Up Yours, XXI

February 18, 2011 9:31 AM

Rumors I've Heard About Anna Wintour
posted by ThePinkSuperhero (32 comments total)

Priceless. *wipes away tears*
posted by bearwife at 9:39 AM on February 18, 2011

Oh man, that's HILARIOUS.

Saw her repeatedly this season. Avoided her like the plague. :)
posted by zarq at 9:43 AM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

These are...acceptable. That's all.
posted by rtha at 9:43 AM on February 18, 2011 [4 favorites]

At first I was like meh. But then I LOLed.
posted by sveskemus at 9:43 AM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

She has Cartier glasses,
And a new iPad,
All in a Louis Vuitton bag,
Oh you mad?
Mmm, hmm,
Mmm, hmm,
Mmm, hmm,
Yeah bitch...
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:45 AM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I lol'd at "DON'T LOOK DON'T LOOK DON'T LOOK" but I think I actually died over the Forever 21 panel. DIED.
posted by katillathehun at 9:48 AM on February 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

Occasionally, Vice hits one out of the damn park.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:49 AM on February 18, 2011 [6 favorites]

Existing in a completely alternate universe to Wintour, I can only look upon her and her ilk and milieu in the way a kid looks in a fancy aquarium at a dentist's office. There's one flashy fish that rules the tank, but it's still just a puny little fish that can't breathe outside the tank and because it's developed such a sensitivity to the tank conditions it would certainly die if it were placed in a different tank. I realize that fashion has some degree of relevance, if only as a kind of historical indicator. But individuals like her within the scene seem to have reduced their humanity into something so trivial as to be conveniently forgotten.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:49 AM on February 18, 2011 [9 favorites]

If you haven't read Tim Gunn's story about Anna Wintour, do it now.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:57 AM on February 18, 2011 [4 favorites]

but it's still just a puny little fish that can't breathe outside the tank and because it's developed such a sensitivity to the tank conditions it would certainly die if it were placed in a different tank

So you're saying that Anna Wintour is a 3rd-stage Guild Navigator?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:59 AM on February 18, 2011 [11 favorites]

I love how it got more and more absurd as it went along. So good.
posted by darksong at 9:59 AM on February 18, 2011

Someday, probably not too many years hence, Anna Wintour will get turfed for some new blood. It happened to Grace Mirabella and it happened to Diana Vreeland. And again like her two predecessors, she may do some remarkable post-Vogue work. But I doubt that in her post-Vogue career that she'll be able to demand that no one gets to eat in front of her or share an elevator with her, and so I look forward to the day. Get over yourself, honey. It's just a job.
posted by orange swan at 10:00 AM on February 18, 2011

My ex girlfriend claims she had to wait for a different elevator all the time at Conde Nast. She was working at Vanity Fair at the, her job at the time was taking dead flowers back to the florest and demanding new ones for free.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:16 AM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I've always thought that Anna Wintour looks like...well, this is hard to explain.

Do you remember that movie Stephen King's Sleepwalkers about the mother and son half cat monsters that have an incestuous relationship? Well, they do these weird transformations from human into cat monster that are aided by CGI and makeup.

Anna Wintour looks like if you freeze framed that movie about midway through human/catmonster transformation. She is on her way to turning into a cat, but she's just not quite there yet.

Come on, y'all. You feel me on this?
posted by orville sash at 10:31 AM on February 18, 2011 [4 favorites]

but it's still just a puny little fish that can't breathe outside the tank and because it's developed such a sensitivity to the tank conditions it would certainly die if it were placed in a different tank

So you're saying that Anna Wintour is a 3rd-stage Guild Navigator?

Um, he's saying she's kinda bland, mayhaps?
posted by infini at 10:53 AM on February 18, 2011

Nah, this is kind of apt, actually.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:57 AM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

After watching The September Issue one begins to realize that Ms. Wintour no matter how powerful in her respective world is looked down upon by the rest of her old-moneyed family. They view her world full of fops and dandies as an unimportant and a trite existence in comparison to their scholarly work addressing and reporting of the issue of humanity and civilization.

About her family, via Wikipedia:

Wintour was born ... to Charles Wintour, editor of the Evening Standard, and Eleanor ("Nonie") Trego Baker, daughter of a Harvard law professor. Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded publications such as Honey and Petticoat, is her stepmother. The late-18th-century novelist Lady Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire, was Wintour's great-great-great-grandmother, and Sir Augustus Vere Foster, the last Baronet of that name, was a granduncle.

... One of her younger brothers, Patrick, is also a journalist, currently political editor of The Guardian. James and Nora Wintour have worked in London local government and for international non-governmental organizations respectively.

posted by wcfields at 11:17 AM on February 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

orville sash, it's relevant both to your comment and to the subject of Anna Wintour that the momma werecat in Sleepwalkers was played by Alice Krige, who was also the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact.

Also: came for "Considers baby brains, fresh out of the skull, to be a delicious mid-afternoon snack"; left satisfied nevertheless.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 AM on February 18, 2011

Anna Wintour's glasses are not to protect her eyes from the sun, but to protect the sun from her eyes.
posted by The Whelk at 12:13 PM on February 18, 2011 [9 favorites]

Delish!
posted by kthanksbai at 12:34 PM on February 18, 2011

I think she looks like an old monkey.
posted by brujita at 12:46 PM on February 18, 2011

So you're saying that Anna Wintour is a 3rd-stage Guild Navigator?

Silence, Ixian scum, before I cut your tongue from your mouth! The penalty for offending the Brood Mother is death!
posted by loquacious at 12:56 PM on February 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

Ha! This is excellent! I have a feeling that Wintour is the end of the line. The fashion world is changing. I suspect that the days of iron rule by the Vogue are nearing an end (though to be fair, I've thought that since the mid 80's when I did fashion photography). There is just too much variety and fragmentation, and the same thing will happen as when fragmentation hit the film and music world. And when that happens, running Vogue will be like running the NME or some such thing, and nobody gives a damn, and as a result, you can't have these monumental tyrants. In the end, despite all the hideousness and insanity, I like the fashion world. I think it gets at something about human beings that is more interesting than many other subcultures (the film or music world seem so much more obvious and comprehensible - the whys and whatfors are so much more graspable).
posted by VikingSword at 1:06 PM on February 18, 2011

I don't have many strong feelings about it one way or another, but all I know is this: if they could just replace Anna with Tavi, the warm happy feeling I get when I first hear the news will carry me through to the end of my days.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:09 PM on February 18, 2011

Silence, Ixian scum, before I cut your tongue from your mouth! The penalty for offending the Brood Mother is death!

Bite me, freak! I serve the One Who Can Be Many Places At Once, he that is called Muad'Dib!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:22 PM on February 18, 2011

ThePinkSuperhero: "I don't have many strong feelings about it one way or another, but all I know is this: if they could just replace Anna with Tavi, the warm happy feeling I get when I first hear the news will carry me through to the end of my days."

She's sweet. Very, very knowledgeable, too. More than many bloggers and editors -- all of whom are older than her.

She was also the subject of one of my all-time favorite fashion-week related tweets back in 2009:

@Grazia_Live: "At Dior. Not pleased to be watching couture through 13 year old Tavi's hat." A screenshot of the tweet and a snapshot of the hat in question can be found here.
posted by zarq at 2:17 PM on February 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

Lisa drew these! I know Lisa! Now I feel like I am in the inner circle of the VIP A-List celebrities. One time in high school Lisa and I sat next to each other on the bus. Jealous, bitchesssssssss?
posted by prefpara at 2:36 PM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think it gets at something about human beings that is more interesting than many other subcultures (the film or music world seem so much more obvious and comprehensible - the whys and whatfors are so much more graspable)

It's much older than film or even writing. People have been decking themselves out in whatever (clothing, fur, feathers, vines, body paint) for at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. (I don't know about music; that is also probably one of the oldest human arts.)

Going by tribal cultures in recent times, many of the fashion plates of stone age prehistory were warriors or priests.

Anna Wintour, Warrior Priestess of the Death Goddess!
posted by bad grammar at 4:53 PM on February 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

She was also the subject of one of my all-time favorite fashion-week related tweets back in 2009: @Grazia_Live: "At Dior. Not pleased to be watching couture through 13 year old Tavi's hat." A screenshot of the tweet and a snapshot of the hat in question can be found here.

I just spent 10 minutes going through my RSS feed to find her response, which as I recall, wasn't her 1st response- there was a post that was deleted that included something to the effect of, if I'm blocking your way, you could just ASK ME to take it off. Tavi for the win.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:40 AM on February 19, 2011

Someday, probably not too many years hence, Anna Wintour will get turfed for some new blood. It happened to Grace Mirabella and it happened to Diana Vreeland.

It's already happened to Carine Roitfield.

I would love a Queen and I scenario to happen to her, where for some spurious reason she gets transferred to the fashion desk of Dundee Life and has to go about trying not to share lifts. I'm honestly unable to conceive of people who feel they are above everyone else to that extent. How does it even happen? Do you just keep asking for more and more beyond the point where you can stop and think 'hang on, when did I get too important to boil my own kettle'?

I love Tavi. Many I know rely more on beauty bloggers than beauty pages because of the honesty, range of opinions, range of budgets and diversity in the pages - if you're black, say, you'll rarely find anything recommended in Vogue to suit you, and you migth not live somewhere where specialist mags are available. Fashion will go the same way - particularly as the image in the mags is very singular and bloggers are waking up to the fact that some people are fatter, or thinner, or can;t afford designer labels, or don't care about V.Beckham, or want to copy a look but don't want to do it with leather because they're vegan. Vogue is probably the most intelligent fashion magazine out there, and I'd 100x rather read it over Cosmo and the like, but it says nothing to me about my life.
posted by mippy at 8:47 AM on February 19, 2011

"Junior staffers are not allowed to look at Anna Wintour."

Heh. You know who I've actually hard that about? David Letterman. (It's in Bill Carter's "The War for Late Night.")
posted by Sys Rq at 12:42 PM on February 19, 2011

hard heard
posted by Sys Rq at 12:43 PM on February 19, 2011