Vogue, Vogue

I love Vogue. There, right off the bat, I have to say that I look forward every month for my copy. I get worried whenever my delivery is late. And I think I'm not alone in this. For fashionistas (though I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a fashionista, at least not like the folks that the Sartorialist manages to find during his travels, but that's another post all together) all over the world, Vogue is the style bible and Anna Wintour the high priestess. Despite such standing, I dare say that not much is really known about the inner workings of either Vogue or Anna Wintour. That is, until “The September Issue”, R.J. Cutler’s new documentary on the subject. The is the making of Vogue’s September issue, generally regarded as the most important edition of the year. The crew follow Wintour and the rest of the Vogue staff, led by Creative Director Grace Coddington as they put together this issue. It is fascinating to watch how the Vogue team generates the finished product, from conceptualizing the features to shooting the cover. It is both instructive and hilarious to see the team dissect cover girl Sienna Miller, whose hair was described as lackluster and worse, deemed a touch too toothy by Wintour upon viewing the cover phot. More fascinating though is the way the different magazine features are conceptualized and the clashes that inevitably result between the creative team led by Coddington, a genius with images and the imperious Wintour with her uncanny talent of creating tight and well edited features. So we have memorable lines from Coddington like “so she (referring to Wintour) doesn’t think rubber is a texture” upon learning that Wintour had vetoed one of her photos featuring a rubber trench or “Pls don’t photoshop Tom’s tummy” when she learned that Wintour wanted to trim some excess fat from the stomach of the hapless and ordinary mortal they happened to include in one of the features. Despite of, or perhaps because of such creative clashes, readers get a magazine that is always fresh, interesting and very often with beautifully shot images.

And if the film follows Vogue for the making of only one issue, it does provide us with a welcome glimpse into Wintour herself. She is often icily reserved but we do get flashes of humanity. She doesn’t like black (throughout the film, we hear her agonizing over whether there is too much black in the pictures) and she does use her quite considerable influence to give a hand to young designers. It was Wintour who suggested Thakoon for an all important capsule collection for Gap, a move which helped put the young designer on the fashion map. We also see how much influence she yields, as when she tells fashion buyers and Conde Nast during a meeting, that she convinced Prada to lighten their highly embellished knee high socks, as apparently, the original designs weighed a ton!

For fans of Vogue and all things fashion related, The September Issue is undoubtedly one of those must see films!