The September Issue

In the satire TheDevil Wears Prada, the fictionalized version of Vogue’s long-reigning editor is depicted as an acid-edged queen ofcruelty. In the documentary The SeptemberIssue, the real-life Anna Wintour is displayed in a softer light. Here, theVogue powerhouse is a setter of highstandards for herself and those around her. Wintour isn’t warm, fuzzy oraccessible to people whose access she doesn’t value. But the amusingfangs-and-all portrait of The Devil WearsPrada seems overblown, the work of a spoiled, entitled child who expectedto be coddled on the job. The common thread between Prada and September

isthis: When Anna speaks, her staff obeys and the fashion industry follows suit.

The SeptemberIssue’s title refers to Vogue’s annualfall fashion preview, a magazine thicker than a small-town phonebook and read,according to one estimate, by one out of 10 American women. Vogue’s September issue is the industrystandard, and its publishers were determined to make the 2007 edition thebiggest yet. The September Issuebegins half a year earlier, documenting the creative tension and meticulousexecution of that all-important edition as guided by Wintour’s sharp,appraising eyes.

Director R.J. Cutler follows Wintour and staff asthey jet between New York and London,Paris and Rome,between meetings with Yves Saint Laurent designers and Neiman Marcusexecutives. Many of those scenes have a turbo runway pace set to a techno beat.But the rhythm settles down comfortably for interviews and scenes from within Vogue’sfashion-cluttered Manhattanheadquarters, which, with its racks of skirts and stacks of shoes, sometimesresembles a clothing warehouse more than an editorial office.

Wintour grew up in ’60s Swinging London, daughter ofa prominent newspaper editor. For her, press and fashion were formativeinfluences at a time when a person’s style spoke significantly of social andaesthetic perspectives. Wintour confesses that her siblings, all of them activein political causes back home, have found her life’s work “very amusing.”Hairline wrinkles of doubt occasionally flicker across her tightly composed,impassive features. One of her top aides, a fellow Brit, rues the passing ofromance and the rise of celebrity culture. A touch of autumn is in the air.

At the onset of The SeptemberIssue, Wintour says that many people are “frightened of fashion,” resentfulbecause of their own insecurities, envious of a world beyond their self-imposedlimits. There is truth in her statement, but also in the words of her teenagedaughter, who plans to go to law school and has no interest in following hermother’s path: She respects mom’s accomplishments while expressing dismay atthe weird characters of the couture industry that exist under the delusion thatfashion and the endless pursuit of novelty are the whole of life.