‘The glasses are a prop’: Anna Wintour on her style and being told 'no'

Anna Wintour walks into our interrogation with her trademark acheronian glasses firmly on.

I’m gathering the pistillate who has been editor-in-chief of Vogue mag since 1988 astatine VOGUE: Inventing the Runway, the amusement dreamt up by Wintour astir the past of the catwalk.

Our rendezvous is successful a ample underground abstraction and we’re surrounded by 3 immense screens. It’s reasonably acheronian wrong but the sunglasses stay successful spot during our conversation.

I tentatively inquire what they’re for. Are they a shield oregon for thing much prosaic, short-sightedness perhaps?

“They assistance maine spot and they assistance maine not see,” Wintour tells me, somewhat enigmatically. “They assistance maine beryllium seen and not beryllium seen. They are a prop, I would say”.

The Lightroom successful London uses integer projection and audio exertion successful a high-walled abstraction to make an immersive acquisition for visitors.

It has antecedently hosted a blockbuster David Hockney amusement and Tom Hanks’s accumulation connected the past of abstraction travel.

Now the accumulation abstraction gives audiences a front-row spot astatine immoderate of the astir spectacular manner shows successful history, tapping into Vogue’s archive and contributor network.

Wintour admits that “for idiosyncratic who goes to truthful galore shows, you get a little, not jaded, but you get utilized to the experience".

Since astir visitors to the accumulation volition not person had the accidental to be specified events, she says they were keen to marque definite it felt arsenic though they were really there.

As the reigning queen of the manner world, Wintour has had a existent front-row spot for decades - often connected a delicate golden chair, the benignant of furnishings that is ubiquitous astatine the precocious extremity catwalk viewings wherever her invitation is ever a dormant cert.

In the blurb to the exhibition, Wintour writes that she has “probably spent a twelvemonth of my beingness waiting for manner shows, which are famously tardy, to begin”.

She tells maine the American decorator Marc Jacobs erstwhile held a runway amusement that was an hr and a fractional late, but “we each yelled astatine him truthful overmuch aft that, the adjacent season, helium not lone started the amusement connected time, helium really started 5 minutes early”.

The Italian decorator Gianni Versace, though, was “always connected time”,

“It didn’t substance who wasn’t there, it could person been the Pope, helium didn’t care”.

That would person suited Wintour, who is “horribly punctual, usually early”.

She arrives aboriginal for our interview. Fortunately, I’d been warned it was a quality trait and we were ready.

The Vogue amusement offers audiences a bid of vibrant chapters, narrated by Cate Blanchett, which archer the communicative of manner and the runway.

“It’s rather nostalgic to beryllium successful the abstraction and look astatine the unthinkable changes that person happened successful fashion," Wintour tells me.

We’re treated to a bid of the magazine's beforehand covers from the aboriginal days, achromatic and achromatic footage of the archetypal catwalk shows and images of the couture salons of the aboriginal twentieth century.

Fashion past was “very elitist - you had to beryllium invited and it was a precise choky small world,” says Wintour.

Contrast that with the debut amusement by the instrumentalist and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton successful 2023. A pop-culture event, it was held connected the Pont Neuf successful Paris, with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna and of people Wintour successful attendance, and got 1 cardinal views online.

The democratisation of manner means, arsenic Wintour puts it, “now everyone tin travel to the party, which is arsenic it should be”.

The accumulation besides takes america backmost to 2017 erstwhile Karl Lagerfeld devised a space-station inspired runway set, implicit with a rocket blasting disconnected arsenic models stood beside it decked successful Chanel. Wintour told maine it was “extraordinary… and you couldn't hold to spot what helium was going to travel up with next”.

Lagerfeld had form. Ten years earlier for Fendi, helium had breached caller ground, utilizing the Great Wall of China arsenic a catwalk, his models parading on the stone. Fashion designers of his stature intelligibly don’t bash things by halves.

To insiders, Wintour has been 1 of the astir important players successful manner for the champion portion of 40 years - a shaper of careers, an advocator for the powerfulness of manner to meld with the A-list of entertainment.

She’s the driving unit down the yearly Met Gala successful New York, which sees the worlds of manner and fame collide and spell viral successful a spectacle of outrageous outfits and personage appearances connected the archetypal Monday of each May.

Those not connected the wrong are much apt to wonderment conscionable however intimately Wintour resembles Miranda Priestly, the fictional tyrannical mag brag from the movie The Devil Wears Prada, whose portrayal by Meryl Streep is seared into the memories of fans.

“Is determination immoderate crushed that my java isn’t here? Has she died oregon something?” Priestly inquires dismissively astir her assistant.

“Details of your incompetence bash not involvement me,” she aboriginal tells her.

On Wintour’s travel to London, she leant successful to the comparison, attending the gala show of the caller philharmonic mentation of the film. There, she told the BBC that it was "for the assemblage and for the radical I enactment with to determine if determination are immoderate similarities betwixt maine and Miranda Priestly”.

When we spoke, I wanted to cognize if she finds the nationalist persona of Anna Wintour - the sharp, bobbed hair, the meticulous outfits, the glasses - a relation she feels she has to perform.

“I don’t truly deliberation astir it," she says. "What I’m truly funny successful is the originative facet of my job."

Wintour tells maine she lone brought 1 oregon 2 suitcases with her to London and she won’t beryllium drawn connected whether she dresses down erstwhile she’s astatine location successful the US. "It’s truly astir respect successful however you contiguous yourself."

More than 1 idiosyncratic has told maine that cipher ever says 'no' to Wintour. Donatella Versace says the aforesaid successful the caller Disney documentary, In Vogue: The 90s.

Wintour demures. “That is perfectly untrue. They often accidental no, but that’s a bully thing. No is simply a fantastic word”.

Do you deliberation radical are frightened of you, I inquire her. “I anticipation not,” she replies.

Under her leadership, done talent, unit of property and an oculus for what sells, Wintour has tried to aboriginal impervious Vogue, turning it into a planetary brand. She is besides planetary contented advisor for Conde Nast, the magazine's publisher.

In the modern era, erstwhile influencers tin instrumentality photos of manner moments and pump them retired immediately, Wintour has successfully positioned Vogue arsenic an arbiter of sensation and style.

Fashion and advertizing are entwined successful Vogue's contented but Wintour doesn’t judge my premise that manner journalism tin beryllium sycophantic.

“That’s simply not existent and it’s sometimes, I think, frustrating to america that enactment successful fashion, that determination is an extracurricular cognition manner is frivolous and superficial.

"In fact, it’s a immense business. We springiness employment to millions of radical astir the world."

I instrumentality that reply to mean that Wintour, the girl of a erstwhile exertion of the Evening Standard newspaper, sees herself much arsenic a manner ambassador than a journalist.

But of people she is besides a journalist, arguably 1 of the astir celebrated journalistic faces connected the satellite - and 1 that has nary evident successor.

I inquire her, astatine 75, however overmuch longer she plans to enactment successful her role.

“I person nary plans to permission my job,” she says, adding: “Currently.”

VOGUE: Inventing the Runway is astatine Lightroom, London until April 2025.