Holy cow, I just looked it up and Anna Wintour was named Editor-in-Chief of Vogue the year I was born. She’s been Vogue’s EIC for my entire life! So it’s a time of momentous change for Wintour (and me! just kidding) to be stepping down now and relinquishing the reins to Chloe Malle, who was a mere toddler at the time of Wintour’s ascension. She’ll still be Chief Content Officer for parent company Condé Nast, but it’s the end of an era. The timing is also fortuitous and/or unfortunate, depending on your point of view, given that this summer they finally filmed a long-awaited sequel to the 2006 hit The Devil Wears Prada. The movie — based on a book inspired by the author’s experience working as an assistant for Wintour — saw Meryl Streep deliciously play Miranda Priestly, the steely EIC of fictional Runway magazine, who audiences everywhere knew was a take on Wintour. Wintour herself has stayed largely mum on the portrayal, but not so much now! She just told David Remnick of The New Yorker that she thought the movie “was a fair shot.”
Based on the 2003 bestselling novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, who had previously worked as a personal assistant to Wintour at Vogue, the movie tells the story of an aspiring writer (Anne Hathaway) who finds a job at a top fashion magazine under the direction of a tough-as-nails editor.
Meryl Streep played Miranda Priestly, who is assumed to be based on Wintour. The character became shorthand for difficult-to-please bosses no matter the industry, and Streep earned one of her many Oscar nominations for her performance.
In the past, Wintour has seemed reticent to discuss it all. During a recent appearance on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast, however, the fashion powerhouse actually joked to the host David Remnick that she “went to the premiere wearing Prada, completely having no idea what the film was going to be about.”
“First of all it was Meryl Streep, which, fantastic,” Wintour said. “And then I went to see the film, and I found it highly enjoyable. It was very funny.”
And while she told Remnick, who is an editor at The New Yorker, that “the fashion industry were very sweetly concerned for me about the film, that it was going to paint me in some kind of difficult light.”
Wintour sounds like she both found it delightful and has made peace with it.
“In the end it had a lot of humor to it, it had a lot of wit, it had Meryl Streep,” Wintour said. “I mean, it was Emily Blunt [who played senior assistant Emily Charlton in the film]. They were all amazing. And in the end, I thought it was a fair shot.”
In 2009, she told David Letterman that the film was “fiction” and pointed out that “as my publisher says in the movie, I’m not always warm and cuddly.”
“What I liked about the movie is that it really showed all the hard work that goes into the making of the magazine,” she allowed at the time.
Ok, I’m definitely side-eyeing Wintour’s claim that she went to the premiere “completely having no idea what the film was going to be about.” If that’s really the case, I’d call it an instance where an assistant should’ve been fired! That being said, I think Wintour is striking the right tone here. She knows the rumors about her; in that Letterman clip from 2009 she lists off everything she’s been called over the years, from “Ice Queen” to “Dominatrix.” (Though she doesn’t issue any denials!) So here with Remnick, instead of making her response about her, she touts the comedy, acting goddess Meryl Streep, and she genuinely seems sweetly fond of Emily Blunt. Wintour had a similarly tactful response when Remnick asked her about AOC’s “Tax The Rich” dress at the 2021 Met Gala. Like I said, I think Wintour plays it the right way. Or who knows, maybe she’s loosened up in how she sees herself in the near 20 years since the movie came out.
One thing, though, about the Letterman interview: I watched the clip again and they don’t make it clear in the edit or caption, but the appearance is from August 2009, so I’m pretty sure the movie Wintour is referring to in the quotes excerpted above is The September Issue. That documentary was made by R.J. Cutler (he did last year’s Martha, does he have a type?) and came out in September 2009, tracking Wintour as she oversaw production of Vogue’s September 2007 issue. I think it’s an important distinction that she was praising a doc she was a participant in, as opposed to The Devil Wears Prada. Curiously, I remember watching The September Issue with my father and his visceral take on Wintour was that she was deeply insecure.
Photos credit: Caroline Torem-Craig/Avalon, Avalon.red, Jennifer Graylock-Graylock.com/Avalon, Cat Morley/Avalon
