Mario Testino
安娜•温图尔在她位于巴黎丽兹酒店(Paris Ritz)的套房拍照。她在参加时装秀之余还去上网球课。
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看下面两张照片，可以帮助我们了解安娜•温图尔(Anna Wintour)和整个时尚界发生的故事。第一张照片是摄影师理查•艾维登(Richard Avedon)在1955年为名模朵薇玛(Dovima)拍摄的时尚单片。在这张名为"与大象共舞"(Dovima with Elephants)的黑白照片中，朵薇玛身着一袭迪奥(Dior)晚装，腰间系着一条飘垂的白色长饰带，伸展双臂优雅地搭在两头巨象身上，两侧的大象就像她的贴身保镖。这张照片可能算得上是最经典的时尚单片了——姿态完美，神情淡然超脱。去年11月，"与大象共舞"的一张冲印片在佳士得拍卖行(Christie)以1,153,011美元的价格成交，创下艾维登作品的最高拍卖价纪录。另一张照片就刊登在Vogue杂志今年的4月刊中，这张照片彻底颠覆了上一张照片那种经典的人像拍摄法则。在这张跨页照片中，身着纽约尼克斯队队服的篮球前锋阿马尔•斯塔德迈尔(Amar'e Stoudemire)跻身一群体态轻盈的杂志模特的中间。身高6英尺10英寸、体重240磅的阿马尔看起来就像一头被"朵薇玛们"包围的大象。
斯塔德迈尔并不是被温图尔选中拍片的第一位篮球明星，早在几年前，她就把勒布朗•詹姆斯(LeBron James)搬上了杂志封面，不过最近一段时期，她一直对斯塔德迈尔青眼有加。去年9月份，她邀请斯塔德迈尔和她一起参加9月纽约时尚购物夜(Fashion's Night Out)开幕之前的时装秀，今年2月份还带他参加了汤米•希尔费格(Tommy Hilfiger )的时装秀。温图尔说，"阿马尔出场时看起来风度绝佳。我认为几乎没有男士能离得开学院派羊毛开衫、蝴蝶领结和耐克高帮板鞋。但当我征询斯塔德迈尔对最佳装扮的看法时，他的回答是驼色斗篷。结果你知道，他是对的。"
她说，"有些人就像是灯塔，我这个位置让我有幸能结识很多这样的人。"很难想像温图尔和这些人交往只是因为喜欢他们。她继续实事求是地说，"在Vogue杂志工作真的很有意义。这些人不一定都能成为朋友，但结交他们并努力了解其现状和将来是我工作的一部分。我不会装模作样地坐在那儿对着一张试算表，然后说，哦，现在该去找勒布朗•詹姆斯了。这是一种与生俱来的本能。"这就是温图尔工作的方式——凭藉直觉、间接迂回、充满耐性。设计师马克•雅各(Marc Jacobs)称，"她的天分使她能十分敏锐地挑到合适的人选，无论是在政界、电影圈、体育界还是时尚界。"
温图尔自1988年以来一直担任Vogue杂志美国版的主编，到如今，"时尚界最有权力的女人"已经成为她惯常的称谓。在以她为原型创作的漫画中，她是一个戴着圆框香奈儿墨镜的冷漠女魔头，凭藉完美无瑕的品味、恐怖手段和讽刺挖苦来统御周围的世界。但是，她的影响力远比哈哈镜式的漫画所表现出来的要广泛得多。这种影响力隐藏在一个由有权有势的朋友和盟军组成的错综复杂的网路中，她与其中的许多人合作了几十年。这个网路覆盖了从好莱坞到华盛顿的整个美国，还横跨了两个大洋。也许她看起来很专横，但实际上她的确比女王更有权势。
她的内部圈子非常紧密，这个圈子里的人都对她忠心耿耿。和温图尔有15年交情的韦恩斯坦公司(Weinstein Company)联席董事长哈威•韦恩斯坦(Harvey Weinstein)说，"我的境遇起起伏伏，但无论情况好坏，安娜总是在那儿支持着我。当我的事业进展不太顺利的时候，安娜就会举办一个宴会，安排我坐在伯纳德•阿诺特(Bernard Arnault)身边。"韦恩斯坦说，这给他带来了好几笔生意（但他拒绝透露更多的细节）。韦恩斯坦投桃报李，在2008年的总统选举前，他帮助温图尔为时任美国参议员的巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)筹备了一场慈善演唱会，由老牌歌手布鲁斯•斯普林斯汀(Bruce Springsteen)和比利•乔尔(Billy Joel)献唱。
澳大利亚导演巴兹•鲁曼(Baz Luhrmann)执导的电影《红磨坊》(Moulin Rouge!)在预映时恶评如潮，鲁曼将半成品样带交给温图尔从而与她结识。温图尔对这部影片给予坚定的支持，让女主角妮可•吉德曼(Nicole Kidman)身穿片中晚装登上Vogue杂志的封面，并和韦恩斯坦及唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)这些盟友一起组织了一场围绕这件晚装的名流拍卖会。鲁曼说，"在这些人的帮助下，我看到《红磨坊》经历生产的阵痛后顺利诞生。"从那以后，鲁曼和温图尔就成了亲密的朋友。他说，"每当我有什么新想法了就会告诉安娜。她的意见我都会认真聆听。"他指的是关于拍摄下一步电影的计划，也就是将小说《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby)改编成电影。
安娜军团使她掌控的领域远远超出了一位杂志主编所能触及的范围，包括极其强大的经济影响力。在过去两年中，已经可以越来越清楚地看到她的势力范围究竟有多大。2009年年初，纽约时尚产业的规模达到100亿美元，温图尔争取到了与纽约市市长迈克尔•彭博(Michael Bloomberg)见面的机会。她提议举办一个一年一度的深夜购物大聚会，灵感来自巴黎不眠夜(nuits blanches)，也就是在这座城市举行的持续24小时的文化节。在坚持要求纽约的五个行政区全部受邀参加之后，彭博签字同意了这项计划。他说，"即使是像我这样就连领带和衬衫都搭配不好的人也知道，时尚对纽约市来说意味着钱。另外，在安娜优雅而平静的外表之下有一颗相当坚定的决心。她是那种你无法拒绝的人。"
最初，这个创意并没有获得广泛认同。整个纽约市为之感到震惊。购物疗法突然变成了一种不正常的行为，纽约彷佛被最没有美国味儿的美德——节俭——给冰冷地禁锢住了。刚开始的时候，温图尔去找梅西百货公司(Macy's Inc.)的董事长泰瑞•伦德格尔(Terry Lundgren)以寻求帮助。该公司旗下有梅西百货和Bloomingdale's百货商店。伦德格尔说，"考虑到人们的情绪，我当时感到犹豫。我不知道这项计划是否会奏效。"
据温图尔以前的一位同事回忆，当一些商店还在畏首畏尾的时候，温图尔已经在部署她的名流突击队了。"她在指挥中心运筹帷幄——我会安排西耶那•米勒(Sienna Miller)来你这里，我会让贾斯汀•汀布莱克(Justin Timberlake)去你那边！"（汀布莱克和米勒都是温图尔的好莱坞盟军中最热心的成员。贾斯汀•汀布莱克说，"温图尔明白时尚不仅仅是衣服，还是一种思想状态。她很清楚所有这些微小的力量汇聚在一起能促成伟大的事业。"）
当年的纽约时尚购物夜堪称四旬斋期间的狂欢节。据市场调研公司ShopperTrak称，纽约零售商店总的客流量增加了大约50%。虽然在活动结束后发表的其他报告显示看客比买家要多，但总体意见还是认为此次活动非常值得称赞。伦德葛 称，"也许你不能确切地用数字来衡量温图尔的经济影响力，但实际上这确实是一个非常庞大的数字。"他补充说，到时尚购物夜结束后的那个周末为止，梅西百货一度下降4至5个百分点的销售额出现了两位数的增幅。"这是当年首次出现这种令人振奋的局面。"
第二年，温图尔加大了赌注。她召集Vogue杂志各国版本的30位主编和发行人在巴黎开了一个特别会议，讨论将活动进一步扩大到全球范围。前进出版公司(Advance Publications)的董事长撒母耳•纽豪斯(S.I. Newhouse)说，"这些人还是首次被聚集在一起。她做这件事不需要我的授权，她具有超凡的能力来执行她的意愿。如果我有保留意见，她可能也会义无反顾地行事。"前进出版公司是Vogue杂志出版商康泰纳仕公司(Conde Nast)的母公司。
为了拉开这个购物狂欢节的帷幕，温图尔在林肯中心的广场上组织了纽约历史上规模最大的一次公开时装秀，售出了1,500张门票，起价为25美元。这场时装秀云集了全球125位顶级模特，通过互联网现场直播，此后又在哥伦比亚广播公司(CBS)电视台转播。2010年的纽约时尚购物夜活动吸引了纽约1,000多家零售商店、美国100多个城市以及全球16个国家的参与。例如，伊斯坦布尔在3个小时内的服装销售额达到200万美元。放心吧，在2011年的活动中，这一切还将重演。
在4月份举行的大都会博物馆(Metropolitan Museum)时装学院(Costume Institute)慈善庆典上，温图尔的忠诚联盟还将大放异彩。嘉宾名单包括保尔•麦卡特尼(Paul McCartney)、杰夫•昆斯(Jeff Koons)、艾莉西亚•凯斯(Alicia Keys)和谷歌(Google)主管消费者产品的副总裁玛丽莎•梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)。去年，彭博、波诺(Bono)、巴瑞•迪勒(Barry Diller)、拉里•高古轩(Larry Gagosian)和汤米•摩托拉(Tommy Mottola)等不同领域的名流都赶来捧场。
Mario Testino
安娜•温图尔与达芙妮•吉尼斯(Daphne Guinness，左)和卡尔•拉格斐(Karl Lagerfeld)在时装学院(Costume Institute)慈善庆典上。温图尔1995年成为该慈善庆典的联合主持后，为庆典赋予新生，让它成为纽约星光闪耀、世界为之倾心之地，期间还为大都会博物馆时装学院筹集了7500万美元资金。
当温图尔于1995年接任这个慈善庆典的联合主持时，这还是一个在纽约公园大道(Park Avenue)举行的内部聚会，每年募集的善款约为900,000美元。自1948年以来，大都会博物馆一直在举办某种形式的时装学院慈善庆典，当时，女性名流们支付50美元就可以穿上时装学院的某款晚装出席在12月份举行的一场午夜晚宴。戴安娜•弗里兰德(Diana Vreeland)和派特•巴克利(Pat Buckley)都是在各自领域取得了杰出成就的强大女性，她们曾先后担任这个慈善庆典的联合主持。温图尔召集了来自好莱坞、电视和互联网行业的重量级人物，使这个慈善庆典成为纽约星光闪耀、世界为之倾心之地。温图尔说，"以前，这个庆典更多的是时尚界的聚会。在我介入之后，我开始邀请妮可•吉德曼和凯特•布兰切特(Cate Blanchetts)这样的嘉宾，然后是政治、文学、绘画和音乐圈的人士，如此一来，这就不仅仅是时尚庆典了。这个过程就像是制作一场盛大的演出秀。"
对于有时候过分谨小慎微的大都会博物馆来说，温图尔带来了一种全新的看待事物的方式。例如，去年温图尔用卡车将一个30英尺高的热气球从南达科他州运来，让其漂浮在博物馆安格哈德大厅(Engelhard Court)的上方。大都会博物馆总裁艾米丽•莱弗提(Emily Rafferty)说："当我们第一次看到这个热气球时的反应是：不行！博物馆里不能有燃气！安娜改变了我们的看法，她把我们思考可行活动的方式带入了新的层次，但又从来没有忘记我们是在一个博物馆里工作。"
今年，一张庆典门票的价格将达到25,000美元，包桌的价格是250,000美元。去年，这个庆典活动募集了近900万美元善款。在纽约慈善圈中，据说只有邀请了对冲基金巨头出席的罗宾汉基金(Robin Hood Foundation)慈善庆典的募款金额超过了这个数目。莱弗提赞叹说，自温图尔接手以来，她总共为大都会博物馆时装学院筹集了7500万美元资金，其中的5500万美元是通过慈善庆典募集的，另外2000万美元则是企业为展览提供的赞助。莱弗提说，"这真的是一笔巨资。"有了这笔钱后，时装学院将从2012年开始进行大整修。为表彰温图尔做出的巨大贡献，大都会博物馆授予其名誉理事头衔。
许多人认为他们已经了解安娜•温图尔了。她是把头发做得纹丝不乱的时尚界女魔头。在过去几年中，她被冠以各种各样的绰号，许多绰号都与"冷酷"这个词有关。她并没有跳出来澄清这种看法。从2009年的纪录片《9月刊》(The September Issue)中你就可以看出这一点，在片中，温图尔不动声色地任由Vogue杂志的创意总监格蕾丝•柯丁顿(Grace Coddington)公然操纵观众的情感。一位以前的同事称，"安娜不会反驳任何人对她的看法。"
事实上，温图尔对自己的声誉有一种冷幽默。在根据温图尔一位元前助手的映射小说改编的电影《穿普拉达的女王》(The Devil Wears Prada)首映时，她穿着一身普拉达翩然而至。在去年秋天访问中国期间，她在一个新闻发布会上被问到她是否真如片中女主角那样。当时，她面无表情地说，"当然是真的，我会殴打所有的助手，把他们关到柜子里，不给他们发薪水。"鲁曼说，"她在观看马戏表演的时候会发出夸张的大笑，尽管她真的是非常严肃地对待演出。"温图尔本人则做出了更简单的解释，"我很关心我的朋友和家人，他们都知道这一点，但是，工作就是工作。"
Mario Testino
温图尔和她的孩子，查理(Charlie)和碧•夏弗(Bee Shaffer)。
从很小的时候开始，温图尔就对时尚情有独锺。她的父亲是英国人，名叫查理斯•温图尔(Charles Wintour)，是伦敦《标准晚报》(Evening Standard)的编辑，素以孤傲闻名。她的母亲是个美国人，名叫艾莲娜•贝克(Eleanor Baker)，大家都管她叫诺尼(Nonie)。1967年，17岁的安娜从学校辍学，去参加伦敦的狂野时尚舞蹈表演。
从那以后，她不断攀登英国和美国时尚杂志的巅峰位置，当然也从未忘记真正值得她去攀登的时尚界的最高宝座。接下来，她的故事就该说到1982年首次去Vogue杂志面试的情景了。当时的Vogue主编格蕾丝•米兰贝拉(Grace Mirabella)问温图尔，如果她能进入这个杂志社，她想要什么样的工作。据说温图尔毫不眨眼地对米兰贝拉说，"你的工作。"米兰贝拉严阵以待，但是六年后，温图尔还是冲破了防线，取代了米兰贝拉。（米兰贝拉至今仍对此耿耿于怀。）
和大多数人相比，温图尔很早就意识到时尚将会冲出其狭小的空间，与更广泛的文化交融在一起。当她将金•贝辛格(Kim Basinger)搬上Vogue杂志1991年5月刊的封面时，时尚仍生活在朵薇玛式的纯洁幻想世界中。大多数好莱坞明星不单不是道德楷模或智慧源泉，也不是时尚偶像。温图尔改变了这一切，她把一众明星搬上杂志封面，使好莱坞明星们警觉最好还是认真对待自己的穿着打扮。从1993年的薇诺娜•赖德(Winona Ryder)和莎朗•斯通(Sharon Stone)到1994年的茱莉亚•罗伯茨(Julia Roberts)，再到1995年的黛咪•摩尔(Demi Moore)，直至1998年，登上封面的明星数量呈爆炸式增长。这一年，桑德拉•布洛克(Sandra Bullock)、克雷尔•邓尼斯(Claire Danes)、芮妮•齐薇格(Renee Zellweger)（温图尔贴身打造她的形象）、伊莉莎白•赫莉(Elizabeth Hurley)和著名的辣妹组合(Spice Girls)轮番登上Vogue杂志的封面（温图尔承认她在这件事上有些不够慎重，她说，对于将辣妹组合放上封面她并不是十分引以为傲）。同样在这一年，奥普拉•温弗瑞(Oprah Winfrey)和希拉蕊•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)也成为封面人物，这表明Vogue杂志向更广阔的世界敞开了怀抱。但有时候，这个更广阔的世界并不买帐。温图尔在2008年将勒布朗•詹姆斯搬上封面，由安妮•莱博维茨(Annie Leibovitz)拍摄的这张照片中的詹姆斯让人联想起金刚，这一期杂志在报刊亭的销量遭遇惨败。
还有人质疑Vogue杂志有时候是不是过分追求时尚而忽略了更重要的东西。今年3月刊中，有一篇美化叙利亚独裁政权阿萨德家族的专访。作者琼•茱丽叶•巴克(Joan Juliet Buck)承认，"不错，在叙利亚，权力是世袭的，而且纪念真主 的烟灰缸随处可见。但是叙利亚总统巴沙尔•阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)的妻子阿斯玛(Asma)确实年轻迷人，而且非常时髦。"
尽管受到非议，温图尔仍然认为其基调是正确的，尽管她并不赞同每句话。鲁曼说，"在我成长的过程中，时尚变得和音乐一样有影响力。"一位同事称，是先有温图尔还是先有这个时尚界？这有点像鸡和蛋的关系，但她是引路人，你不得不冠以她这项殊荣。
在过去十年中，时尚可能已经冲破了原先的限制，但这个规模达3500亿美元的产业本身依然足够紧凑，只需一人就能主宰，这个人就是温图尔。在2月份的时装周期间，当她只在米兰停留四天的消息传出后，所有义大利人都为之大惊小怪地忙做一团。主办方召集了紧急会议，火急火燎地要求设计师们重新安排他们的时装秀，大家都急着把原定88小时的时装秀压缩至70小时以迁就她缩短后的行程。2007年，R. J.卡特尔(R. J. Cutler)拍摄了纪录片《九月刊》，影片记录了Vogue杂志社如何制作最重要的一期杂志的过程。一位朋友问他，温图尔工作的时候是什么样子。他回答说，"在好莱坞，如果没有斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg)的祝福，你也可以拍出一部电影；在硅谷，如果没有比尔•盖茨(Bill Gates)的祝福，你也能发布一款软体；但是我相当清楚地知道，在时尚界，如果没有安娜•温图尔的祝福，你休想取得成功。"
事实上，时尚界的一些大人物能取得今天的地位在很大程度上都要感谢温图尔。她促成了一些时尚大品牌和代理公司之间的联姻，例如古琦(Gucci)和宝缇嘉(Bottega Veneta)，Sportswear Holdings和迈克•柯尔(Michael Kors)。一位曾与温图尔一起亲密工作过的前同事称，"她在做这些工作时非常谨慎，但对整个时尚界和零售业来说，她确实担当了一种顾问的角色。"
迈克•柯尔的故事可以追溯到1981年，当时温图尔刚刚成为Vogue美国版的一名时尚编辑不久。年轻的设计师柯尔刚刚推出了他的第一个女装系列，温图尔立刻敏锐地发现自己很喜欢这些服装以及这位设计师。柯尔的事业在90年代遭受沉重打击，于1993年申请破产，但是温图尔一直对他赞誉有加。
2002年，曹其峰(Silas Chou)和劳伦斯•斯特罗尔(Lawrence Stroll)正在寻找时尚界的下一个大品牌。这两位搭档在1989年漂亮地收购了汤米•希尔费格，并于1992年使其成为家喻户晓的名牌。温图尔向他们推荐了柯尔。曹其峰说，"在我结识迈克•柯尔之前20年，温图尔就已经发现了他的才能。我们一直在谈判，关键时刻，温图尔对柯尔的看法起到了非常重要的作用。"曹其峰和斯特罗尔在2003年通过他们旗下的Sportswear Holdings以大约1亿美元的价格收购了柯尔品牌的控股权，而现在柯尔品牌的零售额已接近10亿美元。
和温图尔一起参加了几次企业联姻会的一位前同事说，"我发现温图尔真的是时尚界的麦肯锡(McKinsey)。"温图尔本人则比较谦虚，她说，"我们可以提出建议，但最终还要当事各方自己拿主意。"
伯纳德•阿诺特是经常能得到温图尔建议的人之一，他执掌的奢侈品王国酩悦•轩尼诗－路易•威登集团(LVMH)旗下拥有路易•威登(Louis Vuitton)、纪梵希(Givenchy)、马克•雅各和芬迪(Fendi)等品牌。1993年，温图尔和Vogue杂志特约编辑安德列•里昂•塔利(Andre Leon Talley)将落魄的设计师约翰•加利亚诺(John Galliano)引荐给约翰•巴尔特(John Bult)及马克•赖斯(Mark Rice)这两位金主，使加利亚诺的职业生涯重振旗鼓。后来她还把加利亚诺推荐给阿诺特，后者先是让加利亚诺担任纪梵希的设计师，然后又让他担任迪奥的设计师（迪奥是阿诺特的控股公司旗下的品牌）。1997年，温图尔将马克•雅各推荐给阿诺特旗下的路易•威登品牌。阿诺特称，"温图尔给他们指出了一种出乎意料的选择。我非常坦白地告诉温图尔，现在不是挑选大牌设计师的时候，这么说可能相当鲁莽。正是温图尔看到了约翰和迪奥品牌在风格上的紧密契合。她是眼光独到的伯乐。"
看起来现在加利亚诺比以往任何时候更需要温图尔：今年2月底，这位设计师突然被迪奥停职，因为此前巴黎的一对情侣指控他在一家咖啡馆无缘无故地冲他们呼喊反犹太人言论。紧接着，摄于去年10月份的一个视频片段曝光，视频显示，显然是喝醉了的加利亚诺在一家酒吧发表类似的种族主义言论。此后，他就被解雇了。对于他的沉沦，温图尔表示，"这真是个悲剧。"
去年7月，温图尔与时任法国工业部长的克利斯蒂安•埃斯特鲁斯(Christian Estrosi)会面。她礼貌地建议法国政府从经济上给法国年轻设计师提供更多的支持。她自己的美国设计师协会(CFDA)/Vogue时尚基金为美国年轻设计师筹集了数百万美元资金，这已经成为欧洲的一个样板。她是在2001年想到这个主意的，当时，世界贸易中心(World Trade Center)遇袭事件打断了纽约时装周，使年轻的设计师陷入经济困境。该基金目前已有1000万美元资金，已经在米兰和伦敦推出了类似的基金专案。
奢侈品巨头法国巴黎春天百货集团(PPR)总裁弗朗索瓦•亨利•皮诺(Francois-Henri Pinault)说，"她要处理的事情确实比其他任何主编承担的工作重大得多。"皮诺目前正在和埃斯特鲁斯讨论如何给年轻设计师提供经济支持的问题。温图尔并不是直接找到他并向他提出这个要求的。他说，"温图尔的做法聪明多了。"
Ivan Shaw
马里奥•特斯蒂诺(Mario Testino)为温图尔拍摄用作《华尔街日报》四月版的封面照。
我在温图尔整洁宽大而富有艺术气息的Vogue杂志社办公室跟她见面，那天她从早上五点开始就呆在那儿了——平时这是她起床的时间。大部分日子里，她会在早上六点钟的时候去打网球，但最近她一直在治疗疼痛的肘部，因此不能打球了，但这并不意味着她完全与网球绝缘。我们见面的这天，她正在观看她的朋友罗杰•费德勒(Roger Federer)在澳网公开赛上与吉勒•西蒙(Gilles Simon)展开的一场胜负难分的五盘制比赛。西蒙以前曾经赢过费德勒两次，因此温图尔很紧张。事后她显然有些如释重负地说，"费德勒总算赢了。"
温图尔第一次找到费德勒是在2002年的美国网球公开赛，也就是他赢得第一个大满贯之前。费德勒有些吃惊。他说，"当时我还不是十分清楚她是谁。"从此以后，温图尔就成了费德勒一个深受信赖的顾问和亲密的朋友，不仅对费德勒而言，对他的妻子米尔卡(Mirka)和经纪人托尼•高德斯克(Tony Godsick)来说也是如此。费德勒说，"我从温图尔那里获得各种各样的建议——包括在场上和场下穿什么衣服、拍摄照片以及赞助商等等所有的一切。"虽然温图尔却从未要求任何回报，但费德勒说，"总会有这么一天的，当这一天到来时，我会很乐意与她合作。"
温图尔的密友称，难得的是，她从来不会直接要求回报。从另一个方面来说，如果温图尔真的要求他们做些什么，也从来不会得到否定的答案。马克•雅各说，"如果我被要求做某件不想做的事情，首先我会收到一封电子邮件，然后会接到Vogue杂志某个人的电话，此刻我就不会费事去拒绝了，因为我知道下一个电话肯定是她亲自打来的。"
雅各称，那些只看到她坚硬外表下的光环的人们总是毫不怀疑她会摆出女训导主任的架势。"她留给外界的印象并不好。但她总是坚定地支持她所信任的人，如果你并不是这些人当中的一员，可能会对她有不同的看法。"从刚进Vogue杂志开始，温图尔就一直支持雅各。他说，"当时，人人都看轻我。温图尔和我之间的关系已经超越了一般的时尚主编与设计师的关系。"正是由于这层关系，在吉米•法伦(Jimmy Fallon)的时装秀上，雅各紧邻温图尔而坐，两人一起高谈纽约时尚购物夜。
如果说拥有一个共同利益集团（即使这个集团的范围很大而且成员都富有魅力）会面临一个风险的话，那这个风险就是这可能会使Vogue的内容编排看起来过于排他。在我提出这个问题时，温图尔思索了一会儿，对此做出了另一种解释。她说，"我会努力对新人保持开放态度，但显然你会更加相信认识很长时间的人。我认为Vogue有自己的圈内语言，某些人可能被视为这本杂志的中流砥柱和标杆。我们非常努力地把熟面孔与正在崛起的新人结合起来，但是我宁可偏之于谨慎地任用较熟悉的人而不愿……怎么说来着？……对，操之过急。"
环游全球、牵线搭桥以及活动策划这种种角色很容易使人忘记温图尔的本职工作是经营一本杂志。和业内其他杂志一样，Vogue也遭受了经济衰退带来的沉重打击。该杂志2008年的收入下降5.55%，2009年进一步下降27%，跌至2.89亿美元，但现在似乎已经反弹了。据康泰纳仕公司新闻部称，Vogue2010年的收入增长18%，至3.42亿美元，尽管仍低于2007年高峰时期的4.19亿美元。另外，今年第一季度的收入增长近11%，仅次于《世界时装之苑》(Elle)的14.3%，和《型时代》(InStyle)的10.9%不相上下。在广告总页数方面则是Vogue稳超了这两本杂志。
去年9月，在纽约时装周前夕，温图尔推出了重新设计后的网站Vogue.com。这个网站起步较慢，刚开始只有545,000名唯一访问者，到今年1月份，注册用户已达896,000名。这仍然不及Style.com高达240万的访问者，Style.com是康泰纳仕旗下的综合性网站，原先是Vogue杂志的官网。但Vogue.com呈现健康上升势头，考虑到Style.com已有10年历史后就更是如此了。
温图尔的老板萨缪尔•纽豪斯承认，温图尔涉足互联网领域较晚。她不太情愿开通这个网站，因为她认为能表现Vogue杂志影响力的是印刷出版物。但是，通常情况下，她一旦做了，就会做好。在数字时尚界，温图尔还能像在印刷出版界那样占据说一不二的统治地位吗？对此，纽豪斯没有做出正面回答，他说，"现在断言还为时过早，但是从纽约时尚购物夜这个例子可以看出，她显然有能力去执行她的意愿。"
当然，品牌才是纽豪斯最关心的东西。他说，"没有比Vogue杂志主编更重要的角色了。"他证实，Vogue是康泰纳仕旗下最赚钱的出版物。至于不时冒出的关于温图尔（现年61岁）接班人的传言，纽豪斯只有一句话："绝没有这回事。我希望温图尔还能再干10年、20年。"
你可能会问，在这个外表看来很能培养人才的Vogue杂志社，温图尔有没有培养某个人，在她（或者更确切地说，是萨缪尔•纽豪斯）选择将她的衣钵传承下去时能够接掌大权？温图尔的一位前同事回答说，"她为什么要这么做呢？"在大多数杂志社，主编大权的交接并不像封建王朝传位那样。权力的更替很少是温和的。格蕾丝•米兰贝拉没有培养温图尔，戴安娜•弗里兰德也没有培养米兰贝拉。多数情况下，一位元新主编意味着一种新的编辑视觉，通常代表了老板的意愿。只要Vogue还在温图尔的视觉界定之下，就没有人会比温图尔本人干得更好。
但是去年，有关继任者的谣言传得风生水起。据说卡琳•洛菲德(Carine Roitfeld)正蓄势以待，但也仅止于传言而已。这位颇有争议的Vogue法国版主编在巴黎被视为朋克之父伊基•波普(Iggy Pop)的翻版。她恰巧看起来也有点像这位眼珠突突的摇滚明星，而且她也和波普一样具有浓厚的情欲色彩，这使Vogue法国版以大胆的风气而著称。洛菲德以开创所谓的"情色时尚"(porno chic)潮流而享有盛誉（如果可以称之为"荣誉"的话），这为Vogue法国版在时尚界赢得了限制级的名声。说起来，Vogue美国版似乎有些让人瞧不起，其内容总是过分迎合大众的喜好。
洛菲德于去年12月辞职，据传她是因为和巴黎世家(Balenciaga)等品牌之间的咨询关系而被迫辞职的，这种关系被认为与其主编职责很难共存。（但洛菲德否认曾提供咨询服务以及被要求辞职。）在Vogue法国版内部，有关洛菲德威胁到温图尔地位的这种想法从未被当真。法国版的一位管理人员称，"这纯粹是瞎扯。洛菲德关心的东西只有创意，而温图尔想的则是业务。温图尔给其他所有的编辑定好"啦"音（这是法语里面的一种表达方式，来源于管弦乐队给乐器调音的方式，也就是说为他们设定基调并起到激励作用）。"
并非人人都对温图尔的商业头脑和广泛的雄心赞赏有加。有人哀叹那种狭义的、朵薇玛式的时尚感一去不返，也有人认为温图尔这种更开阔的敏感度使时尚最细腻优雅的本质变得粗糙。最近《纽约时报》(New York Times)刊登了一篇关于洛菲德离职的文章，时尚摄影师伊内兹•冯•兰姆斯韦德(Inez van Lamsweerde)称，她希望Vogue法国版不会开始变得更像美国版。她写道，"我们是否真的需要又一本关于最新的建筑杰作和最新书籍的杂志？就我而言，我需要的是一本具有最佳品味和不可思议的摄影技巧的真正的时尚杂志。"这种事情以前也曾发生过。上个世纪90年代，设计师杰佛瑞•比尼(Geoffrey Beene)就指责温图尔迎合最低级的大众品味。这件事在当时颇为有名。比尼抨击她说，"作为一位编辑，她把优雅出众变成了世俗大众，把品味变成了垃圾。"后来他不再邀请温图尔出席他的时装秀。
即使是在洛菲德离职后，有关温图尔的传言依然不减。最新的一个传言是，她有意离开Vogue杂志和时尚界，在华盛顿谋求一个大使的职务。温图尔热心为巴拉克•奥巴马筹款以及她对第一夫人蜜雪儿•奥巴马(Michelle Obama) 的公开仰慕，都助长了这种传言。当温图尔被问到她最仰慕的人是谁时，她首先提及的名字之一就是蜜雪儿•奥巴马。
在2008年的总统选举之前，她和凯文•克莱(Calvin Klein)及安德列•里昂•塔利一起在克莱家中举行了一场筹款晚宴。克莱回忆道，"我负责与审美有关的工作，温图尔则负责打电话，实际上筹得的资金都要归功于她。她就像一台发电机，你会觉得这位瘦小美丽的女子是为时尚而生、为时尚而死。"此后不久，安妮•莱博维茨为蜜雪儿•奥巴马拍摄了一张跨页照片，刊登在2009年1月刊中。这位第一夫人还出现在Vogue杂志2009年3月刊的封面上，同期还刊登了她的独家专访。
去年7月，温图尔在她位于格林威治村的联排别墅中为奥巴马举行了一场筹款晚宴，每位嘉宾捐资30,000美元。出席此次晚宴的都是温图尔关系网中的关键人物，包括哈威•韦恩斯坦和他的妻子——玛切萨(Marchesa)的设计师乔治娅•查普曼(Georgina Chapman)；运动品牌希尔瑞(Theory)的创始人安德鲁•罗森(Andrew Rosen)（他给CDFA/Vogue时尚基金捐了很多钱，还为纽约时尚购物夜活动制作了T恤）；盖璞(Gap)的设计师派翠克•罗宾森(Patrick Robinson)（他和奥普拉•温弗瑞及温图尔共同主持了2010年的时装学院庆典）；温图尔的老友、美国设计师协会会长黛安•冯•芙丝汀宝(Diane von Furstenberg)；艺术品交易商拉里•高古轩。据《女装日报》(Women's Wear Daily)称，此次晚宴筹集了150万美元资金。
温图尔断然否认她在谋求某项政府工作。对她来说，Vogue没有界限。她说，"在各种新的媒体管道纷纷面世、各种声音甚嚣尘上之际，像Vogue杂志这样权威、冷静的声音变得比以往更加重要。关注时尚的眼睛越多、有关时尚的见解越多、全球探索时尚的活动越多，对Vogue杂志来说就越好。Vogue杂志就像耐克(Nike)或可口可乐(Coca-Cola)，是庞大的全球性品牌。我想要让它进一步强大、我想要保护它，让它成为人们谈话的议题。"
JOSHUA LEVINE
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
To understand what's happened to Anna Wintour and to the fashion industry as a whole, it helps to look at two photographs. The first is a 1955 Richard Avedon shot of the model Dovima, dressed in a black Dior gown with flowing white sash, stretching her white arms toward two enormous pachyderms that flank her like bodyguards. 'Dovima with Elephants,' as the photograph is known, may be fashion's most iconic single image—perfectly posed and concerned with absolutely nothing but itself. A print sold for $1,153,011 at Christie's last November—a record for an Avedon.
Wintour turns that iconography inside out in Vogue's April issue. Amidst the magazine's lissome models is a photo spread featuring Amar'e Stoudemire, the 6-foot-10-inch, 240-pound basketball forward, in his New York Knicks uniform. An elephant among Dovimas.
Stoudemire isn't the first pick in Wintour's basketball draft—she put LeBron James on the cover a few years back—but she's been courting him for a while now. In September, she invited him to join her at the runway show before last September's Fashion's Night Out and in February she brought him to the Tommy Hilfiger show. 'Amar'e looked wonderfully dapper when he turned up,' Wintour says. 'I can think of very few men who could pull off a collegiate cardigan, bow tie and Nike high-tops. I asked him what he thought one of the best looks was, and he indicated a camel cape. And you know, he was right.'
'There are people who are like beacons, and I'm in the fortunate position that I can meet such people,' she says. It's hard to imagine Wintour hanging around with these people just because, well, she likes them. 'To be in Vogue means something,' she continues, matter-of-factly. 'Not all of them become friends, but it's part of my job to get to know these people and try to understand who they are, what they are and what future they have. I won't pretend that I'm sitting here with a spreadsheet . . . 'Now it's time to reach out to LeBron James.' It's instinctive.' That's how Wintour works—intuitively, obliquely and patiently. 'Her genius,' says the designer Marc Jacobs, 'is picking people very astutely, whether in politics, movies, sports or fashion.'
She's been editor of the American edition of Vogue since 1988, and by now it has become commonplace to call her the most powerful woman in fashion. But her influence is much broader than it appears in her fun-house-mirror caricature: a brittle despot in round Chanel sunglasses who rules the world around her through impeccable taste, terror and sarcasm. It is hidden within an intricate web of powerful friends and allies, many of whom she's worked with for decades. That web spans the U.S., out to Hollywood, down to Washington, and across both oceans. Imperious as she may appear, she's really more impresario than empress.
Her inner circle is tight-knit, their devotion cemented by an almost canine sense of loyalty on Wintour's part. 'I'm a streak player, but Anna's there, good or bad,' says Harvey Weinstein, co-chair of the Weinstein Company, who goes back some 15 years with Wintour. 'When I wasn't doing so well, Anna would throw a party and put me next to Bernard Arnault.' Out of that came several business deals, says Weinstein (he declines to be more specific). Weinstein returned the favor by stepping in to help Wintour produce a Bruce Springsteen/Billy Joel benefit concert for then-Senator Barack Obama before the 2008 election.
Australian director Baz Luhrmann met Wintour when he sent her a half-finished reel of his movie 'Moulin Rouge!' after it was beset by toxic prerelease buzz. Wintour threw her support behind it, putting Nicole Kidman on the cover in a gown from the film and organizing a celebrity auction around it with allies like Weinstein and Donald Trump. 'Those people helped me see 'Moulin Rouge!' through its birth pangs,' Luhrmann says. The two have been close friends since. 'I always talk to Anna about what I'm up to,' he says, referring to plans for his next film, an adaptation of 'The Great Gatsby,' 'and I always listen to what she has to say.'
Anna's army gives her a reach that far exceeds her grasp as a magazine editor, not to mention a deceptively potent economic punch. In the past two years, it's become clearer just how wide-ranging her clout really is. In early 2009, with New York's $10 billion fashion business reeling, Wintour took a ride to see New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She proposed a one-shot, late-night shopping party, inspired by Paris's 'nuits blanches,' the city's round-the-clock cultural festivals. Bloomberg signed on, after insisting that all five boroughs be invited to the party. 'Even a guy like me, who can barely match my tie to my shirt, knows that fashion means dollars to New York City. Besides, behind all Anna's grace and poise is some pretty tough resolve. She's not a person you want to say no to.'
The idea wasn't universally popular at first. The city was shell-shocked. Retail therapy had suddenly become dysfunctional behavior, and New York was in the chilly grip of that least American of virtues, thrift. Early on, Wintour approached Terry Lundgren, chairman of Macy's Inc., which owns both Macy's and Bloomingdale's, for support. 'I was hesitant, given the mood people were in,' Lundgren says. 'I didn't know if it would work.'
One former colleague recalls Wintour deploying her celebrity shock troops when some stores balked at joining up. 'She's calling it in from command central—'I'll get you Sienna Miller at the store, I'll send you Justin Timberlake!' ' (Timberlake and Miller are among Wintour's most zealous Hollywood allies. 'She understands fashion is a frame of mind, not just the clothes,' Timberlake says. 'She's figured out that all these small moving parts come into play to make a bigger picture.')
Fashion's Night Out was a Mardi Gras moment in the middle of Lent. Overall foot traffic in New York City stores increased almost 50 percent, according to the research firm ShopperTrak. While other post-event reports suggested there was more ogling than spending, the overall verdict was resoundingly favorable. 'Maybe you can't really put a figure on Wintour's economic impact, but it's a very big number,' Lundgren says, adding that Macy's sales, which had been down 4 to 5 percent, rose into 'double digits' the weekend after FNO. 'It was the first shot in the arm we had seen that year.'
The following year, Wintour upped the ante. She convened an extraordinary meeting of 30 international Vogue editors and publishers in Paris, to discuss further global initiatives. 'It was the first time anybody had gotten them all together,' says S.I. Newhouse, chairman of Advance Publications, which owns Vogue parent Condé Nast. 'She didn't need my authority to do it—she has a remarkable ability to impose her will. If I had had reservations, she probably would have gone ahead anyway.'
To kick off the festivities, Wintour organized New York's largest public fashion show in the plaza at Lincoln Center, selling 1,500 tickets at $25 and higher. The show conscripted 125 of the world's top models, broadcast live on the Web and later on CBS. Fashion's Night Out 2010 clocked in with more than 1,000 New York stores, over 100 American cities and 16 countries around the world. Istanbul, for example, logged clothing sales of $2 million in three hours. Rest assured, there will be an encore in 2011.
Wintour's glittery coalition of the willing will be on full display next month at her benefit gala for the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. The guest list includes Paul McCartney, Jeff Koons, Alicia Keys and Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of consumer products. Last year, Bloomberg, Bono, Barry Diller, Larry Gagosian and Tommy Mottola all dropped in from their respective planets.
When Wintour took over as co-chair of the gala in 1995, it was an in-grown Park Avenue cluster buss that generated around $900,000 a year in donations. The Met has been throwing some kind of Costume Institute benefit since 1948, when matrons paid $50 to wear some of the Costume Institute's gowns at a midnight supper in December. Diana Vreeland and Pat Buckley, formidable doyennes in their own right, took their turns co-chairing it. Wintour corralled the biggest names from Hollywood, television and the Internet, and turned the gala into New York's star-spangled air kiss to the world. 'It was much more fashion industry before,' Wintour says. 'When I became involved, I started to invite the Nicole Kidmans and the Cate Blanchetts, and then I tried to bring in the worlds of politics, literature, painting, music, so it's not just about fashion. It's like producing a show.'
For the sometimes fussy Met, this was a new way of looking at things. Last year, for instance, Wintour had a 30-foot hot-air balloon trucked in from South Dakota and floated it above the museum's Engelhard Court. 'When we first saw it, we go, 'Never! We can't have gas in the museum!' ' says Met president Emily Rafferty. 'Anna's changed our attitude—she's brought us to new levels of thinking of what we can do, but without ever losing sight that we're working in a museum context here.'
Prices for a ticket will run up to $25,000, and $250,000 for a table. Last year, the gala brought in almost $9 million. In the realm of New York charity benefits, only the Robin Hood Foundation gala with its hedge-fund-heavy guest list is said to raise more. In all, Rafferty credits Wintour with raising $75 million for the museum's Costume Institute since she arrived—$55 million through the benefit gala and $20 million through corporate sponsorships for exhibitions. 'That's an awful lot of money,' Rafferty says. The money will help the Costume Institute undertake a major renovation, beginning in 2012. For her labors, Wintour has been named an honorary trustee of the museum.
Many people think they already know Anna Wintour. She's the perfectly coiffed monstre sacré of the fashion world. She has been saddled over the years with various nicknames, many turning on some form of the word 'cold.' She does not go out of her way to dispel them. You can see it in the 2009 documentary 'The September Issue,' as Wintour impassively allows Grace Coddington, the Vogue creative director with her heart on her sleeve, to hijack the audience's affection. 'Anna doesn't play against anyone's expectations of her,' a former colleague says.
Instead, Wintour has an arid sense of humor about her reputation. At a screening of 'The Devil Wears Prada,' based on a roman à clef by a former Wintour assistant, she wore Prada. During a trip to China last fall, she was asked during a press conference whether she was really like that. 'It's true, of course, that I beat all my assistants, lock them in a cupboard and don't pay them,' she deadpanned. 'She's got an eye-rolling way of laughing at the circus, even while she takes it deadly seriously,' says Luhrmann. Wintour herself puts it more simply: 'I care deeply about my friends and my family and they know it, but work is work.'
Wintour had a fixation with fashion from a very young age. Her father was an Englishman named Charles Wintour who edited London's Evening Standard newspaper and had a reputation for aloofness. Her mother was an American named Eleanor Baker, whom everyone called Nonie. In 1967, 17-year-old Anna dropped out of school to join London's wild fashion dance.
Since then she has climbed from masthead to masthead at fashion magazines in England and here, never losing sight of the only fashionable masthead really worth climbing. The story has passed into legend of Wintour's first interview at Vogue in 1982. Grace Mirabella, then Vogue's editor, asked Wintour what job she would like if she came to the magazine. 'Your job,' Wintour is said to have replied without blinking. Mirabella circled the wagons, but six years later, Wintour had penetrated and Mirabella was out. (Mirabella remained bitter about it.)
Wintour realized long before most that fashion was about to burst its tight seams and join the broader culture. When she put Kim Basinger on Vogue's May 1991 cover, fashion was still living in the rarefied fantasy of Dovima. In the main, Hollywood stars were no more icons of style than they were models of personal probity or fonts of wisdom. Wintour changed all that with a series of celebrity covers that put Holly wood on notice that it had better get serious about what it wore—Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone in 1993, Julia Roberts in 1994, Demi Moore in 1995, leading up to the celebrity explosion of 1998, when Sandra Bullock, Claire Danes, Renée Zellweger (whose image Wintour managed closely), Elizabeth Hurley and the notorious Spice Girls took turns on Vogue's cover (Wintour concedes she might have pushed the point there: 'I'm not terribly proud of putting the Spice Girls on the cover,' she says). That was also the year Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton got covers, signaling Vogue's embrace of the wider world. Occasionally, the wider world doesn't hug back. Wintour's 2008 LeBron James cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz to evoke King Kong, was a big loser on the newsstand.
There's also the question of whether Vogue doesn't sometimes allow a fashionable tail to wag a questionable dog. The March issue included a soft-focus look at Syria's ruling al-Assad family. Yes, conceded writer Joan Juliet Buck, 'In Syria, power is hereditary,' and there are those 'souvenir Hezbollah ashtrays' scattered around. But president Bashar al-Assad's wife, Asma, is nonetheless 'glamorous, young and very chic.'
Still, Wintour called the tune correctly, even if she doesn't get every note right. 'Fashion has become as powerful as music was when I was growing up,' Luhrmann says. Was it Wintour or was it the world? 'That's a little chicken and egg, but she led the way and you have to give her the credit,' says a colleague.
Fashion may have overflowed its banks in the past decade, but the $350 billion industry itself remains compact enough for one person to dominate, that person being Wintour. She threw all of Italy into a tizzy last year when it was discovered she would spend only four days in Milan during February's fashion week. Emergency meetings were called, designers frantically demanded to reschedule their shows and every one scrambled to squeeze 88 runway shows into 70 hours to accommodate her abbreviated stay. In 2007, R. J. Cutler was shooting 'The September Issue' about putting together Vogue's biggest issue. A friend asked him what it was like watching Wintour work. 'Well,' he replied, 'you can make a film in Hollywood without Steven Spielberg's blessing, and you can publish software in Silicon Valley without Bill Gates's blessing, but it's pretty clear to me you can't succeed in the fashion industry without Anna Wintour's blessing.'
In fact, some of fashion's biggest names are where they are in large part thanks to Wintour. She has helped broker corporate marriages for some of fashion's biggest brands—Bottega Veneta at Gucci and Michael Kors at Sportswear Holdings. 'She does this very discreetly, but she's really a kind of consigliere to the entire fashion and retail industry,' says a former colleague who worked closely with her.
The Michael Kors story goes back to 1981, soon after Wintour joined New York magazine as fashion editor. Kors, a young designer, had just launched his first women's-wear line and Wintour decided in her brisk way that she liked the clothes, and him. Kors hit the rocks in the mid-'90s, filing for bankruptcy in 1993, but Wintour talked him up tirelessly.
In 2002, Silas Chou and Lawrence Stroll were looking for fashion's next big brand. The two partners had made out handsomely buying Tommy Hilfiger in 1989 and taking it public in 1992. Wintour recommended Kors. 'When I met Michael, Anna had seen his talent 20 years before,' Chou says. 'We talked constantly and when the time arrived, her opinions about him were very important.' Chou and Stroll bought a controlling stake in Kors in 2003 through their Sportswear Holdings for around $100 million. Retail sales for the Kors brand are now in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
'I came to realize that she's really the McKinsey of fashion,' says a former colleague who attended several corporate matchmaking sessions with her. Wintour is more modest: 'We can suggest, but in the end, everybody makes up their own minds.'
One of the people Wintour counsels regularly is Bernard Arnault, whose LVMH luxury conglomerate owns Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and Fendi, among others. In 1993, Wintour and Vogue contributing editor André Leon Talley put a down-and-out designer named John Galliano together with financial backers John Bult and Mark Rice, which relaunched Galliano's flagging career. She later proposed him to Arnault, who hired him first for Givenchy and then for Christian Dior (which is controlled by Arnault's holding company). In 1997, Wintour pushed Marc Jacobs to Arnault for Louis Vuitton. 'She pointed us towards unexpected choices,' Arnault says. 'I speak very openly to her, and this was quite audacious—it was not about picking the big names of the moment. It took her to see that there was a stylistic closeness between John and Dior. She was the discoverer.'
It looks like Galliano needs Wintour more than ever now: In late February, the designer was abruptly suspended from Dior after a Parisian couple accused him of yelling unprovoked anti-Semitic barbs at them in a Paris bistro. When a video clip recorded last October surfaced soon after showing a visibly drunk Galliano at a bar making similar racist remarks, he was fired. Of his downfall, Wintour says, 'This is all so tragic.'
Last July, Wintour met with then French Minister of Industry Christian Estrosi. She suggested politely that the French government do more to support young French designers financially. Her own CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which raises millions for young American designers, has become something of a model in Europe. She got the idea in 2001, when the World Trade Center disaster disrupted New York's fashion week, leaving young designers financially stranded. The fund now has a $10 million endowment, and has launched similiar programs in Milan and London.
'She tackles things that are really much bigger than what any other editors take on,' says François-Henri Pinault, head of luxury-goods giant PPR. Pinault is currently discussing how to finance support for young designers with Estrosi. Not that Wintour came right out and asked him to. 'She's much more subtle than that,' he says.
When I met Wintour in her big, artfully tidy office at Vogue, she had been up since 5 a.m.—her normal waking hour. On most days she goes off to play tennis at 6, but lately she's been nursing a sore elbow and can't play. Which didn't mean no tennis. She was watching her friend Roger Federer play a tough five-set match against Gilles Simon at the Australian Open. Simon had beaten Federer twice before, and Wintour was uneasy. 'At least he's through,' she said afterward, visibly relieved.
Wintour first sought out Federer at the 2002 U.S. Open, before he won his first Grand Slam. He was a bit taken aback. 'I didn't really know who she was,' Federer says. She's since become a trusted adviser and a close friend, not only to him but also to his wife, Mirka, and agent, Tony Godsick. 'I bounce all kinds of ideas off her—what to wear on and off the court, photo shoots, sponsors, everything,' he says. For her part, Wintour has never asked him for anything, but, he says, 'That day will come, and when it does, I'll be very happy to work with her.'
The unusual part, say her intimates, is that there's never a direct quid pro quo. On the other hand, if Wintour does ask for something, there aren't two possible answers. 'If I get a request for something I don't want to do,' says Marc Jacobs, 'first I get an email, then a phone call from someone at Vogue, and now I don't even bother to say no—I know the next call is from her.'
Jacobs describes a den-motherly attitude that those who see only her hard surface sheen don't suspect she has. 'She gets such a bad rap. She stands by the people she believes in, and if you're not one of those people, perhaps you take a different view.' Wintour has supported Jacobs since her earliest days at Vogue, when, he says, 'everybody was trashing me. It goes way beyond an editor-fashion-designer relationship.' Which is how Jacobs found himself sitting next to Wintour on the Jimmy Fallon show, speaking out about Fashion's Night Out.
If there's a risk to having a rat pack, even a large and glamorous one, it's the possibility that it could make Vogue's pages seem overly clubby. Wintour reflects a minute when I ask her about this, and puts it another way. 'I try to remain open to new people, but obviously there's a stronger element of trust with people you've known for a long time,' she says. 'I think we have a Vogue vocabulary, and there are certain people we like to have as the backbone of the magazine—Vogue's signposts. We try very hard to integrate the familiar signatures with people we feel are new and up-and-coming, but I would rather err on the side of being a little more familiar than being too . . . What's the right word? . . . Edgy.'
With all of her globe-trotting, matchmaking and event-planning, it's easy to forget that Wintour's bread and butter is running a magazine. Like the rest of the magazine industry, Vogue was badly hurt by the economic crash. Revenue fell 5.55 percent in 2008, then a further 27 percent in 2009 to $289 million, but now it appears to have rebounded. Revenue for 2010 was up 18 percent to $342 million, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau—although it remains below the 2007 peak of $419 million—and it's up almost 11 percent for the first quarter of this year, behind Elle's 14.3 percent and abreast of InStyle's 10.9 percent. Vogue is solidly beating both in total number of ad pages.
Wintour launched the redesigned Vogue.com last September, on the eve of New York Fashion Week. After starting slowly with 545,000 unique visitors, the site registered 896,000 in January. That's still fewer than the 2.4 million who visited Style.com, the omnibus Condé Nast site that used to host Vogue, but it's a healthy upswing, even more so when you consider Style.com is 10 years old.
Wintour came late to the Internet, concedes her boss, S.I. Newhouse. 'She started the site reluctantly because she believes that the expression of Vogue's effectiveness is print,' he says. 'But, typically, once she did it, she did it right.' Can Wintour rule the digital fashion world as resolutely as she has ruled print? 'It's too early to say,' hedges Newhouse, 'but take Fashion's Night Out as one example: She clearly has an ability to impose her will.'
The brand, of course, is what Newhouse cares most about. 'There can be no greater role than being editor of Vogue,' says Newhouse, who confirms that Vogue is Condé Nast's most profitable publication. As far as the occasional rumors about a successor for Wintour, who is 61, Newhouse has one word: 'Never. I hope she's here 10 years from now, 20 years from now.'
You might ask, with all her talent-grooming outside Vogue, has Wintour groomed anyone to take over whenever she—or, more to the point, S.I. Newhouse—chooses to pass on her mantle? 'Why would she?' answers a former colleague, who points out that at most magazines the editorial mantle doesn't get passed dynastically. And regime change is rarely gentle. Grace Mirabella didn't groom Wintour, and Diana Vreeland didn't groom Mirabella. More often than not, a new editor means a new editorial vision, usually at the behest of the boss. As long as Wintour's vision defines Vogue, no one is likely to do Wintour better than Wintour herself.
But last year, the successor rumors grew feverish. Waiting in the wings, so it went, was Carine Roitfeld, the provocative editor of French Vogue known around Paris as 'Iggy Pop.' She happens to look a little like the goggle-eyed rocker and she shares with Pop a sense of erotic bravura that gave French Vogue a reputation for daring. Roitfeld gets the credit, if that's the word, for launching a trend known as 'porno chic,' which gave French Vogue an R-rated eclat in the fashion world. U.S. Vogue, it was said dismissively, was overly preoccupied with things people might buy.
Roitfeld resigned in December, reportedly pushed toward the door for having consulting relationships with labels like Balenciaga that were seen as coexisting uneasily with her editorial duties. (Roitfeld denies ever having consulted and having been asked to resign.) Inside French Vogue, the idea that Roitfeld threatened Wintour was never taken seriously. 'It was all bulls—,' says one French Vogue executive. 'The only thing Roitfeld cared about was creativity, and Wintour is about business. Wintour gives the 'la' to all the other editors'—a French expression rooted in the way orchestras tune their instruments that means she both sets the tone and serves as inspiration.
Not everyone applauds Wintour's business sense and wider ambitions. There are those who mourn the passing of fashion in its narrower, Dovima-centric sense, and who see Wintour's broader sensibility as a coarsening of fashion's most exquisite self. In a recent New York Times article on Roitfeld's departure, the fashion photographer Inez van Lamsweerde said she hoped French Vogue didn't start to look more like, well, American Vogue. 'Do we really need another magazine about the latest architectural feat, the latest book? To me, what's needed is a real fashion magazine with the best taste and incredible photography,' she said. This kind of thing has been heard before. Back in the '90s, designer Geoffrey Beene famously accused Wintour of appealing to the lowest common denominator. 'As an editor, she has turned class into mass, taste into waste. Is she not a trend herself?' sniped Beene, who stopped inviting Wintour to his shows.
Even after the departure of Roitfeld, rumors still adore Wintour. The latest one is that she is interested in leaving Vogue and fashion for a job in Washington as an ambassador. This speculation has fed on Wintour's enthusiastic fund-raising activities for Barack Obama and her open admiration for the First Lady—Michelle Obama is one of the first names Wintour mentions when asked whom she most looks up to.
Before the presidential election in 2008, she co-hosted a fund-raising dinner with Calvin Klein and André Leon Talley at Klein's home. 'I spent time on the aesthetics, and Anna did the phone calls and was really responsible for the funds,' Klein recalls. 'She was a powerhouse, this tiny, beautiful woman who you think just lives and dies for fashion.' Shortly after, Annie Leibovitz photographed Michelle Obama for a spread that ran in the January 2009 issue. She also appeared on Vogue's March 2009 cover, along with an exclusive interview with the First Lady.
Last July, Wintour hosted a $30,000-a-head Obama fund-raiser at her townhouse in Greenwich Village. In attendance were key members of her network, including Harvey Weinstein and his wife, Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman; Andrew Rosen, founder of sportswear manufacturer Theory (he contributed heavily to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and made the T-shirts for Fashion's Night Out); Gap designer Patrick Robinson (who co-chaired the 2010 Costume Institute gala with Oprah Winfrey and Wintour); old chum and CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg; and art dealer Larry Gagosian. According to Women's Wear Daily, the dinner raised as much as $1.5 million.
Wintour flatly denies she's angling for some kind of government job. For her, Vogue has no limitations. 'With all the new media outlets out there, with all the noise, a voice of authority and calm like Vogue becomes more important than ever. The more eyes on fashion, the more opinions about fashion, the more exploration of fashion around the world, the better it is for Vogue. Vogue is like Nike or Coca-Cola—this huge global brand. I want to enhance it, I want to protect it, and I want it to be part of the conversation.'
JOSHUA LEVINE
Wintour turns that iconography inside out in Vogue's April issue. Amidst the magazine's lissome models is a photo spread featuring Amar'e Stoudemire, the 6-foot-10-inch, 240-pound basketball forward, in his New York Knicks uniform. An elephant among Dovimas.
Stoudemire isn't the first pick in Wintour's basketball draft—she put LeBron James on the cover a few years back—but she's been courting him for a while now. In September, she invited him to join her at the runway show before last September's Fashion's Night Out and in February she brought him to the Tommy Hilfiger show. 'Amar'e looked wonderfully dapper when he turned up,' Wintour says. 'I can think of very few men who could pull off a collegiate cardigan, bow tie and Nike high-tops. I asked him what he thought one of the best looks was, and he indicated a camel cape. And you know, he was right.'
'There are people who are like beacons, and I'm in the fortunate position that I can meet such people,' she says. It's hard to imagine Wintour hanging around with these people just because, well, she likes them. 'To be in Vogue means something,' she continues, matter-of-factly. 'Not all of them become friends, but it's part of my job to get to know these people and try to understand who they are, what they are and what future they have. I won't pretend that I'm sitting here with a spreadsheet . . . 'Now it's time to reach out to LeBron James.' It's instinctive.' That's how Wintour works—intuitively, obliquely and patiently. 'Her genius,' says the designer Marc Jacobs, 'is picking people very astutely, whether in politics, movies, sports or fashion.'
She's been editor of the American edition of Vogue since 1988, and by now it has become commonplace to call her the most powerful woman in fashion. But her influence is much broader than it appears in her fun-house-mirror caricature: a brittle despot in round Chanel sunglasses who rules the world around her through impeccable taste, terror and sarcasm. It is hidden within an intricate web of powerful friends and allies, many of whom she's worked with for decades. That web spans the U.S., out to Hollywood, down to Washington, and across both oceans. Imperious as she may appear, she's really more impresario than empress.
Her inner circle is tight-knit, their devotion cemented by an almost canine sense of loyalty on Wintour's part. 'I'm a streak player, but Anna's there, good or bad,' says Harvey Weinstein, co-chair of the Weinstein Company, who goes back some 15 years with Wintour. 'When I wasn't doing so well, Anna would throw a party and put me next to Bernard Arnault.' Out of that came several business deals, says Weinstein (he declines to be more specific). Weinstein returned the favor by stepping in to help Wintour produce a Bruce Springsteen/Billy Joel benefit concert for then-Senator Barack Obama before the 2008 election.
Australian director Baz Luhrmann met Wintour when he sent her a half-finished reel of his movie 'Moulin Rouge!' after it was beset by toxic prerelease buzz. Wintour threw her support behind it, putting Nicole Kidman on the cover in a gown from the film and organizing a celebrity auction around it with allies like Weinstein and Donald Trump. 'Those people helped me see 'Moulin Rouge!' through its birth pangs,' Luhrmann says. The two have been close friends since. 'I always talk to Anna about what I'm up to,' he says, referring to plans for his next film, an adaptation of 'The Great Gatsby,' 'and I always listen to what she has to say.'
Anna's army gives her a reach that far exceeds her grasp as a magazine editor, not to mention a deceptively potent economic punch. In the past two years, it's become clearer just how wide-ranging her clout really is. In early 2009, with New York's $10 billion fashion business reeling, Wintour took a ride to see New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She proposed a one-shot, late-night shopping party, inspired by Paris's 'nuits blanches,' the city's round-the-clock cultural festivals. Bloomberg signed on, after insisting that all five boroughs be invited to the party. 'Even a guy like me, who can barely match my tie to my shirt, knows that fashion means dollars to New York City. Besides, behind all Anna's grace and poise is some pretty tough resolve. She's not a person you want to say no to.'
The idea wasn't universally popular at first. The city was shell-shocked. Retail therapy had suddenly become dysfunctional behavior, and New York was in the chilly grip of that least American of virtues, thrift. Early on, Wintour approached Terry Lundgren, chairman of Macy's Inc., which owns both Macy's and Bloomingdale's, for support. 'I was hesitant, given the mood people were in,' Lundgren says. 'I didn't know if it would work.'
One former colleague recalls Wintour deploying her celebrity shock troops when some stores balked at joining up. 'She's calling it in from command central—'I'll get you Sienna Miller at the store, I'll send you Justin Timberlake!' ' (Timberlake and Miller are among Wintour's most zealous Hollywood allies. 'She understands fashion is a frame of mind, not just the clothes,' Timberlake says. 'She's figured out that all these small moving parts come into play to make a bigger picture.')
Fashion's Night Out was a Mardi Gras moment in the middle of Lent. Overall foot traffic in New York City stores increased almost 50 percent, according to the research firm ShopperTrak. While other post-event reports suggested there was more ogling than spending, the overall verdict was resoundingly favorable. 'Maybe you can't really put a figure on Wintour's economic impact, but it's a very big number,' Lundgren says, adding that Macy's sales, which had been down 4 to 5 percent, rose into 'double digits' the weekend after FNO. 'It was the first shot in the arm we had seen that year.'
The following year, Wintour upped the ante. She convened an extraordinary meeting of 30 international Vogue editors and publishers in Paris, to discuss further global initiatives. 'It was the first time anybody had gotten them all together,' says S.I. Newhouse, chairman of Advance Publications, which owns Vogue parent Condé Nast. 'She didn't need my authority to do it—she has a remarkable ability to impose her will. If I had had reservations, she probably would have gone ahead anyway.'
To kick off the festivities, Wintour organized New York's largest public fashion show in the plaza at Lincoln Center, selling 1,500 tickets at $25 and higher. The show conscripted 125 of the world's top models, broadcast live on the Web and later on CBS. Fashion's Night Out 2010 clocked in with more than 1,000 New York stores, over 100 American cities and 16 countries around the world. Istanbul, for example, logged clothing sales of $2 million in three hours. Rest assured, there will be an encore in 2011.
Wintour's glittery coalition of the willing will be on full display next month at her benefit gala for the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute. The guest list includes Paul McCartney, Jeff Koons, Alicia Keys and Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of consumer products. Last year, Bloomberg, Bono, Barry Diller, Larry Gagosian and Tommy Mottola all dropped in from their respective planets.
When Wintour took over as co-chair of the gala in 1995, it was an in-grown Park Avenue cluster buss that generated around $900,000 a year in donations. The Met has been throwing some kind of Costume Institute benefit since 1948, when matrons paid $50 to wear some of the Costume Institute's gowns at a midnight supper in December. Diana Vreeland and Pat Buckley, formidable doyennes in their own right, took their turns co-chairing it. Wintour corralled the biggest names from Hollywood, television and the Internet, and turned the gala into New York's star-spangled air kiss to the world. 'It was much more fashion industry before,' Wintour says. 'When I became involved, I started to invite the Nicole Kidmans and the Cate Blanchetts, and then I tried to bring in the worlds of politics, literature, painting, music, so it's not just about fashion. It's like producing a show.'
For the sometimes fussy Met, this was a new way of looking at things. Last year, for instance, Wintour had a 30-foot hot-air balloon trucked in from South Dakota and floated it above the museum's Engelhard Court. 'When we first saw it, we go, 'Never! We can't have gas in the museum!' ' says Met president Emily Rafferty. 'Anna's changed our attitude—she's brought us to new levels of thinking of what we can do, but without ever losing sight that we're working in a museum context here.'
Prices for a ticket will run up to $25,000, and $250,000 for a table. Last year, the gala brought in almost $9 million. In the realm of New York charity benefits, only the Robin Hood Foundation gala with its hedge-fund-heavy guest list is said to raise more. In all, Rafferty credits Wintour with raising $75 million for the museum's Costume Institute since she arrived—$55 million through the benefit gala and $20 million through corporate sponsorships for exhibitions. 'That's an awful lot of money,' Rafferty says. The money will help the Costume Institute undertake a major renovation, beginning in 2012. For her labors, Wintour has been named an honorary trustee of the museum.
Many people think they already know Anna Wintour. She's the perfectly coiffed monstre sacré of the fashion world. She has been saddled over the years with various nicknames, many turning on some form of the word 'cold.' She does not go out of her way to dispel them. You can see it in the 2009 documentary 'The September Issue,' as Wintour impassively allows Grace Coddington, the Vogue creative director with her heart on her sleeve, to hijack the audience's affection. 'Anna doesn't play against anyone's expectations of her,' a former colleague says.
Instead, Wintour has an arid sense of humor about her reputation. At a screening of 'The Devil Wears Prada,' based on a roman à clef by a former Wintour assistant, she wore Prada. During a trip to China last fall, she was asked during a press conference whether she was really like that. 'It's true, of course, that I beat all my assistants, lock them in a cupboard and don't pay them,' she deadpanned. 'She's got an eye-rolling way of laughing at the circus, even while she takes it deadly seriously,' says Luhrmann. Wintour herself puts it more simply: 'I care deeply about my friends and my family and they know it, but work is work.'
Wintour had a fixation with fashion from a very young age. Her father was an Englishman named Charles Wintour who edited London's Evening Standard newspaper and had a reputation for aloofness. Her mother was an American named Eleanor Baker, whom everyone called Nonie. In 1967, 17-year-old Anna dropped out of school to join London's wild fashion dance.
Since then she has climbed from masthead to masthead at fashion magazines in England and here, never losing sight of the only fashionable masthead really worth climbing. The story has passed into legend of Wintour's first interview at Vogue in 1982. Grace Mirabella, then Vogue's editor, asked Wintour what job she would like if she came to the magazine. 'Your job,' Wintour is said to have replied without blinking. Mirabella circled the wagons, but six years later, Wintour had penetrated and Mirabella was out. (Mirabella remained bitter about it.)
Wintour realized long before most that fashion was about to burst its tight seams and join the broader culture. When she put Kim Basinger on Vogue's May 1991 cover, fashion was still living in the rarefied fantasy of Dovima. In the main, Hollywood stars were no more icons of style than they were models of personal probity or fonts of wisdom. Wintour changed all that with a series of celebrity covers that put Holly wood on notice that it had better get serious about what it wore—Winona Ryder and Sharon Stone in 1993, Julia Roberts in 1994, Demi Moore in 1995, leading up to the celebrity explosion of 1998, when Sandra Bullock, Claire Danes, Renée Zellweger (whose image Wintour managed closely), Elizabeth Hurley and the notorious Spice Girls took turns on Vogue's cover (Wintour concedes she might have pushed the point there: 'I'm not terribly proud of putting the Spice Girls on the cover,' she says). That was also the year Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton got covers, signaling Vogue's embrace of the wider world. Occasionally, the wider world doesn't hug back. Wintour's 2008 LeBron James cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz to evoke King Kong, was a big loser on the newsstand.
There's also the question of whether Vogue doesn't sometimes allow a fashionable tail to wag a questionable dog. The March issue included a soft-focus look at Syria's ruling al-Assad family. Yes, conceded writer Joan Juliet Buck, 'In Syria, power is hereditary,' and there are those 'souvenir Hezbollah ashtrays' scattered around. But president Bashar al-Assad's wife, Asma, is nonetheless 'glamorous, young and very chic.'
Still, Wintour called the tune correctly, even if she doesn't get every note right. 'Fashion has become as powerful as music was when I was growing up,' Luhrmann says. Was it Wintour or was it the world? 'That's a little chicken and egg, but she led the way and you have to give her the credit,' says a colleague.
Fashion may have overflowed its banks in the past decade, but the $350 billion industry itself remains compact enough for one person to dominate, that person being Wintour. She threw all of Italy into a tizzy last year when it was discovered she would spend only four days in Milan during February's fashion week. Emergency meetings were called, designers frantically demanded to reschedule their shows and every one scrambled to squeeze 88 runway shows into 70 hours to accommodate her abbreviated stay. In 2007, R. J. Cutler was shooting 'The September Issue' about putting together Vogue's biggest issue. A friend asked him what it was like watching Wintour work. 'Well,' he replied, 'you can make a film in Hollywood without Steven Spielberg's blessing, and you can publish software in Silicon Valley without Bill Gates's blessing, but it's pretty clear to me you can't succeed in the fashion industry without Anna Wintour's blessing.'
In fact, some of fashion's biggest names are where they are in large part thanks to Wintour. She has helped broker corporate marriages for some of fashion's biggest brands—Bottega Veneta at Gucci and Michael Kors at Sportswear Holdings. 'She does this very discreetly, but she's really a kind of consigliere to the entire fashion and retail industry,' says a former colleague who worked closely with her.
The Michael Kors story goes back to 1981, soon after Wintour joined New York magazine as fashion editor. Kors, a young designer, had just launched his first women's-wear line and Wintour decided in her brisk way that she liked the clothes, and him. Kors hit the rocks in the mid-'90s, filing for bankruptcy in 1993, but Wintour talked him up tirelessly.
In 2002, Silas Chou and Lawrence Stroll were looking for fashion's next big brand. The two partners had made out handsomely buying Tommy Hilfiger in 1989 and taking it public in 1992. Wintour recommended Kors. 'When I met Michael, Anna had seen his talent 20 years before,' Chou says. 'We talked constantly and when the time arrived, her opinions about him were very important.' Chou and Stroll bought a controlling stake in Kors in 2003 through their Sportswear Holdings for around $100 million. Retail sales for the Kors brand are now in the neighborhood of $1 billion.
'I came to realize that she's really the McKinsey of fashion,' says a former colleague who attended several corporate matchmaking sessions with her. Wintour is more modest: 'We can suggest, but in the end, everybody makes up their own minds.'
One of the people Wintour counsels regularly is Bernard Arnault, whose LVMH luxury conglomerate owns Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and Fendi, among others. In 1993, Wintour and Vogue contributing editor André Leon Talley put a down-and-out designer named John Galliano together with financial backers John Bult and Mark Rice, which relaunched Galliano's flagging career. She later proposed him to Arnault, who hired him first for Givenchy and then for Christian Dior (which is controlled by Arnault's holding company). In 1997, Wintour pushed Marc Jacobs to Arnault for Louis Vuitton. 'She pointed us towards unexpected choices,' Arnault says. 'I speak very openly to her, and this was quite audacious—it was not about picking the big names of the moment. It took her to see that there was a stylistic closeness between John and Dior. She was the discoverer.'
It looks like Galliano needs Wintour more than ever now: In late February, the designer was abruptly suspended from Dior after a Parisian couple accused him of yelling unprovoked anti-Semitic barbs at them in a Paris bistro. When a video clip recorded last October surfaced soon after showing a visibly drunk Galliano at a bar making similar racist remarks, he was fired. Of his downfall, Wintour says, 'This is all so tragic.'
Last July, Wintour met with then French Minister of Industry Christian Estrosi. She suggested politely that the French government do more to support young French designers financially. Her own CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which raises millions for young American designers, has become something of a model in Europe. She got the idea in 2001, when the World Trade Center disaster disrupted New York's fashion week, leaving young designers financially stranded. The fund now has a $10 million endowment, and has launched similiar programs in Milan and London.
'She tackles things that are really much bigger than what any other editors take on,' says François-Henri Pinault, head of luxury-goods giant PPR. Pinault is currently discussing how to finance support for young designers with Estrosi. Not that Wintour came right out and asked him to. 'She's much more subtle than that,' he says.
When I met Wintour in her big, artfully tidy office at Vogue, she had been up since 5 a.m.—her normal waking hour. On most days she goes off to play tennis at 6, but lately she's been nursing a sore elbow and can't play. Which didn't mean no tennis. She was watching her friend Roger Federer play a tough five-set match against Gilles Simon at the Australian Open. Simon had beaten Federer twice before, and Wintour was uneasy. 'At least he's through,' she said afterward, visibly relieved.
Wintour first sought out Federer at the 2002 U.S. Open, before he won his first Grand Slam. He was a bit taken aback. 'I didn't really know who she was,' Federer says. She's since become a trusted adviser and a close friend, not only to him but also to his wife, Mirka, and agent, Tony Godsick. 'I bounce all kinds of ideas off her—what to wear on and off the court, photo shoots, sponsors, everything,' he says. For her part, Wintour has never asked him for anything, but, he says, 'That day will come, and when it does, I'll be very happy to work with her.'
The unusual part, say her intimates, is that there's never a direct quid pro quo. On the other hand, if Wintour does ask for something, there aren't two possible answers. 'If I get a request for something I don't want to do,' says Marc Jacobs, 'first I get an email, then a phone call from someone at Vogue, and now I don't even bother to say no—I know the next call is from her.'
Jacobs describes a den-motherly attitude that those who see only her hard surface sheen don't suspect she has. 'She gets such a bad rap. She stands by the people she believes in, and if you're not one of those people, perhaps you take a different view.' Wintour has supported Jacobs since her earliest days at Vogue, when, he says, 'everybody was trashing me. It goes way beyond an editor-fashion-designer relationship.' Which is how Jacobs found himself sitting next to Wintour on the Jimmy Fallon show, speaking out about Fashion's Night Out.
If there's a risk to having a rat pack, even a large and glamorous one, it's the possibility that it could make Vogue's pages seem overly clubby. Wintour reflects a minute when I ask her about this, and puts it another way. 'I try to remain open to new people, but obviously there's a stronger element of trust with people you've known for a long time,' she says. 'I think we have a Vogue vocabulary, and there are certain people we like to have as the backbone of the magazine—Vogue's signposts. We try very hard to integrate the familiar signatures with people we feel are new and up-and-coming, but I would rather err on the side of being a little more familiar than being too . . . What's the right word? . . . Edgy.'
With all of her globe-trotting, matchmaking and event-planning, it's easy to forget that Wintour's bread and butter is running a magazine. Like the rest of the magazine industry, Vogue was badly hurt by the economic crash. Revenue fell 5.55 percent in 2008, then a further 27 percent in 2009 to $289 million, but now it appears to have rebounded. Revenue for 2010 was up 18 percent to $342 million, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau—although it remains below the 2007 peak of $419 million—and it's up almost 11 percent for the first quarter of this year, behind Elle's 14.3 percent and abreast of InStyle's 10.9 percent. Vogue is solidly beating both in total number of ad pages.
Wintour launched the redesigned Vogue.com last September, on the eve of New York Fashion Week. After starting slowly with 545,000 unique visitors, the site registered 896,000 in January. That's still fewer than the 2.4 million who visited Style.com, the omnibus Condé Nast site that used to host Vogue, but it's a healthy upswing, even more so when you consider Style.com is 10 years old.
Wintour came late to the Internet, concedes her boss, S.I. Newhouse. 'She started the site reluctantly because she believes that the expression of Vogue's effectiveness is print,' he says. 'But, typically, once she did it, she did it right.' Can Wintour rule the digital fashion world as resolutely as she has ruled print? 'It's too early to say,' hedges Newhouse, 'but take Fashion's Night Out as one example: She clearly has an ability to impose her will.'
The brand, of course, is what Newhouse cares most about. 'There can be no greater role than being editor of Vogue,' says Newhouse, who confirms that Vogue is Condé Nast's most profitable publication. As far as the occasional rumors about a successor for Wintour, who is 61, Newhouse has one word: 'Never. I hope she's here 10 years from now, 20 years from now.'
You might ask, with all her talent-grooming outside Vogue, has Wintour groomed anyone to take over whenever she—or, more to the point, S.I. Newhouse—chooses to pass on her mantle? 'Why would she?' answers a former colleague, who points out that at most magazines the editorial mantle doesn't get passed dynastically. And regime change is rarely gentle. Grace Mirabella didn't groom Wintour, and Diana Vreeland didn't groom Mirabella. More often than not, a new editor means a new editorial vision, usually at the behest of the boss. As long as Wintour's vision defines Vogue, no one is likely to do Wintour better than Wintour herself.
But last year, the successor rumors grew feverish. Waiting in the wings, so it went, was Carine Roitfeld, the provocative editor of French Vogue known around Paris as 'Iggy Pop.' She happens to look a little like the goggle-eyed rocker and she shares with Pop a sense of erotic bravura that gave French Vogue a reputation for daring. Roitfeld gets the credit, if that's the word, for launching a trend known as 'porno chic,' which gave French Vogue an R-rated eclat in the fashion world. U.S. Vogue, it was said dismissively, was overly preoccupied with things people might buy.
Roitfeld resigned in December, reportedly pushed toward the door for having consulting relationships with labels like Balenciaga that were seen as coexisting uneasily with her editorial duties. (Roitfeld denies ever having consulted and having been asked to resign.) Inside French Vogue, the idea that Roitfeld threatened Wintour was never taken seriously. 'It was all bulls—,' says one French Vogue executive. 'The only thing Roitfeld cared about was creativity, and Wintour is about business. Wintour gives the 'la' to all the other editors'—a French expression rooted in the way orchestras tune their instruments that means she both sets the tone and serves as inspiration.
Not everyone applauds Wintour's business sense and wider ambitions. There are those who mourn the passing of fashion in its narrower, Dovima-centric sense, and who see Wintour's broader sensibility as a coarsening of fashion's most exquisite self. In a recent New York Times article on Roitfeld's departure, the fashion photographer Inez van Lamsweerde said she hoped French Vogue didn't start to look more like, well, American Vogue. 'Do we really need another magazine about the latest architectural feat, the latest book? To me, what's needed is a real fashion magazine with the best taste and incredible photography,' she said. This kind of thing has been heard before. Back in the '90s, designer Geoffrey Beene famously accused Wintour of appealing to the lowest common denominator. 'As an editor, she has turned class into mass, taste into waste. Is she not a trend herself?' sniped Beene, who stopped inviting Wintour to his shows.
Even after the departure of Roitfeld, rumors still adore Wintour. The latest one is that she is interested in leaving Vogue and fashion for a job in Washington as an ambassador. This speculation has fed on Wintour's enthusiastic fund-raising activities for Barack Obama and her open admiration for the First Lady—Michelle Obama is one of the first names Wintour mentions when asked whom she most looks up to.
Before the presidential election in 2008, she co-hosted a fund-raising dinner with Calvin Klein and André Leon Talley at Klein's home. 'I spent time on the aesthetics, and Anna did the phone calls and was really responsible for the funds,' Klein recalls. 'She was a powerhouse, this tiny, beautiful woman who you think just lives and dies for fashion.' Shortly after, Annie Leibovitz photographed Michelle Obama for a spread that ran in the January 2009 issue. She also appeared on Vogue's March 2009 cover, along with an exclusive interview with the First Lady.
Last July, Wintour hosted a $30,000-a-head Obama fund-raiser at her townhouse in Greenwich Village. In attendance were key members of her network, including Harvey Weinstein and his wife, Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman; Andrew Rosen, founder of sportswear manufacturer Theory (he contributed heavily to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and made the T-shirts for Fashion's Night Out); Gap designer Patrick Robinson (who co-chaired the 2010 Costume Institute gala with Oprah Winfrey and Wintour); old chum and CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg; and art dealer Larry Gagosian. According to Women's Wear Daily, the dinner raised as much as $1.5 million.
Wintour flatly denies she's angling for some kind of government job. For her, Vogue has no limitations. 'With all the new media outlets out there, with all the noise, a voice of authority and calm like Vogue becomes more important than ever. The more eyes on fashion, the more opinions about fashion, the more exploration of fashion around the world, the better it is for Vogue. Vogue is like Nike or Coca-Cola—this huge global brand. I want to enhance it, I want to protect it, and I want it to be part of the conversation.'
JOSHUA LEVINE
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