Anna Wintour

• 1. Introduction

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  Anna Wintour held the top editorial job at Vogue from 1988 to 2025, and for much of that time her name worked like a password in fashion. When industry publicists disagreed with one of her subordinates, they would ask whether they should take the matter to Anna. Outside the trade she was known for a sharp pageboy bob, dark sunglasses and a reputation for being hard to approach. Born on the 3rd of November 1949, she is a British and American media executive. She has also been the lead chairperson of the Met Gala, the annual haute couture spectacle in Manhattan, since the 1990s. This documentary asks how a person becomes the one an entire industry waits on. It asks what she actually changed about the way a magazine looks and whom it speaks to. It asks why critics have attacked her over fur, over narrow ideals of beauty and over race. And it asks about a novel and a film that made the public feel they already knew her, when the real person may be harder to read than any character.

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• 2. Hemlines and Hampstead

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  At North London Collegiate School, a teenage Anna Wintour defied the dress code by taking up the hemlines of her skirts. At 14 she began wearing her hair in a bob, a style she would keep for decades. Her appetite for fashion came from two places. One was the television show Ready Steady Go!, where she followed the presenter Cathy McGowan. The other was Seventeen magazine, which a grandmother sent over from the United States. She later said that growing up in 1960s London, you would need "Irving Penn's sack over your head" to miss the change.

  She was born in Hampstead, London, to Charles Wintour and Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker. Her parents married in 1940 and divorced in 1979. Charles edited the London Evening Standard from 1959 to 1976, and he treated his teenage daughter as a sounding board. Whenever he wanted ideas for reaching young readers, he asked her.

  The family tree behind her was crowded with notable names. Her first name came from her maternal grandmother, Anna Baker, a merchant's daughter from Pennsylvania. Her paternal grandfather was Major-General Fitzgerald Wintour, a descendant of the prime minister George Grenville. Through her paternal grandmother she descends from the novelist Lady Elizabeth Foster, who later became the Duchess of Devonshire. Her stepmother, Audrey Slaughter, was a magazine editor who founded Honey and Petticoat. She grew up with four siblings. Her older brother, Gerald, died in a traffic accident as a child. A younger brother, Patrick, became a journalist and is now diplomatic editor of The Guardian.

  Her father also steered her career. "I think my father really decided for me that I should work in fashion," she said in The September Issue. When she was 15, he arranged her first job, at the influential Biba boutique. The next year she left school and joined a training program at Harrods. Her parents urged her to take fashion classes nearby, but she soon quit them. "You either know fashion or you don't," she said. An older boyfriend, Richard Neville, then gave her a first taste of magazine production at a publication called Oz.

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• 3. Climbing the Mastheads

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  In 1970, Harper's Bazaar UK merged with Queen to form Harper's & Queen, and Wintour was hired as one of its first editorial assistants. She told her new co-workers that she intended to edit Vogue. There she spotted the model Annabel Hodin, a former classmate from North London. Her connections also won her locations for photographers such as Helmut Newton and Jim Lee. One shoot restaged paintings by Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots. Constant clashes with a rival, Min Hogg, wore her down. She quit and moved to New York with her boyfriend, the freelance journalist Jon Bradshaw.

  In 1975 she became a junior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar. Editor Tony Mazzola dismissed her after nine months, objecting to her shoots. Bradshaw then helped her land a fashion editor post at Viva, a women's adult magazine started by Kathy Keeton, who was married to Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. Guccione closed the unprofitable title in late 1978. Wintour took time off as her relationship with Bradshaw ended. She then spent two years splitting her time between Paris and New York with a French record producer, Michel Esteban.

  She returned to work in 1980 as fashion editor of a new magazine called Savvy, succeeding Elsa Klensch. Savvy aimed at career-minded professional women who spent their own money. These were the same readers Wintour would later chase at Vogue. In 1981 she became fashion editor of New York, where editor Edward Kosner sometimes bent strict rules so she could work on other sections. A cover featuring the actress Rachel Ward taught her how well celebrity faces sold copies. Years later Grace Coddington said, "Anna saw the celebrity thing coming before everyone else did." An interview with Vogue editor Grace Mirabella ended abruptly when Wintour told her she wanted her job.

  In 1983, Alex Liberman, editorial director of Condé Nast, offered her a position at Vogue. A bidding war doubled her salary, and she became the magazine's first creative director, with vaguely defined duties. She made changes without telling Mirabella, which stirred friction on staff. In 1985 she took over British Vogue after Beatrix Miller retired. She replaced many staff members and held tighter control than her predecessors, earning the nickname "Nuclear Wintour". Those who stayed called the era "The Wintour of Our Discontent". She steered the magazine away from its traditional eccentricity toward the American edition.

  In 1987 she returned to New York to run House & Garden, which had long trailed rival Architectural Digest. In her first week she canceled $2 million worth of photo spreads and articles. Staff in the industry joked that it had become "House & Garment" because of all the fashion, and "Vanity Chair" because of all the celebrities. When the title was shortened to HG, many longtime subscribers mistook it for a new publication and set it aside. Most of those subscriptions were eventually canceled, and while some fashion advertisers arrived, most of the traditional advertisers left.

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• 4. Jeans on the Cover

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  Ten months after taking over House & Garden, Wintour became editor of U.S. Vogue. Insiders feared that, under Mirabella, the magazine was losing ground to the newly launched American edition of Elle. Eve Pollard had in fact offered Wintour the top job at Elle just before the Vogue appointment.

  She changed the look of the covers first. Mirabella had favored tight studio head shots of famous models. Wintour showed more of the body, shot outdoors, much as Diana Vreeland had done years earlier. She used less famous models and mixed cheap clothes with couture.

  Her first issue, November 1988, carried a Peter Lindbergh photograph of 19-year-old Michaela Bercu. Bercu wore faded jeans worth $50 and a bejeweled T-shirt by Christian Lacroix worth $10,000. No Vogue cover model had worn jeans before. The pairing was a last-minute swap, because the skirt Bercu was meant to wear did not fit properly.

  In 2012 Wintour recalled that the picture "broke all the rules". The model was not looking at the camera, her eyes were nearly closed and her hair blew across her face. Later, people read all kinds of meaning into it: a statement about mixing high and low, a hint that the model was pregnant, even something religious. Wintour said none of that was true. "I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change," she said. In 2011, when Vogue put its whole archive online, she was quoted as saying, "I just said, 'Well, let's just try this.'"

  Her hold over the written word is less certain. Her staff say she reads everything bound for print. Former editor Richard Story has claimed she rarely, if ever, reads the arts coverage or book reviews. Early in her career she left the text beside her layouts to others, and former co-workers say her own writing skills are minimal. Today she writes little for the magazine apart from the monthly editor's letter.

  Through the 1990s, Vogue refocused on fashion and regained the prominence it had held under Vreeland. It stayed the market leader against Elle and against Harper's Bazaar, which had lured away Liz Tilberis, Wintour's most prominent deputy. She reportedly keeps three full-time assistants, yet sometimes surprises callers by picking up the phone herself.

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• 5. Rumours and Honours

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  In the 2008 Birthday Honours, Wintour was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, yet the year was a rough one for Vogue. The Great Recession bit, and the April cover of LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen drew criticism for evoking racial stereotypes. Rumours spread that she would retire and make way for Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue. An editor at Russian GQ reportedly presented Aliona Doletskaya, editor of Russian Vogue, as the coming head of the American edition. Condé Nast answered with a two-page advertisement in The New York Times defending Wintour's record. In that same paper, Cathy Horyn argued that Wintour had not lost her touch, but that the magazine had become "stale and predictable". She also mocked Vogue's "peculiar fascination for the 'villa in Tuscany' story", and said it had handled the recession awkwardly.

  In 2009, Wintour began appearing more often in the media. On 60 Minutes, she said she would not retire, calling it an interesting time to hold the position. She said it would be "irresponsible not to put my best foot forward and lead us into a different time." That September came The September Issue, a documentary by R.J. Cutler, producer of The War Room. It followed the making of the September 2007 issue and centered on her sometimes-difficult bond with creative director Grace Coddington. Wintour promoted it on the Late Show with David Letterman, defending fashion's relevance in a tough economy. In 2010 the American Society of Magazine Editors elected her to its Hall of Fame.

  In 2013, Condé Nast named her artistic director of its magazines while she stayed at Vogue. She took on some duties of longtime chairman Si Newhouse, who in his mid-80s was stepping back to oversee the parent company, Advance Publications. A company spokesman said the post was created to keep her. Wintour called it "an extension of what I am doing, but on a broader scale."

  Honours followed. In January 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art named its Costume Institute complex after her. That year she starred in The Fashion Fund on Ovation TV, and Forbes ranked her the 39th most powerful woman in the world. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours, and Queen Elizabeth II invested her at Buckingham Palace in May 2017.

  Not every relationship survived. In 2018 she fell out with André Leon Talley after he was dropped as Vogue's Met Gala red carpet reporter. He exposed the rift in his second memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, in May 2020. That same year Condé Nast promoted her to worldwide chief content officer in a restructuring, and she also became global editorial director of Vogue.

  In 2023 she proposed a London event similar to the Met Gala to raise money for a local arts scene still struggling after COVID. That year she was also appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour. In January 2025 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She stepped down as Vogue's editor-in-chief that June. On the 1st of September, the magazine announced that Chloe Malle, promoted from editor of vogue.com, would take over.

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• 6. Power and Its Critics

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  Christian Dior hired the younger designer John Galliano partly because Wintour encouraged fashion houses to look for fresher talent. Her reach extended past clothes. When Marc Jacobs and his partner were short of cash for a show, she persuaded Donald Trump to let them use a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. In 2006 she convinced Brooks Brothers to hire the relatively unknown Thom Browne. A protégée at Vogue, Plum Sykes, went on to become a successful novelist, setting her stories in New York's fashionable elite. The Guardian once called Wintour the "unofficial mayoress" of New York City.

  The rewards were considerable. Her salary was reported at $2 million a year in 2005. Perks included a chauffeured Mercedes-Benz S-Class in New York and abroad, a $200,000 shopping allowance and the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris during European shows. Condé Nast president Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr. had the company give her an interest-free $1.6 million loan to buy her Greenwich Village townhouse.

  She also raised money for others. As a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she organized benefits that brought in $50 million for the Costume Institute. She began the CFDA/Vogue Fund to support and mentor unknown designers. Since 1990 she has raised over $10 million for AIDS charities.

  Her political giving ran along party lines. She has backed Democrats since Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate run and John Kerry's 2004 campaign. For Barack Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012 she served as a bundler of donations. With Sarah Jessica Parker she co-hosted a dinner for 50 people at $40,000 a head at Parker's West Village town house. Meryl Streep, Michael Kors and advertising executive Trey Laird were among the guests. She also teamed up with Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein on fundraisers in Obama's first term. In 2013 she hired Hildy Kuryk, who had fundraised for the Democratic National Committee and Obama's 2008 campaign. She backed Clinton again in 2016 and advised on wardrobe for key campaign moments. In 2020 she endorsed Joe Biden.

  Critics have been blunt. Animal rights activists attacked her for promoting fur, which she has defended in Vogue and used in photo spreads. Others charge that the magazine pushes elitist and unattainable ideas of femininity and beauty. Supporters say her changes advanced the status of women, and she has argued it is good that "more people are going to get better fashion" as luxury brands become democratized. A New York Times investigation indicated that black women had been sidelined at Vogue during her tenure. Wintour apologized to staff for the magazine's complicity in racism.

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• 7. The Devil in the Fiction

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  Lauren Weisberger, a former personal assistant to Wintour, wrote the bestselling 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada after taking a writing workshop suggested by Richard Story. Weisberger had left Vogue for Departures along with Story. The book was eagerly awaited as an insider portrait. Asked about it by The New York Times, Wintour said she always enjoyed a great piece of fiction and had not decided whether to read it. Weisberger says she drew on her friends' experiences as well as her own. In the book, Wintour herself makes a cameo near the end, where she and the fictional editor Miranda Priestly are said to dislike each other.

  Priestly shares plenty with Wintour. She is British, has two children and is described as a major contributor to the Met. She is also a tyrant who demands the impossible from subordinates, withholds the time and information to deliver it, then berates them for failing. Kate Betts, once mentored by Wintour, reviewed the book harshly in The New York Times Book Review. Betts had been fired by Harper's after two years during which staffers said she tried too hard to copy Wintour. She wrote that Weisberger sold her soul to the devil of fashion for $32,500 and understood little of the isolation of the job. The novel's heroine, Andrea Sachs, does concede that Priestly makes every key editorial decision herself and has genuine class and style.

  During production of the film in 2005, Wintour reportedly threatened designers that Vogue would ignore them if they made cameos as themselves. A spokesperson denied it, saying she was interested in anything that "supports fashion". Many designers are named in the film, but only Valentino Garavani appeared as himself. Meryl Streep played Priestly in the 2006 film, with a screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna. Critics praised Streep's version as an original and more sympathetic character. Wintour attended the premiere in Prada. Streep's film office resembled Wintour's closely enough that Wintour reportedly had her own redecorated.

  She reportedly predicted the film would go straight to DVD. It earned over $300 million worldwide. In an interview with Barbara Walters that aired on the day of the DVD release, she called it "really entertaining" and said she was "100 percent behind it." Forgiveness for Weisberger did not follow. When reports said the novelist's editor had told her to restart her third novel, Wintour's spokesman suggested she "should get a job as someone else's assistant."

  Biographer Jerry Oppenheimer argues the story may have done Wintour a favor by making her a household name well beyond fashion. Years later, reviewers of The September Issue measured her against Streep's Priestly. Paul Schrodt in Slant Magazine said she had been on a media warpath to win back her image. Manohla Dargis in The New York Times said Priestly had helped humanize Wintour and the documentary continued the work. Wintour has since embraced the film, appearing on the cover of Vogue beside Streep to promote its 2026 sequel.

  Other characters borrowed from her too. Edna Mode in The Incredibles (2004) has a similar hairstyle. Johnny Depp said he partly based his Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) on her. Fey Sommers in Ugly Betty (2006-2010) got the bob, the sunglasses and a name that sounds like "Summer" to echo "Winter".

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• 8. Armour and Appetites

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  While Vogue editor, Wintour said she woke at 5:30 a.m., played tennis, had her hair and makeup done and reached the office at 7:30. She arrived at fashion shows well before they started, saying she used the waiting time for calls and notes and got some of her best ideas there. According to the BBC series Boss Woman, she rarely stays at a party longer than 20 minutes and is usually in bed by 10:15 p.m. She switches off her phone at lunch, most often a steak or a hamburger without the bun. A co-worker at Harpers & Queen recalled that she ate smoked salmon and scrambled eggs every single day and nothing else.

  Because of her position, her wardrobe is studied and copied. Early on she paired fashionable T-shirts and vests with designer jeans. At Vogue she switched to Chanel suits with miniskirts and kept wearing them through both pregnancies, opening the skirts slightly at the back and keeping her jacket on. The Guardian listed her among the 50 best-dressed over 50s in March 2013. More recently she has been seen in Chanel suits with midiskirts, kitten heels and printed midi-dresses.

  She has been described as perfectionistic, emotionally distant and hard to approach, and she agrees she can "get quite angry". Her romantic history began early with older, well-connected men. At 15 she was briefly involved with the novelist Piers Paul Read, then 24. Later she dated the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, and the pair became fixtures of London's club circuit. In 1984 she married the child psychiatrist David Shaffer, an older acquaintance from London. They had a son, Charles, in 1985 and a daughter, Katherine, in 1987, and divorced in 1999. Charles studied at the University of Oxford and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Katherine wrote occasional columns for The Daily Telegraph in 2006, graduated from Columbia University in 2009 and works as a New York-based producer with Ambassador Theatre Group. In 2018 she married the Italian filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini, son of Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani.

  Newspapers and gossip columnists alleged that an affair with the investor Shelby Bryan ended her marriage to Shaffer. She declined to comment. A former colleague told the Observer that Bryan had "mellowed her" and that she now smiled and had been seen to laugh. A report in October 2020 said her marriage to Bryan had ended after 16 years.

  The sunglasses are less a pose than a prescription, according to biographer Jerry Oppenheimer. He says they are corrective lenses, because her vision is deteriorating as her father's did. A former colleague recalled trying on her Wayfarers and getting dizzy. Wintour told 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer they had become "really armour", letting her keep her reactions to a show private. After her marriage ended and Vogue's editorial staff turned over, an editor and friend remarked that she was no longer hiding behind her glasses and was having fun again.

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