All hail the Editrix

The release of The Devil Wears Prada has put the editrix squarely in the public eye. Rachel Hills discovers that in the world where mag-hags reign supreme, fashion is often stranger than fiction.

There is something deliciously ironic about a punch that, rather than eroding the power of the person attacked, only makes them stronger. So it was with former Vogue staffer Lauren Weisberger’s roman a clef, The Devil Wears Prada, which perhaps more than anything else – her big black sunglasses, her famous bob, even her job – confirmed Anna Wintour’s status as the most intriguing woman in fashion today.

There are magazine editors, and then there’s Anna Wintour. Icy, whip-smart and controlled, Wintour has been touted as the most influential person in the industry; a kingmaker responsible for the death of grunge (it wasn’t selling beauty products or accessories, so she told designers to get back to glamour or else); the rise of the supermodel; and the careers of designers like John Galliano and Michael Kors. She made Oprah lose 10kg before she was allowed to grace the cover of Vogue, was a catalyst for Hillary Clinton’s post-Monica makeover, and openly refuses to hire anyone she perceives as overweight or unattractive.

Today, Wintour’s influence is debatably on the wane, but she remains an undisputedly compelling figure. Corine Roitfeld may be fashion’s latest ‘It’ woman (and a snappier dresser to boot), but ask yourself this: could she inspire a book that would become a bestseller for no reason other than that it was associated with her, even as she exerted all her influence to ensure every review panned Weisberger’s book? Would a French newspaper hire a bunch of Roitfeld look-alikes as a promotional stunt, as the New York Metro did with Wintour? And if they did, would anyone notice? Fashion fanatics would say Roitfeld is far too chic to be the subject of something as pedestrian as a gossipy paperback, but she has yet to capture the interest of the general public, “the masses”, in the way that Wintour has.

But Wintour isn’t the first of her kind to capture the public imagination. Rather, she is the most recent in a line of editors – editrixes even, with all the frission and power the word suggests – who have shaped what we wear and how we wear it as much as any designer or supermodel. Women who are stylish, charismatic and blow to smithereens the cliché of the woman who makes her living peddling fashion to the masses, but dresses like a bag lady herself.

There was the vivacious Carrie Donovan, with her pearls and big Mr Magoo glasses, who turned every meeting into a performance and sprinkled her speech with French. There was the tiny but feisty Carmel Snow, a rebellious career woman who didn’t bear her first child until her 40s and would work her way through a line of double martinis as she worked through the night during the Paris fashion collections. More recently - although not on the same scale as Wintour – we’ve seen Tatler’s Isabella Blow, famous for her love of bizarre hats.

Then there was Diana Vreeland, a flamboyant social butterfly who mastered the Paris and London social scenes before hitting New York, where her striking features and deeply rouged cheeks caught the eye of Snow, who quickly employed her as fashion editor at Harpers Bazaar. Vreeland’s editorial style was practical (her famous ‘Why Don’t You?’ column encouraged readers to be imaginative with their existing wardrobes rather than purchase new clothes during the grip of the Great Depression, and she remained a champion of the $30 dress even when she went on to edit Vogue 25 years later) yet daring, with exotic shoot locations and off-the-wall style suggestions. It was Vreeland’s outrageousness that ultimately saw the end of her reign, in 1971, as Conde Nast grew tired of her costly editorial style.

But what is it about these women that makes them stand out from the pack? Why Carrie Donovan rather than Grace Mirabella, Anna Wintour over Liz Tilberis?

For one, they’re all very good at what they do. All have an eye for talent – Wintour promoting Galliano and Kors, Blow credited with discovering Alexander McQueen, Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl, and Snow able to boast Truman Capote, Lauren Bacall, Cristobal Balenciaga (yes, that Balenciaga), legendary photographer Richard Avedon and Vreeland amongst the talents she fostered. They’re instigators as much as they are tastemakers, Vreeland and Wintour moulding fashion to fit their own visions as much as any designer.

And like a designer, they see their work as an art as much as a business. Conde Nast chairman Si Newhouse has commented of Wintour: “Anna is driven by a desire to express herself as an editor. I don't think she thinks of herself as having a job any more than Baryshnikov thinks of himself as having a job.”

But make no mistake, creative expression aside, this is business - and every last one of these women is known for her dogged perfectionism. Former staffers talk of torn-up pages, redesigns and rewrites. Of the famously outgoing Donovan, former staffer Linda Well has said: “When you didn’t do a good job, nobody would mess around like Carrie Donovan. She would hold up my copy like she just stepped on it off the street. She would hold it at arms length and just be like, ‘Fix this.’” It seems Anna Wintour isn’t the only tough boss out there.

But it’s not solely about talent. There’s a reason Wintour and Vreeland are enduring icons in a way Carmel Snow and even Carrie Donovan are not. Legendary photographer Richard Avedon, who worked with Snow in the 1950s and 60s, has said that Snow missed her chance at fame because she lived in a time before editors were celebrities in their own right.

But there might be more to it than that. If you imagine the bold, haughty Vreeland, all severe black bun and bright red cheeks, navigating the corridors of Harpers Bazaar alongside the tiny, blue- or lavender-curled Snow, it’s not hard to pick which of the women was more likely to end up making a mark, even if both had an equal influence on the fashion world. Fashion has always been as much about style as substance, after all.

It would seem that one of the keys to making ‘editrix’ status is to be eccentric. You need to give people something to remember you by, and women like Vreeland and Wintour gave and give us plenty. Vreeland was the very essence of theatre and eccentricity. Told by her mother at a young age that she was “extremely ugly”, she set about reinventing herself as the “ideal girl” – arresting, witty, quirky and undeniably attention grabbing. When asked by Interview in 1980 if she was “self-invented” she replied, “But don’t we all invent ourselves?”, a credo which ran through her column, the memos she sent her staff, and even her surroundings. With decorator Billy Baldwin, she transformed her apartment into the “Garden Of Hell”, with red wall coverings, books, cushions and furniture. Her office was similarly scarlet.

Wintour’s eccentricities are more understated, buried under a veneer of control. But it is Wintour’s regimented aesthetic and lifestyle that makes her so intriguing. This a woman who despite being a prolific party thrower never stays at an event for more than the first ten minutes, who goes to bed at 10pm and wakes at 5:45am each morning, who reportedly forbids junior staffers to speak unless they are spoken to, and who, when animal activists dumped a dead raccoon on her plate while she ate lunch, calmly requested its removal and continued eating. If, post-Vreeland, the archetypal fashionista was oddball and eccentric, Wintour’s iciness became an eccentricity – and a cause to pay attention – in itself.

One thing’s for sure though, if you want to make a splash in the world of fashion - or anywhere else, really - it pays to be an original. It’s time to throw away the “rubbish” trend items and “common” classics and get fabulous, darling! In the words of Vreeland, “Never fear being vulgar, just boring”.


5 ways to unleash your inner editrix

1. Embrace your inner perfectionist. Send poorly written emails back to friends and colleagues for rewrites, tear up memos and documents that aren’t up to scratch, and loudly declare anything that displeases you, “Rubbish!”

2. Adopt a signature item. Anna has her sunglasses, Isabella has her hats, Carine has her eyebrows and kohl-rimmed eyes, Carrie had her pearls and Diana her red rouge.

3. Make nonsensical declarations, loudly and often. Be inspired by Diana’s Vreeland’s “blue jeans are the most beautiful things since the gondola”; “I always wear my sweater back-to-front; it is so much more flattering”; “pink is the navy blue of India”; and “people who eat white bread have no dreams”.

4. Get comfortable with yourself. None of the great fashion editors were great beauties, but all were undeniably striking and had a more lasting impact on fashion and culture than any supermodel.

5. Make friends with the right people. Socialites are so last week, modern day bohemians are so tomorrow.

- Rachel Hills

Published in Russh, November/December 2006.