Yes, it’s all frivolous surface and glam and, yes, it’s intentionally flattering. There are no industry revelations or personal secrets revealed. The September Issue is a breezy, entertaining look at the planning and execution of Vogue’s 2007 telephone-book-sized September issue. At the center of the documentary is Vogue’s glamorous editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (who is described in the movie as “the most important woman in America”), Vogue’s Creative Director Grace Coddington and an industry with which we all seem fascinated to one degree or another.
We accompany Ms. Wintour as she travels to the runways, ateliers, and showrooms of Paris and New York. We watch (and squirm) as her minimally expressed opinions send well-known designers into states of high anxiety. Even a raised eyebrow is enough to send minions, associates and designers alike scurrying for notebooks, scissors and telephones. We peer over her shoulder at meetings, photo shoots, sample selections and layout design boards. Wintour has a hand in every aspect of the magazine and her critiques of photos and collections under consideration for the magazine are brief and often deadly… “the girls always look the same in your pictures”… “I see you’ve decided against color this year” and the rare, “very beautiful.” Candid moments, like these, with employees and designers, sometimes as brief as a comment, offer insights which effectively tint the scenario to which we’re privy and provide fodder for discussion over post-cinema drinks.
The power of Ms. Wintour in the industry is driven home at a meeting between Ms. Wintour and the CEO of Neiman Marcus. The CEO asks Ms. Wintour to use her influence with design houses to get them to deliver their clothing on time. She merely laughs and rewards him with one of her signature “you must be kidding” looks. We also learn that under her aegis, the magazine has done some giving back, not only in the annual sponsorship of The Metropolitan Museum fundraising costume gala but also of new industry talent. We shriek (with glee) when the winner of the Vogue new designer contest, Thakoon, is escorted by staff into the office to meet Wintour and is greeted with a look that says, “Who the heck are you and how did you get into my inner sanctum?”
The most enjoyable discovery, bar none, is the indomitable Creative Director and conceivably resident style genius of Vogue, Grace Coddington (pictured at left with Anna Wintour). A former model, this unlikely looking woman has the confidence of a salmon swimming upstream. She’s a force of nature in big hair, practical garments and flats. With enough imagination, taste, and sheer guts to staff her own magazine, Ms. Coddington manages against some odds to achieve the better part of her vision, while maintaining a wicked sense of humor and endless passion for her art. Time spent with her, whether you agree or not with the expressed point of view, is time well spent.
A self-confessed romantic and lover of beauty, Coddington is the last fashion editor who actually dresses the models herself to ensure the perfect execution of her vision. Her relationship with Wintour is often strained. Wintour calls Coddington the greatest living stylist (leaving us to wonder who she thinks the greatest stylist is). Coddington fires her own shots, and tells us that Wintour is the person responsible for all the celebrity models on every magazine cover. “Vogue trained a whole generation to believe they wanted to be fashion models.” She takes another shot at the September cover model, Sienna Miller, by calling her hair lackluster and ordering a wig for Miller to wear in the photo shoot.
We briefly see Ms. Wintour at home and meet her bright, attractive daughter, Bee Shaffer, who is completely uninterested in stepping into her mother’s Manolos, calling the fashion industry “weird”. What we immediately notice about Ms. Wintour’s home is that it is not the over decorated, hands off the furniture type of apartment one might expect from fashion’s high priestess. Instead, it is a real home, with a plain kitchen table and dishes on the countertops. Wintour’s lived-in home, more than anything else, lends humanity to this driven, seemingly cold, perfectionist.
It is also fascinating to discover that, in this industry of perfect bodies, beautiful skin and models that look no more than fifteen, neither whippet-thin Anna Wintour nor odalisque-like Grace Coddington seems to have had cosmetic surgery. Their faces are out there for everyone to see (when Ms. Wintour takes off her signature glasses, that is) complete with well-earned lines, wrinkles and discoloration. Maybe they are human, after all.
