How can one woman hold so much power in a multi-billion dollar industry? The September Issue shows all the mind-blowing meticulous and uncompromising work that went behind the biggest issue of American Vogue, the September 2007 840-page phone book-thick fall fashion bible. If you thought Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada was, well, a devil, then the real-life pope of international fashion whose word on all things sartorial is doctrine and canon will leave you speechless as she makes the most famous and esteemed designers nervous like little girls who doubt that they know even a single thing about clothes, puts into trash $ 50,000 worth of fashion editorial work, and dictates to major retailers what the rest of us are going to wear.
However, the more profound aspects of this documentary are the less notorious driving or hindering forces of multi-million-copy-selling Vogue. Anna Wintour, aka "nuclear Wintour," has chinks in her armor. After all, every deity is a human first, and Anna is a mother to a daughter who thinks that the fashion industry is "amusing," a sentiment shared by Anna's three other siblings. To the commander-in-chief of couture and prêt-a-porter, this seems to send an unwelcoming weakness. Juxtaposed with Anna is creative director Grace Coddington, the apparent warmness to Anna's iciness. Pushing each other has been the norm for their 20 years of working close together. The dynamic between the two is exciting, frustrating, and a necessary endeavor to produce the pages of fashion's most revered reference.
Fashion people will eat up this film. However, normal people/fashion outsiders will not regret seeing this insightful piece about how it is to be supremely powerful, what it takes to be at the pinnacle, and the costs of this might and glory.
However, the more profound aspects of this documentary are the less notorious driving or hindering forces of multi-million-copy-selling Vogue. Anna Wintour, aka "nuclear Wintour," has chinks in her armor. After all, every deity is a human first, and Anna is a mother to a daughter who thinks that the fashion industry is "amusing," a sentiment shared by Anna's three other siblings. To the commander-in-chief of couture and prêt-a-porter, this seems to send an unwelcoming weakness. Juxtaposed with Anna is creative director Grace Coddington, the apparent warmness to Anna's iciness. Pushing each other has been the norm for their 20 years of working close together. The dynamic between the two is exciting, frustrating, and a necessary endeavor to produce the pages of fashion's most revered reference.
Fashion people will eat up this film. However, normal people/fashion outsiders will not regret seeing this insightful piece about how it is to be supremely powerful, what it takes to be at the pinnacle, and the costs of this might and glory.