T H E S E P T E M B E R I S S U E

Really can't wait to see this movie, is it ever gonna show in KL anyways?!

"There is something about fashion that makes people very nervous." Anna Wintour is talking direct to camera, in close-up, at the beginning of The September Issue, a funny and involving new documentary detailing a life in an issue of American Vogue, the world's most successful fashion magazine. The key detail for seasoned Wintour-watchers is visual: the sunglasses are off. The doyenne of magazine editors, who has for more than two decades been US Vogue's editor-in-chief, Wintour has long been regarded by people who don't know her, and doubtless some who do, as cold and remote: the legendary Nuclear Wintour, fictionalised as the frosty, diva-ish Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. With her shades, her severe bob and her slender frame, Wintour, a Brit transplanted to New York, seemed to be the embodiment of the tiresome old adage that you can never be too rich or too thin.

Now, thanks to RJ Cutler's film, released this Friday, we discover she has expressive, soft green eyes; a shy smile, almost girlish; an irreverent sense of humour; and an aura not of invulnerability, though clearly she can be tough, but of sensitivity. It's telling, I think, that this daddy's girl - her father, Charles, was editor of the Evening Standard, and a huge influence - still looks to her family for validation even as the nabobs of the rag trade genuflect before her: in one scene, at home in her Manhattan townhouse, she seems to be gently seeking approval from her daughter, Bee, who is studying to become a lawyer, apparently regarding fashion as a less than serious pursuit. cont; -- Review by GQmag.