Why Anna Wintour will never go out of fashion

Since first shocking the fashion world by putting a model in an exquisite Christian Lacroix jacket and ordinary blue jeans on her first US Vogue cover as editor in 1988, Anna Wintour has known how to make headlines.

This week was meant to belong to Irish designer Jonathan Anderson, who was making his debut in Paris as creative director of the most celebrated luxury label, Dior. By announcing the search for her successor in the editor’s chair at Vogue, Wintour hijacked the conversation, reminding everyone who truly rules fashion.

For 37 years, Wintour has steadfastly pushed fashion to the forefront of popular culture. When Wintour began at Vogue, few people outside the magazine’s glossy pages knew the names of the designers at Chanel or Louis Vuitton. Now your barista knows how to say Balenciaga and could be wearing it.

By filling Vogue’s covers with Hollywood stars such as Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston, along with performing artists Madonna, Britney Spears and Rihanna, she has consistently blurred the lines between fashion and celebrity. Thanks to Wintour’s democratisation of luxury, most celebrities now either have lucrative contracts as fashion ambassadors or their own clothing or beauty brands.

If you are Kim Kardashian, whose first Vogue cover was in 2014, you have all three.

With her signature bob and sunglasses, Wintour has become a star herself, never quite rising above the derisive nickname “Nuclear Wintour”, earned for her no-nonsense management style. “I have great affection for Anna, but she took to power rather than being the cozy, conspiratorial friend she used to be,” former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told The New York Times in March. “I’m impressed by her ability to take on more and more responsibility.”

Other nicknames came along, including the title from the 2003 book The Devil Wears Prada, written by her former assistant Lauren Weisberger, which went on to become a movie and musical. At the musical’s London premiere in December, Wintour told the BBC that it’s “for the audience and for the people I work with to decide if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly”.

Anna Wintour attends the Chanel show in Paris on March 11.Credit: GC Images

Viewers of the 2009 documentary The September Issue were given glimpses of her very Miranda Priestly-like imperious nature and the fear she instilled in designers, eager to win her approval and the fashion pages that came along with it. Stefano Pilati, then creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, memorably trembles when a less-than-enthusiastic Wintour arrives in his studio. Pilati was replaced in 2012.

Wintour’s significant legacy extends beyond the magazine she edited, which never attained the creative credibility of Vogue’s Italian edition under Franca Sozzani or journalistic approach of British Vogue under Alexandra Shulman from 1992 to 2017. The infamous 2011 profile of now-deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma, as an inspirational figure described as “the most magnetic of first ladies”, temporarily dented the US edition’s reputation.

It was a rare, embarrassing moment for Wintour, the daughter of respected British newspaper editor Charles Wintour. When the story received criticism, Wintour severed ties with its author, former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, despite their 50-year friendship.

Other missteps included the magazine’s slow acknowledgment of diversity. The first black photographer to work on a Vogue cover was Tyler Mitchell in 2018 – his subject, Beyoncé, insisted on it.

Grace Coddington and Anna Wintour in a scene from the documentary The September Issue.

The US edition became the only Vogue that really mattered by attracting advertisers and balancing the sophistication of style and the vulgarity of fame. As Wintour’s predecessor as editor of Vogue, Diana Vreeland, said: “Never fear being vulgar, just boring.” Wintour has never been boring.

After early missteps, Wintour turned Vogue into a digital force and a generator of international events. With The Met Gala, she created fashion Christmas, upstaging the Oscars red carpet and Paris Fashion Week.

Events such as Fashion’s Night Out and Vogue World further extended the magazine’s reach and revenue stream.

She has been rewarded with constant promotions within Vogue’s parent company, Condé Nast, and was made a dame in 2017 by Queen Elizabeth II, who honoured her for her contribution to fashion and journalism.

Wintour may no longer be editor-in-chief of Vogue, but as Vogue’s global editorial director and chief content officer for Condé Nast titles including WIRED, Vanity Fair, GQ, AD, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour, Bon Appétit and Tatler, she will continue to oversee its events.

Her successor won’t even have the grand title of editor-in-chief. The magazine is searching for a head of editorial content to lead daily operations across platforms. There is only one chief. That’s all.

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