A Wintour's end. Perhaps.
Core Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know I Learned at Vogue.
When I worked at Vogue, it felt like a family fashion magazine - but only if you were a member of Anna’s actual family.
Anna was (and is) a devoted mother who was wild about her son and daughter, Charlie and Bee. And Anna’s husband at the time, David Shaffer, was a frequent fixture outside Condé Nast’s front door on Fridays - ready to whisk her off in their firey tomato red Range Rover (custom color?), likely to their weekend place in Mastic, Long Island.
But it was Anna’s daughter Bee who was a near constant presence in our offices in my years there. Because when other New York private school children went off to their carefully selected after-school activities, Bee Shaffer did her own thing - by sending herself to Vogue.
Bee arrived at 4:00pm, having been picked up from The Spence School by a Condé Nast car.
By the time she checked herself in with Condé Nast’s Security Desk, Bee had changed out of her Spence uniform- into her “own” Vogue look- usually Levi’s denim overalls plus some old-school sneakers. Her larger look was set off by a super-sharp pixie haircut, and the vibe was very Huck Finn (sans any fence painting in her future.)
In my second year there, Anna invited Bee’s entire Spence Fourth Grade class to spend a day at Vogue. On the inside we dubbed it “Take Spence to Work Day”, a riff on the annual April “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”.
Some of us were assigned to help host, and a colleague and I were put in charge of the group for a stressful hour and a half. To fill the time, we screened “The Vogue Runway Report”, a film Vogue produced seasonally to forecast upcoming trends for the fashion houses, advertisers, and readers. And now this crew of pre-teen city sophisticates too.
After this half-hour film wrapped, we tried to keep them contained in The Vogue Room- a cozy conference room on Condé Nast’s twelfth floor- in which we hosted all kinds of outside VIP guests. The Vogue Room became our holding pen/rumpus room - and “rambunctious” would for sure describe our small charges.
After what felt like an eternity, a new team relieved us to escort them to their next scheduled activity.
What was that you ask? Why, these 40 spicy nine and ten year olds were loaded into Condé Nast corporate cars waiting outside 350 Madison Avenue, and delivered to Badgley Mischka’s nearby showroom. There, they were greeted by Mark (Badgley) and James (Mischka), given a private fashion show featuring that season’s collection, and treated to an in-house “ladies” lunch.
Anna’s home life spilled into ours in other ways. We were all schooled in her morning routine - since it greatly affected our work existence.
Anna woke up at 5:30am, played tennis, showered/changed (into her pre-styled look already hanging in her closet), had her hair blown out by “Poncho” (at the time also a friend of mine - my stylist too - he cut my hair after work, for free), had her make-up done, and then - after making sure her children had eaten breakfast and were ready - she collected them into a Condé Nast car for the uptown school drop off at Collegiate and Spence.
After which Anna arrived at the office at the gong of 8:30am.
Back in the 90s, it was super cool in New York (and other fashion capitals) to know someone who worked at American Vogue. It was a feather in one’s cap to have a friend inside, who could provide some scoop. In New York at that time, this information was its own form of currency.
I was fascinated at what occurred inside the walls of Vogue. And once inside, I discovered that the professional dynamics were intensely personal.
Everything ran according to what Anna felt, thought, wanted, and dictated. Anna lorded over everything, and nothing escaped her notice. The two scariest words in our office were “Anna’s unhappy”.
And since the value of Vogue’s brand is what people on the outside think of it, controlling the narrative inside - since these dynamics then emanated outward - was a critical component of Vogue’s power.
In 2000, Condé Nast moved from 350 Madison Avenue to 4 Times Square, for more room to spread out- and leaving behind treasures Margit and Helmut of Condé Nast newsstand fame. It was the start of some serious corporate deadening.
In 2014, Condé Nast Corporate moved the gang again, this time to 1 World Trade Center. In this newest building, Anna and her Vogue team were now that much more spread out from one another.
These real estate re-locations cost Condé Nast much of Vogue’s unique magic. Out went the cramped desks, the original Vogue Closet, and the insane internal energy. The drama. The unmatched glamour - of being so on top of one another every day - that even the smallest of magnificent sartorial details were duly noted.
Anna’s personality has felt less indelibly imprinted on the place, and its brand platforms, with each passing year. And the magazine has come to resemble a “product” instead of Anna’s hands-on personal production.
The last vestiges of Vogue’s intrinsic “personality” writ-large inspired The Devil Wears Prada franchise. A phenomenon delivered to the world by Lauren Weisberger (who worked as one of Anna’s two personal Vogue assistants in 1999). Her 2004 New York Times best selling novel The Devil Wears Prada, and subsequent 2006 debut film by the same name, took the world by storm.
The Devil Wears Prada crystallized the essence of the place in the last moment that it actually existed. Because it brilliantly captured the personal/internal dynamics that once dominated life inside Vogue.
In this moment, it feels like Vogue’s dwindling subscriber base/readership feels more of an affinity to the book and the movie- than to the brand itself. Like they perhaps would rather tune into this pretend version of the magazine, than read the real one.
Related, The Devil Wear’s Prada 2, the sequel, is in production as we speak.
At the end of last week, Anna announced that she will step down from her role as Editor of Vogue. Anna, in her role as Creative Director of Condé Nast, will hire her own replacement. Who will report, you know, directly to Anna. Should be interesting.
And perhaps there will then be another book written, and a new movie made, about this next chapter. Stay tuned!
What I’m reading/watching this week:
’s Back Row: 8 Big Questions About Anna Wintour’s Big Move. The author of Anna: The Biography, Amy’s insider’s perspective is always spot on in its style and substance.Catwalk featuring Christy Turlington. You can time travel to the mid-fashion 90s- Paris, Milan, New York in this fashion industry documentary. So many favorite scenes: John Galliano’s debut in Paris, Gianni Versace in Milan, Isaac Mizrahi’s runway moment with Christy, Linda, Naomi, and Kate in Coke and Sprite crushed bottle top dresses. A super authentic throw back in time, the film features so many 90s stylish characters. I have watched this 1995 documentary too many times to count, and it never gets old.