the september issue
Run, don’t walk to see The September Issue! Admittedly I am a fashion fanboy, spending hours as a teenager pouring over the pages of the Vogue archives I had access to in this glorious city known as Chicago.
I learned about fashion because of Vogue.
Now, you may look at me, a regularly denim-clad, half-breed Greek American and ask what the fcuk I know about fashion. But honey, don’t judge a book by its cover. I loathe menz fashion and truly believe the reason women have the most gorgeous clothing in the world (at any point in history, in any culture) is because as bearers of children, their reward is to be wrapped in beauty. Never mind that female fashion at times is suffered under the hand of merciless men who cut with a blatant disregard to the actual curvature of the body. I’m looking at you Dior, glancing sideways at you Blahnik, and winking at you Mugler (I still cry tears of joy when I see your corsets!). But I digress.
Just as American Vogue forever changed my life, Anna Wintour taught, and continues to teach me what fashion means.
The September Issue documents eight months leading up to the pivotal, what else, September issue of American Vogue, the largest issue of their publication year, and as it happens in 2007, their largest issue to date, an 840 page monster compendium of dress.
Wintour lets her guard down slightly in the film, opening her house, her workdays, and a bit of her mind to the cameras, but the usual and sundry natural British reserve embedded in her personality is evident. However, I must say that with her glasses off her marvelously complex eyes shine brightly under her fawn fringe. There is so much more than la reine de la mode in the film, but we never taste it. That is the beauty of Anna Wintour. Her decisiveness (her self-stated best trait), sharp as it may be, is all people need to know about her. The rest is none of our business.
Before I wax poetically about the ginger goddess that is Grace Coddington, and the utter mess that is André Leon Talley, I must mention a revealing thread that surfaced during the movie. Sienna Miller (gag, purge) was chosen at the intended cover model for the issue. The premise of the shoot was a fanciful Roman Holiday -esque spread of Miller in various famose piazze. Mario (de)Testino was chosen to shoot it and managed to bring back some mediocre pictures (sorry folks, I’m speaking the truth here) without one single shot of Miller at the Coliseum.
Uhh, hello. You were in Roma asshat.
Without raising her voice (was it the cameras?) Wintour repeatedly asked, nearly ten times by my count, where the Coliseum pictures were. None ever surfaced. Detestino failed, much to my glee because, as my play on his name suggests, I detest his 2000’s cliché photography. Where he once created, he now repeats. And did anyone else notice how much Miller looked like Kate Winslet?
Next up, André Leon Talley. Oh. My. God. Fashion homos of the world, we must do our very best to never, ever, become the raging lunacy that Talley presents. I cannot deny his influence in bending Wintour’s ear from time to time. And the man has an uncanny eye to spot, ignite, and crush trends with the bat of a false eyelash. But the fashion emergency that is Talley needs to be addressed. In some ways, I’m not sure why Wintour doesn’t clamp down on him more.
In a telling scene where he is receiving a tennis lesson, artfully draped in a Vuitton towel, huffing and puffing back and forth across the court, he breaks for a moment to explain to the camera that “…she intervened and nearly saved my life..” and then drops THE sound byte of the entire movie: “…what Anna says, goes…”
Finally, the real star of the documentary, if there is a star of such things, is Grace Coddington, creative director of American Vogue . While it may be that the eye belongs to Wintour, the mind belongs to Grace Coddington.
Her photo spreads, without fail, knock me to the ground with an emotional sledgehammer. I was thrilled to hear that she chose Galliano as an inspiration for one of her shoots. Her work with his clothing is the best in the world.
Beyond her eye for through-the-lens magic, Coddington opens up to us like no one else in the film. It is, for her, a chance to talk about the meaning of what she does and why she still does it after many successful years in the business. She presents the most human face to the camera and in some ways you can feel the emotional gut-punch she takes as some of her favorite images are removed from the issue. Of course, the winning moment comes near the end as she is looking a the final layout. She whispers “well, aside from Sienna, this is almost all my issue”. I secretly cheered when I heard that.
Grace Coddington is the kind of woman I’d like to relax in a café with, sipping red wine well into the night. This is her movie and I consider her the most amazing person in fashion today. She is a treasure and a genius, and the film is worth seeing just for her.