Her Father’s Daughter

Looking for some cool on a very hot afternoon in New York. 5:00 PM. Photo: JH.

August 21, 2009. Another very hot day in New York.

Her Father’s Daughter. At six in the evening I went down to the Paley Center for Media (originally called the Museum of Television and Radio) to see the new documentary by R.J. Cutler, “The September Issue” about the making of the September 2007 Vogue. That issue was the magazine’s biggest ever.

When I arrived, I ran into Boaz Mazor in the lobby talking to Grace Coddington, the magazine’s creative director. Boaz, who is the very successful longtime sales director of Oscar de la Renta, is as much a part of the fashion community as Coddington. He told me in front of her that the New York Post said Coddington was the real star of the movie.


	Grace Coddington and Boaz Mazor

I’d never met Grace Coddington before although I’d seen her many times with Anna Wintour at the runway shows. She’s a striking figure because of her massive flaming coiffure, her pale-as-milk skin and the almost severe simplicity of her look. I am not a reader/follower of fashion magazines and so I really knew nothing about her or what she was like until we were introduced. She has a wide, bright, warm smile that tells you everything. Her eyes smile too, and under the circumstances, in the flesh she looks much younger than her photographs.

Everyone was assembled in the screening room by seven. Christy Carpenter who is the Executive v-p and CEO of the Center, introduced R.J. Cutler who told us a little about the genesis of the film.

It opens with a Technicolor-like close up of the magazine’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour being interviewed.

It’s impossible to watch her without thinking of Meryl Streep’s portrayal of “a fashion magazine editor” in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Wintour has long had a reputation in the media community for being an “ice queen,” and for years the nickname passed about (never to her face most assuredly) was “Nuclear Wintour.”

The film shows quite a different character from the Streep film, however. It’s the hair that I found myself staring at. Like a silken helmet, impervious and set for any battle. The ends are so perfectly cut and so pointed toward the sides of her chin that it occurred to me that (along with the frequent collaboration of her dark glasses) it is what makes her so mysterious to the eye.

Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, from R.J. Cutler's documentary, "The September Issue," last night at the Paley Center for Media. The film opens in five theatres in the city.

The voice is soft and even has a slight rumble to its lilt. Although deadly serious – most of the time.

We learn that she doesn’t like dark colors. Or black. Okay. We see her passing judgment on the layouts, on the photos, on the clothes. We see her in business meetings where she is deadly serious, and we see her with merchants (like Neiman’s Burt Tansky – who is widely known to be one of the kindest, nicest people in the entire fashion industry) where she is smiling and almost girlish. We see no references, even a word about her love-life. It’s all business.

Coddington comes into play early on. She is so unique looking. Those unapologetic, flaming tresses; the pale pale skin without any apparent effort to cosmeticize the noticeable signs of aging, and the very simple, very plain style of dress. BLACK. Very dark. And the manner, which is soft-spoken, also serious but well aware that the last word will come from her editor even if she disagrees -- as she is quite willing to do if she believes she is right.

Grace and Anna at a show.

She is the perfect foil for Anna Wintour. The Fric and Frac of the fashion world. They are perfect partners, which may be why the viewer thinks of her as the star of the film. She’s accessible to the viewer, the kind of person you think you’d like to know because she must be good company, and fun, and smart and shrewd and no-nonsense too, in her way. You want to befriend Grace Coddington. Anna Wintour is interesting to watch but not accessible. Or doesn’t seem such. Although -- and this may be key -- while she doesn’t defer to Coddington, she gets Coddington’s message, and hears it.

We see Wintour with her entourage of editors, photographers, stylists and assistants, traveling to Paris. We see her meeting the designers and photographers and watching the fantastic fashion show productions. It appears to be a very glamorous existence. Boaz Mazor, with whom I sat, along with Melissa Morris, estimated that one of them (the Galliano show) cost as much as a million dollars to stage.

We see Wintour at her large and beautiful Long Island country house (in Bellport) with her daughter Bee Shafer, who tells the camera/interviewer that she would never choose a career in fashion for a variety of reasons because it’s “weird” although “many of the people are amusing.” There is a moment when the two women are on the sofa and Bee Shafer is talking about her future plans (to go to law school), and the camera pans in on the mother looking at the daughter with a slight smile on her face and a mother’s affectionate pride, especially in her eyes. The mother. Serious, but not ice.

We also learned in the course of the film that Wintour’s greatest influence was her father Charles Wintour who was editor of the London Evening Standard (he died in 1999 in his 82nd year). She makes a reference to her father’s Victorian upbringing “where he probably rarely ever saw his mother,” and you suddenly understand exactly who the woman is. She is doing the job her father would have expected of her. And she is doing it well. In other words, she is doing the job the very best she can.

It’s really not a party. You can see it in her shoulders, slightly hunched over as she walks with a very deliberate but almost weary gait. Toward the end of the film she recalls asking her father why he retired when he did, because she knew he loved his work, and he was good. He told her that it was because he got to the point where he could no longer take the anger the job brought out in him. She then said that she understood, and thought that was when she would probably quit also.


	The young Grace Coddington, fashion model before her editorial days at first British Vogue and then American Vogue.

If you live in New York, and especially if you work in media, in magazines, etc., you understand the unrelenting pressure to produce, to promote, to invent, to create, to keep moving, and always – if you can find the patience in yourself, to do your best. A lot of it is a circus that you’re participating in whether you like it or not – although by choice -- full of personalities, many of which are driven, ambitious, insensitive, even idiotic, and worried about the future – the future being the deadline, and then the next assignment.

Some people handle it with serene alacrity and grace like Grace Coddington who started out a little girl in Wales, dreaming her dreams poring over issues of Vogue (three months later – it was Wales remember). She started on her path as a beautiful model (her first photograph was by Lord Snowdon) with a great career that was cut short by a disfiguring, (albeit repaired) auto accident. This was followed by a lifelong career as a creative editor for Vogue. After this film, you’ll never look at an intriguing or fantastic fashion layout without thinking of Grace Coddington.

Others channel their ambition and drive into simmering impatience, anxious to succeed thoroughly and perfectly, and to become the ring master with the snapping, smooth and shiny leather whips, directing all the players under the big top, providing for the rest of the world, one of the greatest shows on earth (in the media world, that is). That’s Anna Wintour. “The September Issue” was her triumph, with the willing (and ambitious, impatient, anxious, and fanatically), devoted hands of her many many helpers.

At the very end of this fascinating film about “What it’s like, what they’re like” in the fashion magazine business, there is a brief, almost in passing image of potentate of the Conde Nast publishing empire, the man behind all of them, the who owns the show and who pays Ms. Wintour her reported seven figure annual salary: S.I. Newhouse. The camera catches him without a word of reference, sitting by as workers celebrate the launching of the issue. There is a sly smile of immense pleasure on his face as he observes the limelight around him. Job well done, and job it is.

After the screening, about 8:30, I walked up Fifth Avenue at twilight.

Passing the GAP store where they were having a big promotional event. The place was jammed.

I stopped by the windows of my favorite midtown lunch haunt, Michael's, and took a picture, unbeknownst to the receptionist.

And then I had to take a few shots of yet more interesting windows at Bergdorf Goodman.

Across the street from Bergdorf's is the Apple Cube where there was a lot of activity on the Plaza (and in the store) with everyone enjoying the passing parade on the hot summer night.

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