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  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    NYT article on Anna Wintour



    Ms. Horyn does a commandable job of keeping the article in a neutral tone.



    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/fa...TOUR.html?8dpc

















    February 1, 2007



    Citizen Anna







    Skip to next paragraph


    New Blog: On the Runway


    Cathy Horyn on all things fashion.











    IF there is one thing that
    no one doubts about Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, it is her power.
    To many she is the dominant figure in the fashion world, her influence
    greater than any contemporary editor and running close to a press
    baron, because she has sought through her magazine and its spinoffs to
    set the agenda for an industry and through her civic causes, like the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to influence the cultural life of New York.




    And to millions of people to whom her power is less real (who know
    her only in connection with ?The Devil Wears Prada?) she is also a
    symbol: the small cross-armed woman in the front row, inscrutable
    behind her dark glasses and self-protecting English bob, her effect
    equal parts terrifying and calm, like the center of the storm she has
    dominated for 19 years.




    For as much as Ms. Wintour, 57, is scrutinized, her deal-making
    within the fashion industry is one activity that has received scant
    attention. In recent years she has gone beyond the editorial domain and
    involved herself in the placement of designers at fashion houses. Her
    efforts fall across a spectrum of involvement, from outright pitching
    the name of a person she likes to a chief executive, to putting her
    weight behind a pending decision, to effectively make a marriage.




    She instigated the deal last year between the men?s designer Thom
    Browne and Brooks Brothers, cultivating in a virtually unknown talent
    the idea of a larger audience and then urging the company?s chief
    executive, Claudio Del Vecchio, to give him a chance. ?She put a lot of
    pressure on me,? Mr. Del Vecchio said. ?She?d say, ?I think there?s
    something here. Please keep talking.? ?




    This fall, Mr. Browne?s designs will be in 90 Brooks Brothers stores ? and, presumably, of course, in Vogue.




    Ms. Wintour has also been busy trying to find a new employer for
    Phoebe Philo, the English star who left Chloé in 2005. Last May, Ms.
    Wintour invited Ms. Philo to a lunch in New York with François-Henri
    Pinault, the chief executive of PPR, the French luxury-goods group that
    owns brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Balenciaga.




    ?It was quite simple,? Mr. Pinault said of the lunch. ?She thought
    it would be interesting for me to meet Phoebe.? He made it clear that
    PPR had no vacancies and no plans to start new labels. Nonetheless, Ms.
    Wintour pressed Ms. Philo?s case in a later conversation, and Mr.
    Pinault said he expects her to do the same this week, when they meet in
    New York, to discuss the spring Costume Institute gala, of which
    Balenciaga is a sponsor.




    ?She?s not too pushy,? Mr. Pinault said. ?From my point of view,
    it?s a very positive way of demonstrating her power. 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. She really makes you understand that.?




    Since the days of Diana Vreeland and John Fairchild, the former
    publisher of Women?s Wear Daily, fashion editors have been regarded not
    only as journalists but as boosters for the industry. Without actually
    knowing whether an editor was advising a designer or telling the buyer
    at Macy?s to order more blue shirts, readers assumed they were.




    Then, in the buying frenzy of the 1990s, when nearly every big Paris
    house changed hands, editors like Ms. Wintour and Patrick McCarthy, Mr.
    Fairchild?s successor, found themselves with even more influence over
    the industry. The new corporate owners, like Bernard Arnault,
    the chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, had come from the
    worlds of real estate, finance and timber. Important editors found
    themselves consulting about everything from the meaning of grunge to
    the importance of individual designers. ?I think Arnault asked a lot of
    people about Marc,? Mr. McCarthy said, referring to the designer Marc Jacobs, now at Louis Vuitton. ?I don?t think he knew his reputation.?




    MS. Wintour, though, has used her influence more purposefully than
    anyone else: as a dealmaker. She seemed, in fact, to grasp that the
    arrival of the luxury moguls was an opportunity to scrape years of
    French dust off fashion, and make them pay for exciting new talent.




    In the mid ?90s, she got an executive at Paine Webber to help John Galliano, propelling him permanently onto the Paris stage. She helped Mr. Jacobs early in his career, getting Donald Trump
    to lend him a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel when Mr. Jacobs and his
    partner, Robert Duffy, had no money for a show. During the Vuitton
    negotiations she continually pressed Mr. Jacobs?s case with Mr.
    Arnault. ?She would say, ?What do you need me to do.? ? Mr. Duffy said.
    ?I would say, ?When your have lunch with Mr. Arnault, will you put in a
    good word.? I don?t know what Anna said or did not say.?




    Ms. Wintour, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is a
    woman of seemingly limitless energy and a famously short attention
    span, who prefers to have her threats delivered by a lieutenant. (?Do
    you want me to go to Anna with this?? is a typical line, according to
    fashion publicists.)




    In more recent years she has made young designers her mission. This
    could be her legacy as an editor, though it may be a mixed one. She
    helped lay the groundwork for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which, after
    years of industry lip service, provides the first practical support for
    young talent. But many fashion insiders and critics feel that by
    promoting labels of dubious design merit but with an obvious social or
    power connection, like Georgina Chapman of Marchesa, whose companion is
    the producer Harvey Weinstein, she leaves herself open to the complaint
    that her magazine promotes a kind of a pedantry.




    This becomes a danger when she attempts to make a match. The chief
    executive of a top European house, who recently had a spot to fill,
    said he was surprised by the names she proposed, characterizing one as
    a socialite. ?The woman had designed maybe 10 dresses in her life,?
    said the executive, who, like a number of the nearly two dozen people
    interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because of his
    relationship with Ms. Wintour.




    How much one objects to this kind of influence depends on how much
    one is able to grasp the totality of Ms. Wintour?s activities. Her
    efforts are widely seen as being for the general good of the industry.
    People who know her well say her motives are selfless and that her
    power is really concentrated on her magazines.




    ?Anna is not Machiavellian,? said Michael Roberts, the fashion
    director of Vanity Fair. Mr. Lagerfeld agreed: ?She?s honest. She tells
    you what she thinks. Yes is yes and no is no.?




    In spite of the bitterness she felt at seeing her friend Tom Ford
    leave Gucci, and in spite of telling Mr. Pinault that he was making a
    terrible mistake to let him go, Mr. Pinault said she remained
    supportive of Gucci.




    But you don?t have to doubt Ms. Wintour?s integrity to see the
    danger of too much influence. You just have to look at the magazine and
    its three spinoffs (Teen Vogue, Men?s Vogue, Vogue Living), at the
    tendency to feature the same socialites and pretty dresses, in the same
    perfect settings, and then imagine what the implications would be if
    she could also determine where designers worked.




    Candy Pratts Price, the executive fashion director of Style.com, the
    Web site for Vogue and W, said Vogue?s editors now attempt to ?place?
    clothes on socialites and other prominent women year-round, not just
    for the Costume Institute gala. That is, they arrange favored designers
    to lend dresses for public appearances. The pictures will run in Vogue,
    as well as in other magazines, reinforcing the importance of those
    designers. Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys, says she
    thinks women are more influenced today by party pictures than by
    editorial spreads of models. ?It?s the People magazine-US Weekly
    syndrome,? she said.




    ?Everyone wants to see what people are wearing.? Ms. Price said,
    ?You can look at it as a good thing or a bad thing, but Anna has her
    finger in it.? From the magazine?s perspective, she said, a virtue of
    placement is that you can control how the clothes will be exposed. ?The
    end result is that Anna can control it all the way to the selling
    floor,? Ms. Price said.




    In its use of franchising and product placement and its glamorous,
    if predictable, formula, Vogue resembles the Hollywood blockbuster.
    ?Nobody else is doing that, and I don?t think anyone has done that in
    the history of fashion magazines,? Mr. McCarthy said of the clothes
    placement. He added, ?I don?t think Vreeland had that kind of
    concentration. She wouldn?t have dressed Babe Paley. Nor would Babe
    Paley have let her.?




    The truth is, for good or bad, Ms. Wintour has identified the prime
    cultural coordinates ? the compliant, publicity-seeking socialite, the
    obsession with money, the struggling young designer, the deterioration
    of old aesthetics and the rise of the luxury-goods tycoon ? and aimed
    Vogue straight at them. ?I believe that Anna opened her arms to the big
    global picture before anyone else did,? said Stan Herman, the former
    president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.




    At the same time, she has the readiness of an old-fashioned ward
    boss. She puts people in her due by making herself and the services of
    her magazine available to them.




    Yet, according to any number of chief executives and designers, she
    does not extract advertising for editorial favors and, unlike a number
    of her counterparts in Europe, she does not run a side business as a
    consultant to fashion houses. Long before ?The Devil Wears Prada,? her
    office (which has three executive assistants) was famous for its exotic
    efficiency. It comes as a surprise to people to have their phone calls
    returned immediately, to receive dossiers on the latest actresses (as
    she did for the designer Stefano Pilati) or to hear a rather shy but
    crisp English voice say, hurriedly, ?What can I do to help??




    IF it sometimes seems that the runways in New York ? and, by
    extension, the fashion pages of American Vogue ? reflect a homogeneous,
    vaguely timid point of view, it?s understandable.




    ?No one says no to her,? Mr. Roberts said. ?And, in a weird way, it?s not her fault.?




    Lacking mortal patience, Ms. Wintour is unlikely to help people who
    feel intimated by her, but at least by her efforts she can show them
    worlds that might have been unavailable to them, and maybe, in the
    process, allow them to see her as Shelley plain. ?I don?t understand
    what people are scared of,? Ms. Price said. ?That they?re going to have
    a lesser relationship with Anna? I think they want to be closer, but
    they don?t know how.?




    Many talented American designers, notably Isabel Toledo and Alice
    Roi, have tended to keep themselves apart from Vogue, with no loss to
    their reputations, while others, like Derek Lam, imagined they needed
    some kind of school pass. ?I was waiting for the call to be summoned to
    her office,? Mr. Lam said with a laugh. ?I thought it was so
    pretentious to call Anna.?




    Next week, Ms. Toledo will present her first collection for Anne
    Klein during Fashion Week, and Mr. Lam, in addition to having his own
    label, is now creative director of Tod?s, the Italian leather-goods
    house. Ms. Price believes that exposure from the Fashion Fund brought
    them these opportunities.




    And Ms. Wintour thinks that Tod?s is right for Mr. Lam, too. But
    initially she wasn?t sure he was ready for the position. ?I got the
    blank look,? said Ms. Price when she told Ms. Wintour that Diego Della
    Valle, the owner of Tod?s, wanted to work with Mr. Lam. ?I think Anna
    believed that Derek hadn?t yet achieved a signature look in his own
    line.?




    Indeed, as Mr. Lam acknowledged, this was her criticism during a
    Fashion Fund interview. ?She said: ?I don?t know what Derek Lam is
    about. Tell me what your focus is,? ? he recalled. ?Her advice was very
    concrete.?




    It turns out that Ms. Wintour can say no. Maybe because corporate
    executives tend to know that the real power in fashion rests with the
    people who control the money, they don?t see a downside to her
    influence. ?I don?t feel I owe her anything, or that she owes me
    anything,? Mr. Del Vecchio of Brooks Brothers said, adding: ?It?s the
    passion that motivates her.


































    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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