour. She has also drawn both praise and criticism for her willingness to use the magazine and its cachet to shape the industry as a whole. Animal rights activists have also singled her out for her continued promotion of fur.

Contents 1 Family 2 Early life 3 Career 3.1 From fashion to journalism 3.2 New York 3.3 Return to publishing 3.4 Condé Nast 3.5 Present 3.6 Fashion industry power broker 4 Personal life 4.1 Marriage, relationships and children 4.2 Philanthropy 4.3 Work habits 4.3.1 Personal fashion preferences 4.4 Politics 5 Criticism 5.1 Personality 5.2 The Devil Wears Prada 5.2.1 Film adaptation 5.3 PETA campaign 5.4 Élitism 5.5 Responses 6 References 7 External links

Her father, Charles Vere Wintour, CBE, was an editor of The Evening Standard; her 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 her maternal grandmother, Anna (Gilkyson) Baker, a Philadelphia socialite.^[2] Her stepmother is Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded such British publications as Honey and Petticoat.^[3]

Wintour had four siblings, three of whom survive: James Charles, the managing director of Gravesham Borough Council;^[4] Nora Hilary Wintour, the deputy general secretary of Public Services International in Geneva, Switzerland^[5] and Patrick Wintour, who started as labor correspondent at The Guardian in 1983 and rose to become the political editor for both it and the The Observer in 2006.^[6] Her eldest brother, Gerald Jackson Wintour, died as a child in 1951 when he was struck by a car while bicycling to school.^[7]

Her aunt, Cordelia Wintour, married Sir Eric James, who was granted a life peerage as Baron James of Rusholme.^[8]

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.^[9] At the age of 14 she began wearing her hair in the bob that has since become her trademark.^[10] As London began to swing, she became a dedicated follower of fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!, and her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market.^[11]

She began an early pattern of dating well-connected older men. At 15, she was involved briefly with Piers Paul Read, then 24,^[12]. In her later teens, she began dating gossip columnist Nigel Dempster and became a fixture on the London club circuit with him.^[13] "She would go to the opening of an envelope", joked her friend Vivienne Lasky.^[14]

The young woman's first fashion job, at the influential Biba boutique, was arranged by her father when she was 15.^[15] The next year, she dropped out of North London Collegiate. Wintour chose not to go to college but instead entered a training program at Harrods. At her parents' behest, she also took some fashion classes at a nearby school, but soon dropped out, telling Lasky that "you either know fashion or you don't".^[16] At Harrod's, she continued dating well-connected older men, this time Peter Gitterman, the stepson of London Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Georg Solti.^[17] Another of them, Richard Neville, gave her her first look at magazine production when she hung around the offices of his popular and controversial Oz.^[18]

She entered the field of fashion journalism in 1970 when Harper's Bazaar merged with Queen to become, for a time, Harper's & Queen, and the new magazine needed editorial assistants.^[19] While there, she let it be known to her coworkers that her ambition was to one day be editor of Vogue.^[20] 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, often shot by Helmut Newton and other trend-setting photographers.^[21] One recreated the works of Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots.^[22]. She left the magazine in 1975 after chronic disagreements with new editor Min Hogg, whose job Anna herself had vied for^[23], and relocated to New York with yet another older boyfriend, freelance journalist and playboy Jon Bradshaw.^[24]

She became a junior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar in New York in 1975.^[22] Her innovative shoots caused conflict with editor Tony Mazzola, and she was fired after nine months, a tenure whose length she has since tended to exaggerate.^[25] During that time she was introduced to Bob Marley by one of Bradshaw's friends, and disappeared with him for a week.^[26]

After several months, Bradshaw's help got her her first position as a fashion editor, with Viva, a women's adult magazine started by Kathy Keeton, then wife of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. While she was there for two years until it folded in 1979, she has rarely admitted to working there due to the Penthouse connection.^[27] It would be the first position for which she would be able to hire a personal assistant, and along with it came her reputation for being a demanding and difficult boss.^[28]

When Guccione shut down the money-losing Viva in late 1978, Wintour decided instead to take some time off. She had endured a difficult breakup with Bradshaw, briefly dating Eric Idle^[29] afterwards. But then she wound up with French record producer Michel Esteban, dividing her time with him between Paris and New York.^[30]

In 1980, she went back to work, succeeding Elsa Klensch as fashion editor for a new women's magazine named Savvy,^[31] The magazine sought to appeal to career-conscious professional women who could and would make purchases with their own earnings^[32], a reader Wintour would later aim Vogue at.

The next year, she moved on to become fashion editor of New York.^[22] It would be the turning point of her career. There, the fashion spreads and photo shoots she had been putting together for years finally began attracting the attention she wanted them to in the industry. She became a favorite of editor Edward Kosner, who sometimes bent what were otherwise very strict rules for her,^[33] arousing the ire of the rest of the staff. He began letting her work on other sections of the magazine, and she learned through her work on a cover involving Rachel Ward how effective celebrity covers were at selling copies.^[33]

Polly Mellen, a coworker from her Harper's & Queen days, arranged for an interview with Vogue editor Grace Mirabella. It ended quickly, after Anna made it very clear to Mirabella that she wanted her job.^[34]

Among those in the magazine business whose eyes her New York spreads eventually caught was Alex Liberman, editorial director for Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue. In 1983, he talked to Wintour about a position at that magazine, and she eventually accepted after a bidding war which doubled her salary.^[35]

She was given the never-before-used title of creative director.^[35] Since her responsibilities were not clearly defined, she often changed aspects of the magazine without letting editor Grace Mirabella know, which caused friction between Wintour and other staffers.^[36] During this time, she began dating prominent child psychiatrist David Shaffer, again some years (thirteen) older than her, an acquaintance from her younger days in London who gave her strong emotional support to her at that time.^[37] The two married in September 1984.^[38]

Wintour became pregnant by him shortly thereafter, and a year after the marriage was chosen to replace longtime British Vogue editor Beatrix Miller.^[39] She took over the post in April 1986, shortly after giving birth to her son, Charlie.^[40] Her husband remained in New York, working on a research project about teenage suicide,^[39] and the company paid for her townhouse, nanny and frequent roundtrip flights on the Concorde for the two.^[41]

She radically changed British Vogue, steering it from a tradition of eccentricity to a direction more in tune with the American magazine, borrowing her ideal reader from Savvy. She told her father's old paper, the Evening Standard, that 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."^[31] She replaced many staffers and exerted far more control over the magazine then any previous editor had, earning the nickname "Nuclear Wintour" in the process.^[42] Those editors who were retained began to refer to the period as "The Wintour of Our Discontent". "It was the end of life as we knew it", said Liz Tilberis, who had hoped for the top job herself.^[43]

Tilberis got the job in mid-1987 when Wintour returned to New York to take over House & Garden. It had long lagged Architectural Digest,^[44] and the company gave her a free hand. Again, she made radical changes to staff and look. "She destroyed House & Garden in about two days," complained a fired editor, noting that she had, in her first week, killed photo spreads and articles that had cost $2 million.^[45] She put so much fashion in photo spreads that industry wags began to refer to the magazine as House & Garment,^[46] and enough celebrities that it was referred to as Vanity Chair.

Wintour's changes did, indeed, have a negative effect on the magazine. When "HG" became the name on the cover in March 1988, many longtime subscribers thought they were getting a new magazine and put it aside for the real thing to arrive.^[44] Many eventually canceled, and while some fashion advertisers came over, most of the magazine's traditional advertisers pulled out.^[47]

After ten months, Conde Nast finally made a long-awaited move and put her into the job she had aimed for since 1971: the editorship of Vogue. Under Mirabella, it had become more focused on lifestyles as a whole and less on fashion.^[46] Industry insiders worried that it was losing ground to the upstart ELLE,^[46] which had been introduced to America from France in 1985.^[31] Besides sweeping staff changes, 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.^[31] 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.^[46] 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.^[31]

Under her editorship, the magazine renewed its focus on fashion and returned to the prominence it had held under Diana Vreeland. Vogue held off the challenge from not only ELLE but Harper's Bazaar, which had lured Tilberis to compete with Wintour, whom she detested, and Mirabella, a magazine Rupert Murdoch founded for Wintour's predecessor. Her most serious adversary, in fact, was within the company — Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair and later The New Yorker, whom she competed against for writers and photographers. The two are said to strongly dislike each other, despite some similar personal qualities.^[48]

The September 2004 issue boasted a record 832 pages, the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time.^[46] She has also overseen the introduction of three spinoff titles: Teen Vogue, Vogue Living and Men's Vogue. Teen Vogue has outpaced its two top competitors, ELLE Girl and Cosmo Girl in ad pages and dollars, and the 164 ad pages in the début issue of Men's Vogue were the most for a first issue in Condé Nast history.^[49] Her accomplishment in expanding the brand earned her the coveted title of "Editor of the Year," by the industry trade magazine AdAge.^[50]

Her salary is reported to be $2 million a year.^[1]. She also receives generous perks including a $50,000 clothes budget, a chauffeur and a suite at the Hôtel Ritz Paris while attending Paris Fashion Week.^[35] Condé Nast president Si Newhouse also had the company make her an interest-free $1.6 million loan to purchase her townhouse in Greenwich Village.^[51]

She has become well-known even outside the fashion world, and has been alluded to or parodied even before The Devil Wears Prada. Edna Mode, in the 2004 hit animated film The Incredibles, was believed to have been at least partially inspired by Wintour, due to the similar bob haircut.^[52] Linda Hunt's Regina Krumm, in Robert Altman's 1994 film Prêt-à-Porter has a similar haircut style, and the editors in the front rows of fashion shows in that film all wear sunglasses. Ugly Betty's character Fey Sommers shares some characteristics as Wintour, such as the bob and sunglasses, and having a homophone for a season as her last name.

Wintour is also referenced in the series after Bradford Meade is arrested and Wilhelmina Slater is poised to take over as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. Wilhelmina is informed by her assistant that Wintour called with an invitation to lunch, which she declines. Several years earlier, in an episode of HBO's Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw gets drunk with a Vogue editor (Ron Silver) in his office. As he tries to help her out of the building, she bumps in to a female employee and, embarrassed, says "please tell me that wasn't Anna Wintour".

A & E IndieFilms and R.J. Cutler are to shoot a feature-length documentary chronicling the making of Vogue's September issue. Cutler had approached Wintour in 2004 and will direct the untitled pic which will be shot over eight months as Wintour prepares the fall fashion issue, known in the industry as the "fashion bible". The filmmakers plan to have the pic completed in 2008 .^[53]

Anna Wintour, through the years, has become one of the most powerful people in fashion, setting trends and anointing new designers. The Guardian has called her the "unofficial mayoress" of New York City.^[54] She has worked behind the scenes to encourage fashion houses to hire younger, fresher designers such as John Galliano, who owes his position at Christian Dior to her intervention. She persuaded Donald Trump to let Marc Jacobs use a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel for a show when he and his partner were short of cash. More recently, she persuaded Brooks Brothers to hire the relatively unknown Thom Browne.^[55] Her protégée at Vogue, Plum Sykes, became a successful novelist, drawing her settings from New York's fashionable élite.

Like many successful power brokers, she rarely makes her wishes known directly. Fashion industry publicists say that a simple "Do you want me to go to Anna with this?" from a subordinate is often enough to settle a dispute in Vogue's favor.^[55]

She has two children by Shaffer, Charles (Charlie) and Katherine (known as Bee), who blogs for the Daily Telegraph^[56](during both pregnancies, she continued to wear Chanel miniskirts to work^[57]). 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^[58] but Wintour has refused to comment.^[59] She maintains an ongoing relationship with Bryan that friends say has mellowed her. "She smiles now and has been seen to laugh," the Observer quoted one as saying.^[57]

Wintour is also a noted philanthropist. She serves as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.^[22] 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.^[22]

She rises daily before 6am, plays tennis and has her hair and makeup done, then gets to Vogue's offices at 8am. She always arrives at fashion shows at their scheduled starting time, whether or not they can be reasonably expected to do so. "I use the waiting time to make phone calls and notes; I get some of my best ideas at the shows," she says.^[56] According to the BBC documentary Boss Woman, she is similarly efficient with her time elsewhere in her day, rarely staying at parties for more than 20 minutes at a time and getting to bed by 10:15 every night.^[60]

Her control over the magazine, particularly her strong suit, photo layouts, has long been industry legend. She has since her first days as editor required that photographers not begin until she has approved Polaroids of the setup and clothing and that they submit all their work to the magazine, not just their personal choices.^[61] But her control over the text is less certain. Her staffers swear she reads everything written for publication^[62], but former editor Richard Storey has claimed she rarely, if ever, read any of Vogue's arts coverage or book reviews.^[63]

Similarly, in younger days she often left the task of writing the text accompanying her layouts to others, since, many of those who did say, she has minimal skills in that area.^[64] Today she writes little for the magazine save the monthly editor's letter.

At Vogue, she reportedly has three full-time assistants but sometimes surprises callers by answering the phone herself.^[55] Her good friend Barbara Amiel says that she often turns her cell phone off in order to eat lunch uninterrupted, and likes to have a good steak for her midday meal.^[65] Others who have known her likewise report that high-protein meals have been a habit of hers for a long time. "It was smoked salmon and scrambled eggs every single day" for lunch, says Liz Walker, a coworker at Harpers & Queen. "She would eat nothing else".^[21]

As the editor of the planet's premiere fashion magazine, her public wardrobe is often closely scrutinized and imitated. While in her earlier days she mixed fashionable T-shirts and vests with designer jeans, once she started at Vogue as creative director she switched to Chanel suits with miniskirts.^[35] She continued to wear them even through both pregnancies, opening the skirts slightly in back and keeping her jacket on to cover up.^[66]

Her practice of wearing sunglasses indoors has been the subject of many speculative explanations. These have ranged from a simple affectation to facetious suggestions that she is Satan and the glasses conceal glowing red eyeballs. According to Jerry Oppenheimer, however, they are simply a way for her to conceal poor eyesight (her father's vision deteriorated seriously in his later years, and she fears a similar fate). A former colleague he interviewed recalls finding her Wayfarers in her office once while she was out and putting them on, only to get seriously dizzy from the strength of the prescription lenses in them.^[67]

"Anna is a liberal," says Amiel. "She endorsed Al Gore in his presidential bid".^[68] She has viewed politics primarily through the lens of fashion, famously saying "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."^[52]

While her success at turning Vogue around and her support of the fashion industry and charity work are universally acknowledged, that has not immunized her from criticism.

In 2003, one of her former assistants, Lauren Weisberger, published the bestselling roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada. Its antagonist, Miranda Priestly, editor of the fictional Runway, was widely believed to be based on Wintour.

Two years later, 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.^[69] This is consistent with reports that she goes to great lengths to manage her public image. When she took over as American Vogue editor, gossip columnist Liz Smith reported rumors that she had gotten the job by having an affair with Newhouse. Wintour was reportedly furious and made her anger the subject of one of her first staff meetings.^[31] She remained angry enough that she still complained about it when accepting an award in 2002.^[70]

There have also been accusations that she has imposed an élitist æsthetic on the magazine, promoting celebrities over fashion personalities and making demands that even prominent subjects change their image before being featured in its pages.

She is often described as cold and aloof. "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", wrote The Guardian.^[52] Many former coworkers told Jerry Oppenheimer of how she kept her distance from most of them. But she is also known for volatile outbursts of displeasure, and the "Nuclear Wintour" sobriquet is a result of both. Despite its wide use, she dislikes it enough to have demanded that New York Times reporter Michael Gross not use it.^[42]

"I think she has been very rude to a lot of people in the past, on her way up — very terse," said the same friend the Observer quoted on the positive effect of her relationship with Bryan. "She doesn't do small talk. She is never going to be friends with her assistant".^[57] A former assistant said, "You definitely did not ride the elevator with her."^[71] Even those who like her admit to some trepidation at her presence. "Anna happens to be a friend of mine," says Amiel, "a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet."^[65]

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.^[46] "The notion that Anna would want something done 'now' and not 'shortly' is accurate," Amiel says of The Devil Wears Prada. "Anna wants what she wants right away."^[68] Laurie Schechter, one of her first assistants, says "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."^[72]

She reportedly once made a junior staffer look through a photographer's trash to find a picture he had refused to give her.^[31] In a frequently-told story, a new intern at the magazine was told she must not make eye contact with Wintour or initiate conversation with her. One day in the hall, the intern saw Wintour trip and stepped over her rather than violate this taboo.^[57]

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.^[73] The same month, the New York Post's Page Six alleged that she and Bryan were illegally subletting a loft from hairdresser John Frieda.^[74]

Weisberger's novel is told in the voice of Andrea "Andy" Sachs, a young woman fresh from college with literary ambitions. Andy gets a job as junior assistant to legendary editor Miranda Priestly, who among her many similarities to Wintour is British, has two children, and serves on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 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.^[75] 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."^[76] 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 Condé Nast publications reviewed Weisberger's book. When the film was released, one of the company's magazines, The New Yorker, ran a review of the film by David Denby that disparaged the novel in comparison.^[77] The New York Times's Janet Maslin avoided mentioning Wintour's name in one of the paper's two negative reviews of the book.^[78] Its favorable notice of the movie mentioned neither Vogue nor Wintour.^[79]

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.^[80] 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 Garavani, actually appeared as himself.^[80]

The film was released, in mid-2006, to great commercial success.^[81] Wintour attended the première 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 similarities striking enough to Wintour's^[82] that she reportedly had it redecorated).^[83]

Amiel reported that at first Wintour said the film would probably go straight to DVD.^[65] It made over US$300 million in worldwide box office receipts. Later in 2006, in an interview with Barbara Walters which aired the day of the DVD's release, Wintour said she found the film "really entertaining" and praised it for making fashion "entertaining and glamorous and interesting…. I was one hundred percent behind it".^[84]

While Wintour may have borne no malice toward the film and those involved in it, she has reportedly never forgiven Weisberger.^[85] When it was reported that her editor suggested she completely start her third novel over, Wintour's spokesman Patrick O'Connell suggested Weisberger "should get a job as someone else's assistant."^[86]

Ultimately, The Devil Wears Prada may have actually done Wintour a favor by increasing her name recognition. "Besides giving Weisberger her fifteen minutes", Oppenheimer writes, "[it] ... place[d] Anna squarely in the mainstream celebrity pantheon. [She] was now known and talked about over Big Macs and fries under the Golden Arches by young fashionistas in Wal-Mart denim in Davenport and Dubuque."^[85]

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.^[87] She herself said she has been physically attacked so many times she's "lost count."^[88] She and Vogue's publisher Ron Galotti (himself the inspiration of a fictional character known as Mr. Big from Sex and the City) once retaliated for a protest outside the Condé Nast offices during the company's annual Christmas party by sending down a plate of steaming, freshly cooked roast beef.^[89]

Some critics have charged that instead of models, celebrities are becoming the face of Vogue.^[90][91][92] 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 Kate Winslet) 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.^[46] At the 2005 Anglomania celebration, a Vogue-sponsored salute to British fashion at the Met, Wintour is said to have gone beyond mere approval and personally chose the clothes that prominent attendees such as Jennifer Lopez, Kate Moss, Donald Trump and Diane von Furstenberg wore.^[57] "I don’t think Vreeland had that kind of concentration", says Women's Wear Daily publisher Patrick McCarthy. "She wouldn’t have dressed Babe Paley. Nor would Babe Paley have let her".^[55]

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."^[46]

Wintour has been accused of exercising her power to set herself apart even from ostensible peers. "I do not think fiction could surpass the reality", an unnamed British fashion magazine editor says of The Devil Wears Prada. "[A]rt in this instance is only a poor imitation of life." Wintour, the editor says, routinely requests that her seats at New York fashion shows are located such that she is not only separated from competing editors but cannot even see or be seen by them, either.^[57] Further,

We spend our working lives telling people which it-bag to carry but Anna is so above the rest of us she does not even have a handbag. She has a limo. And she has her walkers André Leon Talley and Hamish Bowles, whose main job is to carry her bits around for her.^[57]

Amiel confirms this practice. "Why she has this routine I don't know. Certainly it unnerves females … Obviously it is part of the persona".^[68]

Some of her intercessions on behalf of designers have also been criticized as being motivated by personal connections rather than talent. By persuading designers to loan clothes to prominent socialites and celebrities, who are then photographed wearing the clothes not only in Vogue but more general-interest magazines like People and Us, which in turn influence what buyers want, some in the industry believe Wintour is exerting too much control over it, especially since she is not involved in making or producing clothes herself. "The end result is that Anna can control it all the way to the selling floor", says Candy Pratts Price, executive fashion director at style.com.^[55]

Wintour has rarely, if ever, personally responded to criticisms of her, as most critics 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 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.^[46]

Emma Brockes sees this in Wintour herself: "[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".^[52]

Her close acquaintances have seen her purported coldness as really just a traditional British reserve.^[68]. Brockes further notes that it may be mututal: "If she is awkward, it is partly a reflection of how awkward people are with her, particularly women, who get pre-emptively chippy when faced with the prospect of meeting Fashion Incarnate."^[52] She describes herself as shy, and Harry Connick Jr., who escorted her and Bee to shows in 2007, agrees: "She's shy and is nothing like that character."^[93]

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. "Powerful women in the media always get inspected more thoroughly than their male counterparts", said the New York Times in a piece about Wintour shortly after the film's release.^[94] Wintour has been likened to Martha Stewart and Tina Brown, both of whom also have been described as overbearing and abusive to those who work for them.

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.^[31]

She contrasts Vreeland's Vogue with Wintour'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".^[31] 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.^[31]

Concerns about her role as an eminence grise of the fashion world are allayed by those familiar with how she uses that power, who say she is not manipulative. "She’s honest. She tells you what she thinks. Yes is yes and no is no", according to Karl Lagerfeld. "She’s not too pushy" agrees François-Henri Pinault, chief executive officer of PPR, Gucci's parent company. "She lets you know it’s not a problem if you can’t do something she wants. But she makes you understand that if you could, she would be very supportive with her magazine."

Her defenders also suggest her power over the industry is neither as vindictively applied, nor as absolute, as is often believed. She continued to support Gucci despite her strong belief PPR was making a major mistake letting Tom Ford go. Designers such as Alice Roi and Isabel Toledo have become rising stars in the industry without indulging Wintour or Vogue.^[55]

She has also earned praise for her tenacity. "Once a friend, that's it", Amiel quotes Talley as saying, after Wintour helped him overcome a serious weight problem. Amiel herself agrees that "her singular quality is one of loyalty".^[68] This carries over into her professional life. Her willingness to throw her weight around has helped keep Vogue independent despite its heavy reliance on advertising dollars. Wintour was the only fashion editor who refused to follow an Armani ultimatum to feature more of its clothes in the magazine's editorial pages if it was running the company's ads.^[57]

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 making all the major editorial decisions in a major fashion magazine every month all by herself^[95] and that she does have genuine class and style.^[96]

• Anna Wintour on mySpace.
• Nuclear Wintour at YouTube, video montage of photographs of Wintour set to Madonna's "Vogue".
• Party profile at ExcessDaily
• Anna by herself Flickr photo of Wintour alone in the front row waiting for a fashion show with photographer's anecdote about the encounter.

Preceded by Beatrix Miller

Editor of British Vogue 1985–1987

Succeeded by Liz Tilberis

Preceded by Grace Mirabella

Editor of American Vogue 1988–present

Succeeded by current