Vogue boss Anna Wintour on her public persona and being informed ‘no’

Anna Wintour walks into our interview together with her trademark darkish glasses firmly on.

I’m assembly the girl who has been editor-in-chief of Vogue journal since 1988 at VOGUE: Inventing the Runway, the present dreamt up by Wintour concerning the historical past of the catwalk.

Our rendezvous is in a big underground area and we’re surrounded by three huge screens. It’s pretty darkish inside however the sun shades stay in place throughout our dialog.

I tentatively ask what they’re for. Are they a protect or for one thing extra prosaic, short-sightedness maybe?

“They assist me see they usually assist me not see,” Wintour tells me, considerably enigmatically. “They assist me be seen and never be seen. They’re a prop, I might say”.

The Lightroom in London makes use of digital projection and audio expertise in a high-walled area to generate an immersive expertise for guests.

It has beforehand hosted a blockbuster David Hockney present and Tom Hanks’s exhibition on the historical past of area journey.

Now the exhibition area provides audiences a front-row seat at a few of the most spectacular trend exhibits in historical past, tapping into Vogue’s archive and contributor community.

Wintour admits that “for somebody who goes to so many exhibits, you get somewhat, not jaded, however you get used to the expertise”.

Since most guests to the exhibition won’t have had the possibility to attend such occasions, she says they had been eager to verify it felt as if they had been really there.

Because the reigning queen of the style world, Wintour has had an actual front-row seat for many years – usually on a fragile gold chair, the type of furnishings that’s ubiquitous on the excessive finish catwalk viewings the place her invitation is at all times a lifeless cert.

Within the blurb to the exhibition, Wintour writes that she has “in all probability spent a 12 months of my life ready for trend exhibits, that are famously tardy, to start”.

She tells me the American designer Marc Jacobs as soon as held a runway present that was an hour and a half late, however “all of us yelled at him a lot after that, the subsequent season, he not solely began the present on time, he really began 5 minutes early”.

The Italian designer Gianni Versace, although, was “at all times on time”,

“It didn’t matter who wasn’t there, it might have been the Pope, he didn’t care”.

That will have suited Wintour, who’s “horribly punctual, normally early”.

She arrives early for our interview. Luckily, I’d been warned it was a personality trait and we had been prepared.

The Vogue present presents audiences a collection of vibrant chapters, narrated by Cate Blanchett, which inform the story of trend and the runway.

“It’s fairly nostalgic to sit down within the area and have a look at the unimaginable adjustments which have occurred in trend,” Wintour tells me.

We’re handled to a collection of the journal’s entrance covers from the early days, black and white footage of the primary catwalk exhibits and pictures of the couture salons of the early twentieth century.

Trend then was “very elitist – you needed to be invited and it was a really tight little world,” says Wintour.

Distinction that with the debut present by the musician and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton in 2023. A pop-culture occasion, it was held on the Pont Neuf in Paris, with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna and naturally Wintour in attendance, and received one billion views on-line.

The democratisation of trend means, as Wintour places it, “now everybody can come to the get together, which is appropriately”.

The exhibition additionally takes us again to 2017 when Karl Lagerfeld devised a space-station impressed runway set, full with a rocket blasting off as fashions stood beside it decked in Chanel. Wintour informed me it was “extraordinary… and also you could not wait to see what he was going to give you subsequent”.

Lagerfeld had type. Ten years earlier for Fendi, he had damaged new floor, utilizing the Nice Wall of China as a catwalk, his fashions parading alongside the stone. Trend designers of his stature clearly don’t do issues by halves.

To insiders, Wintour has been one of the crucial vital gamers in trend for the most effective a part of 40 years – a maker of careers, an advocate for the ability of trend to meld with the A-list of leisure.

She’s the driving drive behind the annual Met Gala in New York, which sees the worlds of trend and fame collide and go viral in a spectacle of outrageous outfits and celeb appearances on the primary Monday of each Might.

These not on the within usually tend to marvel simply how carefully Wintour resembles Miranda Priestly, the fictional tyrannical journal boss from the movie The Satan Wears Prada, whose portrayal by Meryl Streep is seared into the recollections of followers.

“Is there some purpose that my espresso isn’t right here? Has she died or one thing?” Priestly inquires dismissively about her assistant.

“Particulars of your incompetence don’t curiosity me,” she later tells her.

On Wintour’s journey to London, she leant in to the comparability, attending the gala efficiency of the brand new musical model of the movie. There, she informed the BBC that it was “for the viewers and for the individuals I work with to resolve if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly”.

After we spoke, I needed to know if she finds the general public persona of Anna Wintour – the sharp, bobbed hair, the meticulous outfits, the glasses – a task she feels she has to carry out.

“I don’t actually give it some thought,” she says. “What I’m actually fascinated by is the artistic side of my job.”

Wintour tells me she solely introduced one or two suitcases together with her to London and she or he received’t be drawn on whether or not she attire down when she’s at house within the US. “It’s actually about respect in the way you current your self.”

Multiple individual has informed me that no person ever says ‘no’ to Wintour. Donatella Versace says the identical within the current Disney documentary, In Vogue: The 90s.

Wintour demures. “That’s completely unfaithful. They usually say no, however that’s a very good factor. No is a superb phrase”.

Do you suppose individuals are terrified of you, I ask her. “I hope not,” she replies.

Underneath her management, via expertise, drive of persona and a mind for what sells, Wintour has tried to future proof Vogue, turning it into a worldwide model. She can also be world content material advisor for Conde Nast, the journal’s writer.

Within the fashionable period, when influencers can take images of trend moments and pump them out instantly, Wintour has efficiently positioned Vogue as an arbiter of style and magnificence.

Trend and promoting are entwined in Vogue’s content material however Wintour doesn’t settle for my premise that trend journalism might be sycophantic.

“That’s merely not true and it’s generally, I believe, irritating to us that work in trend, that there’s an out of doors notion trend is frivolous and superficial.

“In actual fact, it’s an enormous enterprise. We give employment to tens of millions of individuals world wide.”

I take that reply to imply that Wintour, the daughter of a former editor of the Night Normal newspaper, sees herself extra as a trend ambassador than a journalist.

However after all she can also be a journalist, arguably one of the crucial well-known journalistic faces on the planet – and one which has no apparent successor.

I ask her, at 75, how for much longer she plans to remain in her function.

“I’ve no plans to go away my job,” she says, including: “At the moment.”

VOGUE: Inventing the Runway is at Lightroom, London till April 2025.