Screenthemes

The September Issue

She can be found sitting front and centre next to the runway at major fashion shows. For such a diminutive woman, she has a surprisingly impressive, intimidating pose, hunched over, clad in large dark glasses and crowned with a thick thatch of hair styled into a round bob with a blunt fringe.

Her name is Anna Wintour, and, as the editor in chief of American Vogue magazine she is perhaps the most powerful woman in the fashion industry.

Well known for having championed the cause of young, up-and-coming designers, Wintour is well aware of the need for fashion journals to be innovative, in order to maintain a hold on their readership. If the readers were ever to pre-empt fashion trends, magazines such as Vogue would lose their power.

And boy, is she powerful. Notorious for her icy demeanour, she glares coldly as an array of employees pitch ideas at her, eager to please her, but, more often than not, left demoralised by their interaction with her. One has to wonder why they bother.

But that’s the inherent inconsistency with fashion. It’s all about being “in the know”, and yet slavish adherents to the dictates of the fashion cognoscenti, demonstrate an extreme need to belong and conform. Perhaps they’re not as cool as they would have us believe.

Nor is Anna Wintour quite the mighty monarch that she first appears to be. If you’re not part of her world – and most of us aren’t, and wouldn’t care to be – she really has little impact at all. In fact, as her daughter who appears in the documentary, The September Issue, points out, the fashion world is actually quite ridiculous. Yet, as we plainly see in the dazzling photos that are taken during the course of the film, the fashion industry is also responsible for creating great beauty.

Wintour is, in many respects, a study in contradictions: vilified for her revival of the use of fur, yet admired for her stance on social issues and for encouraging her peers to do likewise. Her interactive style is similarly intriguing. She can silence a room with a seering glance, yet she can smile and pat the arm of a man sitting next to her at a meeting, while making her point. In other words, there is strong element of artifice at work: power games with her employees and ingratiation towards her investors. When interviewed in the film, she seems quite genuine and likeable. To her credit, she shows no obvious signs of having tried to stall her own advancing age; her face, on those rare occasions we get to see it in its entirety, is full of character, and her eyes are the most beautiful shade of blue. She really does look quite striking.

There are hints in this riveting documentary, of a woman acting out the dynamics of her childhood relationship with her father: a distant, somewhat inscrutable individual. She also has an inclination towards inflating her own sense of importance in a family of serious journalists. Her siblings find her profession, to use her words, “amusing”. She certainly seems keen for her daughter, who, while filming this documentary hoped to become a lawyer, to follow in her footsteps.

However, there are people within the business, who are sincerely dedicated to beauty. Such is the fashion editor/stylist Grace Coddington, who is perhaps the most substantial character in this film. Having been a model in what seems like a previous life, Coddington now devises creative and visually stunning fashion shoots, and often has to fight for her material to be included in the magazine. We learn that Wintour is aware of her colleague’s talent, so is this merely a power game inflicted on Coddington, who seems genuinely artistically motivated?

In fashion circles, August occupies a significant place in the annual calendar, akin to religious festivals to some, the end of financial year to others. It heralds the release of the September Issue (hence the title of the film), and is eagerly awaited by the media, fashion fans, and, of course, advertisers who have invested in it. In this documentary, we get candid, behind-the-scenes access to the September Issue being shot and put together – and the disagreements that accompany the compilation of this much-awaited journal.

This is an interesting and, given some of the comments made by Wintour’s employees in the film – daring film. You certainly don’t need to be a fashionista to get a great deal out of The September Issue.