Anna Wintour

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Anna Wintour : biography

3 November 1949 –

Film adaptation

The film version of the novel has not been the only movie to have a character borrowing some aspects of Wintour. Edna Mode’s similar hairstyle in The Incredibles has been noted, Johnny Depp said he partially based the demeanour of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Wintour. Fey Sommers in the Ugly Betty television series was also likened to Wintour.

During the film’s production in 2005, Wintour was reportedly threatening prominent fashion personalities, particularly designers, that Vogue would not cover them if they made cameo appearances in the movie as themselves. She denied it through a spokesperson who said she was interested in anything that "supports fashion". Many designers are mentioned in the film. Only one, Valentino Garavani, appeared as himself.

The film was released, in mid-2006, to great commercial success. at boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved 8 February 2007. Wintour attended the première wearing Prada. In the film, actress Meryl Streep plays a Priestly different enough from the book’s to receive critical praise as an entirely original (and more sympathetic) character. (Streep’s office in the film was similar enough to Wintour’s that Wintour reportedly had hers redecorated)

Wintour reportedly said the film would probably go straight to DVD. It made over US$300 million in worldwide box office receipts. Later in 2006, in an interview with Barbara Walters that aired the day of the DVD’s release, Wintour said she found the film "really entertaining" and praised it for making fashion "entertaining and glamorous and interesting … I was 100 percent behind it."

That opinion of the movie has not yet led her to forgive Weisberger.Oppenheimer, 328. When it was reported that the novelist’s editor told her to start her third novel over, Wintour’s spokesman suggested she "should get a job as someone else’s assistant."

Oppenheimer suggests The Devil Wears Prada may have done Wintour a favour by increasing her name recognition. "Besides giving Weisberger her fifteen minutes", he says, "[it] … place[d] Anna squarely in the mainstream celebrity pantheon. [She] was now known and talked about over Big Macs and french fries under the Golden Arches by young fashionistas in Wal-Mart denim in Davenport and Dubuque."

When The September Issue was released three years later, critics compared it with the earlier, fictional film. "For the past year or so, she’s been on the media warpath to win back her image", said Paul Schrodt in Slant Magazine. Many considered the question of how similar she was to Streep’s Priestly, and praised the film for showing the real person. Manohla Dargis at The New York Times said that Priestly had helped humanise Wintour, and "the documentary continues this." "The movie offers insights that lift it beyond a realist version of The Devil Wears Prada," agreed Mary Pols in Time.

Career

From fashion to journalism

"I think my father really decided for me that I should work in fashion", she recalled in The September Issue. He arranged for his daughter’s first job, at the influential Biba boutique, when she was 15.Oppenheimer, 42–44. The next year, she left North London Collegiate and began a training program at Harrods. At her parents’ behest, she also took fashion classes at a nearby school. Soon she gave them up, saying, "You either know fashion or you don’t."Oppenheimer, 51. Another older boyfriend, Richard Neville, gave her her first experience of magazine production at his popular and controversial Oz.Oppenheimer, 58–62.

In 1970, when Harper’s Bazaar UK merged with Queen to become Harper’s & Queen, Wintour was hired as one of its first editorial assistants, beginning her career in fashion journalism.Oppenheimer, 63. She told her co-workers that she wanted to edit Vogue.Oppenheimer, 70. While there, she discovered model Annabel Hodin, a former North London classmate. Her connections helped her secure locations for innovative shoots by Helmut Newton, Jim Lee and other trend-setting photographers.Oppenheimer, 81. "She quickly built up a reputation of being able to round up the best people and locations, mainly because of her connections through her father, pals like Nigel Dempster, and other well-placed people she met socially." One recreated the works of Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots.Metropolitan Museum of Art; 12 January 1999; . Retrieved 6 December 2006. After chronic disagreements with new editor Min Hogg, a rival,Oppenheimer, 96. she quit and moved to New York with her boyfriend, freelance journalist Jon Bradshaw.Oppenhimer, 100.