It Came from My Instant Queue: The September Issue

As my girlfriend can easily attest, I know nothing about fashion. I couldn't tell you the difference between a Gucci or a Fendi. I sincerely have no understanding of what the term "couture" actually means. The only reason I know what a Louis Vitton anything is is because their logo is plastered all over every piece they make. The fashion world is an amusing enigma to me, best viewed from afar for purposes of mockery and reality television entertainment than anything I could ever ensconce myself within.

And yet, there is a fascination to the sort of elitist, dog-eat-dog nature of the fashion world. Every time I watch a show or a movie about fashion, I get the impression that everyone, from the designers, to the editors who cover them, and the models that showcase them, all want to kill each other dead. It's a remarkably cutthroat world, filled with bizarre personalities and intense egos.

One of the top egos of the industry is Vogue's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Whether you think you know Wintour or not, you absolutely do. Apart from nearly sole responsibility for the direction of the entire fashion world over the last couple of decades, she's also the source inspiration for Meryl Streep's belittling, egomaniacal fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada. The original novel was written by a former assistant of Wintour's (who Wintour has alternately praised for helping raise awareness of the fashion world, and made catty comments about in various interviews), and though Streep made some strides to make the character more "sympathetic" in the film, Wintour is undeniably the inspirado for the film's mean-spirited fashonista.

Considering the nightmare-inducing work environment that character fostered, and my own fascination with the weirdos of the fashion world, I decided to celebrate this week's theme of "horrible cinematic jobs and bosses" by diving into the documentary The September Issue, a film that explores the hectic months leading up to Vogue's premiere yearly issue, and the internal machinations of Vogue's editorial process as Wintour and her various associates assemble what the fashion trends of the fall will encompass. More importantly, the movie takes an intriguing glance inward toward Wintour's own motivations, both from testimonials by her co-workers, and even a few personal interviews with the notoriously icy editor. The result is a fast-paced documentary that's mostly lightweight and amusing, but has a few moments of poignancy as well.

As with all "____ in the life of" documentaries, The September Issue begins in the relatively early stages of the magazine's assemblage, with only vague edicts of this being the "biggest issue ever" (quite literally, in terms of page count) and some crude notions of shoot concepts being bandied about. Over time, the magazine begins to take shape, and the stress mounts and mounts all the way up to mere days prior to the issue's closing, where some elements are, *gasp*, not ready yet!

The thing about The September Issue is that, as some kind of editorial drama, it's mostly a failure. No matter how much drama and stress the filmmakers try to yank out of concepts like entire sections being re-shot, great photos being cut for seemingly capricious reasoning, and issues with the cover shoot featuring Sienna Miller not offering up enough quality cover photos, none of it really plays out accordingly to the viewer. There seems to be little doubt that, yes, a magazine will ship, and it will feature beautiful photographs of clothes and attractive, skinny women. It will probably also have a lot of pages. We know this, and thus, we are unmoved when "tragedy" seems to strike from time to time.

Rather, the draw of this movie is simply watching these people work. Wintour has collected a unique team of personalities, many of which actually upstage Wintour herself throughout the film. Chief among them are Grace Coddington, a former model and current creative director at Vogue, and Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley. Talley is perhaps only noteworthy for his antics and personality; resembling a cross between Bill Nunn and Hollywood Montrose, Talley is all flair and flailing, especially in an out-of-nowhere tennis lesson sequence that seems like something straight out of a bad comedy. '

More interesting is Coddington, who is portrayed as the sole person in the movie who will actively challenge Wintour's authority. When Wintour goes on a chopping spree, cutting down multiple wardrobe choices and many different photos from Coddington's shoots, she doesn't just stand there and take it like most. She actively complains. She even dares to lament some of Wintour's genius thinking in regards to the direction of the fashion industry, including her decision to be the first fashion magazine to, again, *gasp*, feature a celebrity on the cover of the September issue. Like everyone else, she acknowledges that Wintour saw where fashion was heading long before it got there, but unlike everyone else, she doesn't necessarily seem to think that being right necessarily translates into a benefit to the fashion world.

Why is Coddington the only one to stand up to Wintour? Let's just say the term "Nuclear Wintour" wasn't coined for no reason. Though she rarely shows it on camera, most everyone around her seems perpetually afraid of some kind of massive blow-up if things aren't exactly to her liking. She's undoubtedly opinionated, and her opinions undoubtedly carry weight; so much weight, in fact, that she's been known to make or break major designers. One beneficiary of her generosity, a young designer known as Thakoon, still seems nervous and sweaty even as Wintour heaps praise on his talents. Even huge names like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar De la Renta, and Vera Wang have Wintour personally inspect their forthcoming lineups, long before the fall issue is even in its shooting stage.

All that knee-quaking at Wintour's slight, unassuming frame is kind of bizarre at the outset of the film. She seems less imposing than sort of impishly adorable. Her bob haircut, perpetually bemused facial expression and crossed arms all seem to signal a woman of cutesy shyness. Then she opens her mouth, and you get an inkling of where that terror comes from. Again, Wintour seems measured on camera, clearly unwilling to look too mean in a movie about her and her magazine, but she still manages to let snipey comments spew forth with relative frequency.

What few moments of actual human emotion she does let slip mostly pertain to her family. Her father, a British journalist once dubbed "Chilly Charlie" by the UK press for his "inscrutable" demeanor, all but pre-ordained Wintour into the fashion world, and it's clear many of her personality traits are affected from her father. She speaks with some sadness when addressing her siblings, who view her work as "amusing," suggesting little interest in her chosen career. Even her own teenage daughter, who one might assume would be the heiress-apparent to the Vogue throne, seems genuinely disinterested in the fashion world, calling it "weird," among other things. She expresses tremendous respect for her mother's work, but signals an interest in a law career, as opposed to anything in fashion.

In these rare moments of vulnerability, The September Issue offers a unique look into the mind of a woman whose power over an entire industry is almost alarming in its scope. And while those looks might, in some way, have been calculated tips of the hat by the seemingly always-in-control Wintour, they are nonetheless fascinating. The September issue of Vogue may itself just be a really thick catalog of beautiful things, but the people and politics behind it are far more intriguing than that. You don't need to love fashion to enjoy this documentary, just an interest in people, power, and the people who willingly give them that power.