The Fashion World

The editor-in-chief of American Vogue and the artistic director of Conde Nast, Anna Wintour is looked at as one of the most influential figures in history.

Her father, Charles Wintour, was the editor of the London Evening Standard from 1959 to 1976. Her mother was Eleanor “Nonie” Trego Baker, an American daughter of a Harvard Law School professor. Anna was named after her grandmother, Anna Baker, who was a merchant’s daughter from Pennsylvania.

Anna is a member of a ‘landed gentry family’ and, through her paternal grandmother, she is a distant relative of the late Duchess of Devonshire. She had 4 siblings. Gerald, her older brother, Patrick, a younger brother and journalist, and James and Nora who have worked in local government.

Anna was educated at the North London Collegiate School, where she ‘rebelled’ against the dress code by taking up the hemlines of her skirts. At 14 years of age, Anna started to wear her hair in a ‘bob.’ Her interest in fashion was developed when she started to read the magazine “Seventeen” which her grandmother sent over form the United States. Anna recalled: “Growing up in London in the ‘60’s, you’d have to have had Irving Penn’s sack over your head not to know something extraordinary was happening in fashion.” At this time, her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market.

“I think my father really decided for me that I should work in fashion,” Anna is quoted as saying. He arranged her first job at the influential “Biba” boutique when she was 15 years of age. The next year, Anna left college and began a training program at Harrods. With her parent’s encouragement, Anna also took fashion classes at a nearby school, which she gave up: “You either know fashion or you don’t.” One of her boyfriend’s, Richard Neville, gave Anna her first experience of magazine production at his popular and controversial “Oz.”

Harper’s “Bazaar UK” merged with “Queen” to become “Harper’s & Queen” in 1970, and Anna was hired as one of its first editorial assistants. This began her career in “Fashion Journalism.” Even as early as this, Anna told her co-workers that she wanted to edit “Vogue.” Anna had disagreements with her rival, Min Hogg, quit and moved to New York with her then boyfriend, Jon Bradshaw, who was a freelance journalist.

In New York, she became a junior fashion editor at “Harper’s Bazaar” which she then left to take up positions at “Viva” and later at “Savvy” (1980). Then Anna had a ‘stint’ at New York Magazine.

It was now that Wintour was chosen to be the creative director of “American Vogue” (Alex Liberman chose her). Wintour became editor-in-chief of “British Vogue” in 1985, where she implemented wide-ranging changes. “There’s a new kind of woman out there. She’s interested in business and money. She doesn’t have time to shop any more. She wants to know what and why and where and how,” Wintour is quoted as saying in the London Evening Standard.

Returning to New York in 1987, she took over “House & Garden,” and then took over from Grace Mirabella at “Vogue” in 1988. Wintour’s first cover, a street shot featuring jeans and Lacroix sweater “declared a new chapter” in the magazine’s history.

Wintour married David Shaffer in 1984. He was an older acquaintance from London and a child psychiatrist.

Once in charge of the UK edition of Vogue, Wintour replaced many of the staff and exerted for more control over the magazine than any other previous editor had, earning her the nickname “Nuclear Wintour.” Wintour managed to move Vogue from its traditional eccentricity to a direction more in line with the American edition.

Speaking about her first cover, Wintour said: “It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue’s covers back then, with tons of makeup and major jewellery. This one broke all the rules. Michaela wasn’t looking at you, and worse, she had her eyes almost closed. Her hair was blowing across her face. It looked easy, casual, a moment that had been snapped on the street, which it had been, and which was the whole point. Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true. I just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that,” (2012). This is a favourite cover for Wintour: “It was a leap of faith and it was certainly a big change for Vogue.” The printers had called to make sure that it was supposed to be the cover, as they thought that a mistake might have been made!

When the film “The Devil Wears Prada” came out (2016), Wintour’s skill and professionalism was focused upon by the media. Meryl Streep played the editor Miranda Priestly in the film, ‘believed’ to be based on Wintour. In true inscrutable style, Wintour wore Prada to the premier.

In the 1990’s, under Wintour’s editorship, Vogue held its position as the market leader against some of the newer fashion magazines (such as “Elle,” “Mirabella,” “Vanity Fair”). In September 2004, the Vogue issue became the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time, with 832 pages. There are now 3 spin offs to Vogue = “Teen Vogue”, “Vogue Living” and “Men’s Vogue.”

In the 2008 Birthday Honours, Anna Wintour was appointed “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, and is now called Dame Anna Wintour.

A trustee of the New York Metropolitan Museum, the costume department of the museum was renamed the “Anna Wintour Costume Institute” (2014).

Wintour had 2 children with David Shaffer, the couple divorced in 1999. Today, she lives in Greenwich Village and is involved in several charities, even setting up the CFDA/Vogue Fund which encourages, supports and mentors unknown fashion designers. Wintour has raised over $10 million for AIDS charities since 1990.

A fellow editor and friend of Wintour noted that: “She’s not hiding behind her glasses anymore. Now she’s having fun again.”

(My research comes from Wikipedia and BoF|500)