Felicia Rizky
We tell you all the keys to the transcendental role that the character of the best-known editor on the planet has played in the current fashion world.
Just turned 72, Anna Wintour has not lost an iota of power and influence in the fashion industry. She is, by far, the most relevant and essential woman of the contemporary era in the sector, a sector that is hers more than anyone else’s and owes a lot, but a lot, to this almighty figure.
Anna Wintour is the most influential figure in fashion, arguably the most business-minded editor of all time. During her 25 years in the fashion bible, she turned her covers into authentic launch campaigns for celebrities, designers, and singers… her ability to influence has been so strong that she created the awards to defend the new American designers through the CFDA. ‘The New York Times described her as an “in-house consultant for troubled or outdated magazines.”
To understand her vital role in the world of fashion, we cannot only scratch the surface, the one that tells us about a British woman, one well known, called Anna Wintour. She appears as the absolute director of the American edition of ‘Vogue magazine since ancient times, a close friend of the industry‘s great designers and an essential in the most prestigious parades of the fashionista planet. The truth is that it is so, but the story behind Anna Wintour reveals that she is much more.
In ‘The September Issue’ documentary, Wintour said: “Growing up in London in the 1960s. You had to wear a jacket like Irving Penn’s not to realize something extraordinary was happening in fashion. The way girls looked back then and everything that was going on: the pill and women’s emancipation and the end of the class system, just seeing and living through that revolution made me love [fashion] from a young age.”
She broke into fashion journalism at age 20 when she was hired in London by ‘Harper’s & Queen magazine. But New York immediately took notice of her, and in the 1970s, she moved to the city of skyscrapers to work at ‘Harper’s Bazaar magazine. Her first contact with ‘Vogue’ would come sometime later, specifically in 1983, when Anna began her first steps as creative manager of this header.
In 1985, Anna, as her friends call her, became editor-in-chief of ‘British Vogue’, where she implemented significant changes. “There’s a new kind of woman,” she told the London Evening Standard: “She’s interested in business and money. She no longer has time to shop. She wants to know what, why, where and how.”. Wintour returned to New York in 1987 to take over House & Garden, a move many believed was a starting point for Grace Mirabella’s succession, just ten months later in 1988. Wintour’s first cover was a photograph on the street of a model in jeans and a Lacroix haute couture sweater that was a paradigm shift in the history of all women’s magazines.
In 1988 and after other jobs in her history when she became the director of ‘Vogue’, a position she has defended ever since as a key and irreplaceable piece, not only in this magazine but also as a reference and dictator of sentences in the fashion industry.
With her as editor-in-chief, the most impressive and emblematic covers that the industry remembers would arrive, those best-selling September issues would arrive, and those incredible looks created with impossible pieces would come to life thanks to her innate mastery of combining would also reach. The first ladies like Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama (in addition, she is a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and has raised funds for the presidential candidacies), the top brass of Hollywood or the influencers as protagonists of her covers. Without a doubt, when times were good for the usual press.
Hit after hit, each one more amazing than the last, Anna Wintour earned the industry’s respect and admiration, etching her name on fire as an irreplaceable living figure in the Big Apple, where she lives with her two children. Her.
Meanwhile, Anna Wintour added to an exclusive list of best friends: Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani and Oscar de la Renta, but also outside the world of fashion, such as tennis player Roger Federer.
