Front Row

Martha Stewart: Just Desserts: The Unauthorized Biography

The Other Mrs. Kennedy: Ethel Skakel Kennedy:
An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics

State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton

Seinfeld: The Making of an American Icon

Barbara Walters: An Unauthorized Biography

Idol, Rock Hudson: The True Story of an American Film Hero

For Caroline, Cukes, and Trix

Acknowledgments

Prologue

one:
Family Roots

two:
A Teenage Bond

three:
Swinging London

four:
A Growing Independence

five:
London Party Girl

six:
Shopgirl Dropout

seven:
Finding Love at Harrods

eight:
Live-in Model

nine:
Making the Masthead

ten:
Family Affairs

eleven:
Creative Energy

twelve:
Meeting Mr. Wrong

thirteen:
Playing Hardball

fourteen:
Axed American Style

fifteen:
A Curious Betrayal

sixteen:
An Embarrassing Position

seventeen:
Complex Persona

eighteen:
Out in the Cold

nineteen:
The Chanel Affair

twenty:
A Savvy Decision

twenty-one:
New York by Storm

twenty-two:
A Territorial Grab

twenty-three:
Mister Big

twenty-four:
In Vogue

twenty-five:
Golden Handcuffs

twenty-six:
Marriage Made in Heaven

twenty-seven:
Baby Makes Three

twenty-eight:
Anna’s Guillotine

twenty-nine:
Lover, Friend, Mother

thirty:
Beginning of the End

thirty-one:
The Parking Lot

thirty-two:
July Fourth Massacre

thirty-three:
Anna and the Boss

thirty-four:
Madonna, Di, and Tina

thirty-five:
The Assistant

thirty-six:
Fashion Battlefield

thirty-seven:
The Party’s Over

thirty-eight:
An Affair to Remember

thirty-nine:
A New Life

Selected Bibliography

Author’s Note on Sources

Index

S
ome two hundred people on three continents who have known
Vogue
editor in chief Anna Wintour—present and former friends, lovers, colleagues, employees, and associates—agreed to be interviewed for this book. Others kindly opened doors for me, steered me in the right direction, or agreed to verify or back up controversial facts and anecdotes.

The writing of a book such as this is a collaborative effort, and I could not have succeeded, inasmuch as I did, without their candid insights, observations, and critical assessments.

Wintour, the daughter of a prominent British journalist, refused to be interviewed for this book and declined in any way to help. Moreover, she instructed others not to cooperate. Some abided by her directive, others didn’t.

Wintour’s response was odd, since over the years she has offered up numerous, though mostly self-serving, interviews and even permitted a British television crew to follow her, in a limited way, for a documentary. At the same time she has been quoted as saying she resents the press. It was clear she did not want a book over which she had no control written about her life.

Most everyone I contacted agreed to talk on the record and without any ground rules. A minority, for personal, professional, or financial reasons—their livelihoods depend on Wintour—requested and were granted anonymity. Not everyone was willing to put his or her career on the line, or to jeopardize relationships. You know who you are.

My goal from the beginning was to portray Wintour in the truest and most objective light, and I believe my sources aided me in fulfilling that end. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all those who took the time to answer my many questions:

Patti Gilkyson Agnew, Shig Akida, Moriah Allen, Judy Bachrach, Curt Bass, Julie Baumgold, Dianne Benson, Frances Bentley, A. Scott Berg, Robin Blackburn, Chris Blackwell, Andrea Blanche, Peter Bloch, Isabella Blow, Stephen Bobroff, Patricia Bosworth, Sheila Botein, Catherine Jay Boyd, Jimmy Brad-shaw, Peter Braunstein, Joe Brooks, Stephanie Brush, Gay Bryant, Paul Callan, Jeremy Campbell, Jenny Capitain, Carol Carson, Anne Carter, George Carter, Maureen Cleave, Alex Cockburn, Nik Cohn, Dana Cowan, Toni Cunliffe, Elen Curran, Judith Daniels, Marie Davis, Emma de Bendern Galitizen, Jacques Dehornois, Nigel Dempster, Joanna Dingemann, Byron Dobell, Susan Duff, Susan Edmiston, Tony Elliott, Richard Ely, Edward Jay Epstein, Michel Esteban, Diane Lokey Farb, Nigel Farndale, Clay Felker, Carol Felsenthal, Willie Fielding, Stephanie Fierz, Zandy Forbes, Phillip Frazer, Kathleen Fury, David Gilbert, Eliza Gilkyson, Nancy Gilkyson, Robin Givhan, Adair Gock-ley, Elaine Greene, Sarah Griffiths, Barbara Griggs, Michael Gross, Liz Groves, Valerie Grove, Catherine Guinness, Chris Hall, Sophie Hicks, Felicity Green Hill, Pat Hill, Ian Hislop, Jade Hobson, Jennifer Hocking, Shelby Hodge, Annabel Hodin, Min Hogg, Georgina Howell, Barbara Hulanicki, Richard In-grams, Helen Irwin, Leslie Jay, Liz Jobey, Laurie Jones, Anne Kampman, Mary Kenny, Philip Kingsley, Marilyn Kirschner, Elsa Klensch, Nora Lee Knight, Gini Kopecky, Willie Landels, Jack Langguth, Vivienne Lasky, Guy Le Baube, Stacy Schneer Lee, Zazel Loven, Earle Mack, Dan Matthews, Anthony Mazzola, Joanie McDonell, Angus McGill, Peter McKay, Nancy McKeon, Barbara McKibben, Quita McMath, Richard Meier, Polly Mellen, Sheila Metzner, Carol Mithers, Valerie Monroe, Alma Moore, Jimmy Moore, Alida Morgan, William Mostyn-Owen, Bryan Moynahan, Karen Mullarkey, Jillie Murphy, Tohru Nakamura, Mary Beth Naye, Richard Neville, Nancy Slade Newlove, Helmut Newton, Charlotte Noel, Edna O’Brien, Denise Otis, Patricia O’Toole, Jean Pagliuso, Laura Pank, Betsy Parish, Helen Jay Pennant, Lisa Petersen, Carolyn Pfeiffer, Tom Pocock, Jeffrey Podolski, Virgina Pratt, John Pringle, Der-mot Purgave, Jean Rafferty, Piers Paul Read, Barbara Reilly, Brian Rendall, Susie Rich, Glenys Roberts, Frenelle Rogers, Uli Rose, Pat Rotter, Leslie
Russell, Jordan Schaps, Laurie Schechter, Susanna Schindler, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Marian Schlesinger, Joan Schnitzer-Levy, Gaia Servadio, Mort Sheinman, Barbara Shoemaker, Drusilla Beyfus Shulman, Milton Shulman, Paul Sinclaire, Jerold Smokler, Lady Valerie Solti, Davis Sprinkle, Winston Stona, Susan Summers, Dan Taylor, Sara Taylor, Elizabeth “Neal” Gilkyson Stewart Thorpe, Becca Cason Thrash, Ann Trehearne, Elizabeth Tretter, Deborah Turbeville, Jean Vallely, Helen Vanam, Rosemary Vanamee, Nanette Var-ian, Claire Victor, Brian Vine, Alexander Walker, Liz Walker, Beverly Wardale, Marilyn Warnick, James Wedge, Carol Wheeler, Cristina Zilkha.

Those hundreds of hours of interviews and the huge amount of research that go into a biography of this sort could not have been accomplished without the assistance of seasoned researchers.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to author and journalist Judy Oppen-heimer, whose probing, careful interviewing style, and devotion to fairness and objectivity helped make this book possible, as did Caroline Walton Howe’s brilliant investigative work and sharp eye for detail.

In London, Elizabeth Fay and Jessica Barrington did important legwork and research. There are many more who assisted on both sides of the Atlantic, and I hold you in great esteem.

An author cannot make it through the many pitfalls of the publishing world without men (and women) who are made of steel: the literary agent. I have been blessed with having the crème de la crème—Dan Strone and Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. A special thanks to Dan’s assistant, Hilary Rubin.

At St. Martin’s, I’d like to thank Jennifer Weis, Stefanie Lindskog, Sally Richardson, John Murphy, and the rest of the team for making it all happen.

T
hough the Manhattan sidewalks were coated with grimy slush and patches of ice, the thirty-something woman wore strappy Jimmy Choos and was bare-legged, something even Carrie Bradshaw wouldn’t have done for Mr. Big at his weirdest. But an exception had to be made in this case, despite the wintry weather, for what was to be a memorable moment. This was the woman’s big day—her first and final job interview with the goddess of the world’s fashion bible, Anna Wintour.

A ranking candidate for a six-figure-a-year-with-perks features editor job, the woman had been well-briefed by a friend, a Voguette already safely ensconced in the elite fold, as to the toe-cleavage shoes
sans
stockings. Anna, the bosom buddy had warned the job seeker, dictates
everything
that goes into the magazine, along with the behavior and attitude in its hallowed halls, from how subordinates should act on the elevators when she’s aboard—subdued, respectful, no eye contact—to how they are supposed to dress if they want to work there, or continue working there.

Thus, naked legs and open-toed stilettos in the bitter New York winter were requirements of the famed and feared editrix’s unwritten dress code. It’s known among the fashion world cognoscenti that Anna is prone to hire based on dress and looks, let alone spike stories if someone is not photogenic enough for her. “If we’re talking about fashion editors, on the whole it’s important to me that they have a sense of style,” she’s intoned. “And on the editorial
side”—where the candidate in question hoped to work—“after a few months they will end up looking like
Vogue
. It just rubs off that way.” As a
Vogue
editor who knows and abides by Anna’s rules notes, “People who work here have to look a certain way If somebody hasn’t changed their appearance within six months . . . something isn’t going right.”

Besides the bare legs and towering heels, the
Vogue
wannabe has been advised by her friend to wear little makeup and a coat with a matching dress. To pass Anna’s muster, she’s told, one must strictly comply. And she was finally instructed not to be fashionably late; Anna fumes when she’s made to wait.

The candidate arrived at the appointed hour, confident in securing the job she had always dreamed of. She’d already passed muster with flying colors in interviews with
Vogue’s
managing editor who does screening and with Condé Nast’s human resources department. Her résumé—and pedigree—have been thoroughly checked. In her mind, the job’s in the bag; in her case a four-figure Hermès Birkin for which her name had sat on a waiting list at Bergdorf ’s for more than a year.

She also has gilt-edged credentials and a solid reputation for writing about fashion and boldfaced names—celebrities, artists, designers, society types—and possesses a dynamite chic red leather Filofax brimming with all the
right
names
and
private numbers. She knows all the dirt and how to dish it—also prerequisites for getting the nod from the editor in chief.

Besides all of that, she’s a fashionista par excellence—all in all, a perfect
Vogue
candidate.

Last step, the final interview with Anna of the dominatrix power bob.

But things do not go well from the moment the boss woman’s assistant—one in a relatively long and harried line—summons her to enter the royal chamber in the Condé Nast palace that towers high above Times Square.

The first thing that strikes her is the immensity of Anna’s office and the long,
long
approach from the door to where the editor once dubbed “nuclear Wintour” is holding court behind her enormous, sleek, and devoid-of-any-semblance-of-work prototype Buchsbaum desk; the distance seems to the interviewee like the seemingly endless runway at the Versace shows in Milan. The office itself is stark and cold, much like the pin-thin, famously glacial woman who inhabits it. Anna, in a little Chanel number and her signature
sunglasses—which make eye contact all but impossible—never rises to greet the candidate, just briskly commands, “Sit, please.”

“I really thought I was going to get the job
untilI
met her,” says the
Vogue
aspirant, well known and respected in fashion and celebrity media. “Anna was very, very cool and contradicted
everythingI
said. She would ask me questions and I would answer in the most intelligent way I could, and then she would contradict me. For instance, she said, ‘What would you do in the music section?’ I said something about ‘going very upscale.’ And she said, ‘We’re a
populist
magazine.’ She asked me what I’d do with another section, and I told her I thought that deserved a populist view. She said, ‘We’re an
upscale
magazine.’ She just didn’t want me to win. She’s
very
scary. And I’ve
never
been scared in journalism.

“I’ve gotten almost every job I’ve interviewed for because I’m really good on interviews,” continues the
Vogue
hopeful, “but I knew within just a few minutes that I would never get that job because I felt she was
looking for
me to fail, there was something almost
sadistic
about what was going on.

“I thought, ‘What’s my best mode of behavior here? I truly
cannot
contradict her. I don’t want to get into a battle, or competitive mode with her.’ I wasn’t intimidated, but I wouldn’t allow her to
make
me contradict myself. I wasn’t going to be spineless, so I tried to stick to my guns. I thought, ‘Why let her fuck with my head?’”

After twenty minutes, Anna, looking bored, brusquely concluded the interview.

It’s the last time the woman heard from
Vogue
.

Afterward, her friend and others at the magazine told her she was better off because “everyone at
Vogue
is miserable, and everyone’s terrified of Anna.”

The woman, who went on to other desirable media jobs and a book deal, observes, “A lot of people around Anna, and this is true at every fashion magazine, are gay men, and they’re the
only
ones at
Vogue
who are not terrorized by her. The thing is, she doesn’t really
like
women, which is certainly curious for the editor of the world’s most influential fashion magazine
for
women. I’ve always wondered, what’s with her? Why is she like that? What makes her tick? What’s her story?”