Fashion on Film

Anna Wintour: Not an Ice Queen?

Maureen Dowd on following the editrix at a party.

Does the Devil really wear Prada? The September Issue, a new documentary on Anna Wintour, explores whether the Vogue editor is really the ice queen she seems. It documents the process of putting together the magazine’s September issue in 2008—which, at four pounds, nine ounces, weighed “as much as a preemie” and was stuffed with a prelapsarian 727 ad pages. In her weekly column, Maureen Dowd writes, “The Vogue team and the moviemakers didn’t know they were dancing on the deck of the Titanic” when they made the movie. And following the film’s premiere last week, Dowd observes Anna Wintour from a “stiletto’s throw away” at Monkey Bar in New York. In an effort to discover what the “Skinny One” eats, Dowd told a waiter: “I’ll have what she’s having,” only to have him suggest something more appropriate, like a buttered tart. It ultimately doesn’t matter, however, whether Wintour is really a devil in Prada. Concludes Dowd: “We enjoy the editrix as dominatrix."