Anna Wintour

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Anna Wintour : biography

3 November 1949 –

Personal fashion preferences

Because of her position, Wintour’s wardrobe is often closely scrutinised and imitated. Earlier in her career, she mixed fashionable T-shirts and vests with designer jeans. When she started at Vogue as creative director she switched to Chanel suits with miniskirts. She continued to wear them during both pregnancies, opening the skirts slightly in back and keeping her jacket on to cover up.Oppenheimer, 229. Wintour was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013. She has said she admired her father Charles, known as "Chilly Charlie" for being "inscrutable". Former coworkers told Oppenheimer of a similar aloofness on her part. But she is also known for volatile outbursts of displeasure, and the widely used "Nuclear Wintour" sobriquet is a result of both. She dislikes it enough to have asked The New York Times not to use it. "There are times I get quite angry", she admitted in The September Issue.The September Issue, 1:11.

"I think she has been very rude to a lot of people in the past, on her way up – very terse", a friend told the Observer. "She doesn’t do small talk. She is never going to be friends with her assistant." A former assistant said, "You definitely did not ride the elevator with her."Stummer, Robin; 18 June 2006; ""; The Independent on Sunday. Retrieved 7 February 2007. Unwritten rules imposed by Wintour at the Vogue offices forbid junior staffers from initiating conversation with her; an editor who greeted her on the elevator was reprimanded by one of Wintour’s assistants (She calls that an exaggeration.). A visiting reporter saw a junior staffer appear visibly panicked when she realised she would have to ride the elevator with Wintour. Once a junior editor saw her trip in the hallway, walked past without offering assistance, and was later told she "did absolutely the right thing."

Even friends admit to some trepidation in her presence. "Anna happens to be a friend of mine", says Barbara Amiel, "a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet." "I know when to stop pushing her", says Coddington. "She doesn’t know when to stop pushing me".The September Issue, 32:15.

She has often been described as a perfectionist who routinely makes impossible, arbitrary demands of subordinates: "kitchen scissors at work", in the words of one commentator. She once made a junior staffer look through a photographer’s trash to find a picture he had refused to give her. In a deleted scene from The September Issue she complains about the "horrible white plastic buckets" of ice behind the bars at the CFDA’s 7th on Sale AIDS benefit and moves them out of sight.The September Issue, "7th on Sale" 4:30. "The notion that Anna would want something done ‘now’ and not ‘shortly’ is accurate", Amiel says of The Devil Wears Prada. "Anna wants what she wants right away."Amiel, Barbara; 30 June 2006; ""; Maclean’s. Retrieved 8 February 2007. A longtime assistant says, "She throws you in the water and you’ll either sink or swim."Oppenheimer, 192.

Peter Braunstein, the former Women’s Wear Daily media reporter later convicted of sexually assaulting a coworker, allegedly planned to kill Wintour because of perceived slights. After receiving only one ticket to the 2002 Vogue Fashion Awards, which he perceived as a snub, he became so angry that WWD fired him.Ross, Barbara and Siemaszko, Corey; 15 May 2007; ""; New York Daily News; Retrieved 15 May 2007. At his 2007 trial, prosecutors introduced as evidence a journal he kept on his computer in which he stated his intention to kill her. In it he wrote, "She just never talked to peons like us" to justify his intended actions.Italiano, Laura; 15 May 2007; ""; New York Post; Retrieved 15 May 2007.