Front Row Read online

  Front Row

  Also by Jerry Oppenheimer

  Martha Stewart: Just Desserts: The Unauthorized Biography

  The Other Mrs. Kennedy: Ethel Skakel Kennedy:

  An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics

  State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton

  Seinfeld: The Making of an American Icon

  Barbara Walters: An Unauthorized Biography

  Idol, Rock Hudson: The True Story of an American Film Hero

  Front Row

  Anna Wintour

  The Cool Life and Hot Times of

  Vogue’s Editor in Chief

  Jerry Oppenheimer

  St. Martin’s Press

  New York

  FRONT ROW. Copyright © 2005 by Jerry Oppenheimer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Frontispiece photo of Anna Wintour by Corbis.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Oppenheimer, Jerry.

  Front row : Anna Wintour, the cool life and hot times of Vogue’s editor in chief /

  Jerry Oppenheimer.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. 361) and index (p. 365).

  ISBN 0-312-32310-7

  EAN 978-0312-32310-3

  1. Wintour, Anna, 1949– 2. Periodical editors—Great Britain—Biography.

  3. Fashion editors—Great Britain—Biography. 4. Vogue. I. Title: Anna Wintour, the cool life and hot times of Vogue’s editor in chief. II. Title.

  PN5123.W585O66 2005

  070.5'1'092—dc22

  [B] 2004051313

  First Edition: February 2005

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Caroline, Cukes, and Trix

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  one: Family Roots

  two: A Teenage Bond

  three: Swinging London

  four: A Growing Independence

  five: London Party Girl

  six: Shopgirl Dropout

  seven: Finding Love at Harrods

  eight: Live-in Model

  nine: Making the Masthead

  ten: Family Affairs

  eleven: Creative Energy

  twelve: Meeting Mr. Wrong

  thirteen: Playing Hardball

  fourteen: Axed American Style

  fifteen: A Curious Betrayal

  sixteen: An Embarrassing Position

  seventeen: Complex Persona

  eighteen: Out in the Cold

  nineteen: The Chanel Affair

  twenty: A Savvy Decision

  twenty-one: New York by Storm

  twenty-two: A Territorial Grab

  twenty-three: Mister Big

  twenty-four: In Vogue

  twenty-five: Golden Handcuffs

  twenty-six: Marriage Made in Heaven

  twenty-seven: Baby Makes Three

  twenty-eight: Anna’s Guillotine

  twenty-nine: Lover, Friend, Mother

  thirty: Beginning of the End

  thirty-one: The Parking Lot

  thirty-two: July Fourth Massacre

  thirty-three: Anna and the Boss

  thirty-four: Madonna, Di, and Tina

  thirty-five: The Assistant

  thirty-six: Fashion Battlefield

  thirty-seven: The Party’s Over

  thirty-eight: An Affair to Remember

  thirty-nine: A New Life

  Selected Bibliography

  Author’s Note on Sources

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  Some two hundred people on three continents who have known Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour—present and former friends, lovers, colleagues, employees, and associates—agreed to be interviewed for this book. Others kindly opened doors for me, steered me in the right direction, or agreed to verify or back up controversial facts and anecdotes.

  The writing of a book such as this is a collaborative effort, and I could not have succeeded, inasmuch as I did, without their candid insights, observations, and critical assessments.

  Wintour, the daughter of a prominent British journalist, refused to be interviewed for this book and declined in any way to help. Moreover, she instructed others not to cooperate. Some abided by her directive, others didn’t.

  Wintour’s response was odd, since over the years she has offered up numerous, though mostly self-serving, interviews and even permitted a British television crew to follow her, in a limited way, for a documentary. At the same time she has been quoted as saying she resents the press. It was clear she did not want a book over which she had no control written about her life.

  Most everyone I contacted agreed to talk on the record and without any ground rules. A minority, for personal, professional, or financial reasons—their livelihoods depend on Wintour—requested and were granted anonymity. Not everyone was willing to put his or her career on the line, or to jeopardize relationships. You know who you are.

  My goal from the beginning was to portray Wintour in the truest and most objective light, and I believe my sources aided me in fulfilling that end. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all those who took the time to answer my many questions:

  Patti Gilkyson Agnew, Shig Akida, Moriah Allen, Judy Bachrach, Curt Bass, Julie Baumgold, Dianne Benson, Frances Bentley, A. Scott Berg, Robin Blackburn, Chris Blackwell, Andrea Blanche, Peter Bloch, Isabella Blow, Stephen Bobroff, Patricia Bosworth, Sheila Botein, Catherine Jay Boyd, Jimmy Brad-shaw, Peter Braunstein, Joe Brooks, Stephanie Brush, Gay Bryant, Paul Callan, Jeremy Campbell, Jenny Capitain, Carol Carson, Anne Carter, George Carter, Maureen Cleave, Alex Cockburn, Nik Cohn, Dana Cowan, Toni Cunliffe, Elen Curran, Judith Daniels, Marie Davis, Emma de Bendern Galitizen, Jacques Dehornois, Nigel Dempster, Joanna Dingemann, Byron Dobell, Susan Duff, Susan Edmiston, Tony Elliott, Richard Ely, Edward Jay Epstein, Michel Esteban, Diane Lokey Farb, Nigel Farndale, Clay Felker, Carol Felsenthal, Willie Fielding, Stephanie Fierz, Zandy Forbes, Phillip Frazer, Kathleen Fury, David Gilbert, Eliza Gilkyson, Nancy Gilkyson, Robin Givhan, Adair Gock-ley, Elaine Greene, Sarah Griffiths, Barbara Griggs, Michael Gross, Liz Groves, Valerie Grove, Catherine Guinness, Chris Hall, Sophie Hicks, Felicity Green Hill, Pat Hill, Ian Hislop, Jade Hobson, Jennifer Hocking, Shelby Hodge, Annabel Hodin, Min Hogg, Georgina Howell, Barbara Hulanicki, Richard In-grams, Helen Irwin, Leslie Jay, Liz Jobey, Laurie Jones, Anne Kampman, Mary Kenny, Philip Kingsley, Marilyn Kirschner, Elsa Klensch, Nora Lee Knight, Gini Kopecky, Willie Landels, Jack Langguth, Vivienne Lasky, Guy Le Baube, Stacy Schneer Lee, Zazel Loven, Earle Mack, Dan Matthews, Anthony Mazzola, Joanie McDonell, Angus McGill, Peter McKay, Nancy McKeon, Barbara McKibben, Quita McMath, Richard Meier, Polly Mellen, Sheila Metzner, Carol Mithers, Valerie Monroe, Alma Moore, Jimmy Moore, Alida Morgan, William Mostyn-Owen, Bryan Moynahan, Karen Mullarkey, Jillie Murphy, Tohru Nakamura, Mary Beth Naye, Richard Neville, Nancy Slade Newlove, Helmut Newton, Charlotte Noel, Edna O’Brien, Denise Otis, Patricia O’Toole, Jean Pagliuso, Laura Pank, Betsy Parish, Helen Jay Pennant, Lisa Petersen, Carolyn Pfeiffer, Tom Pocock, Jeffrey Podolski, Virgina Pratt, John Pringle, Der-mot Purgave, Jean Rafferty, Piers Paul Read, Barbara Reilly, Brian Rendall, Susie Rich, Glenys Roberts, Frenelle Rogers, Uli Rose, Pat Rotter, Leslie Russell, Jordan Schaps, Laurie Schechter, Susanna Schindler, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Marian Schlesinger, Joan Schnitzer-Levy, Gaia Servadio, Mort Sheinman, Barbara Shoemaker, Drusilla Beyfus Shulman, Milton Shulman, P
aul Sinclaire, Jerold Smokler, Lady Valerie Solti, Davis Sprinkle, Winston Stona, Susan Summers, Dan Taylor, Sara Taylor, Elizabeth “Neal” Gilkyson Stewart Thorpe, Becca Cason Thrash, Ann Trehearne, Elizabeth Tretter, Deborah Turbeville, Jean Vallely, Helen Vanam, Rosemary Vanamee, Nanette Var-ian, Claire Victor, Brian Vine, Alexander Walker, Liz Walker, Beverly Wardale, Marilyn Warnick, James Wedge, Carol Wheeler, Cristina Zilkha.

  Those hundreds of hours of interviews and the huge amount of research that go into a biography of this sort could not have been accomplished without the assistance of seasoned researchers.

  I owe a special debt of gratitude to author and journalist Judy Oppen-heimer, whose probing, careful interviewing style, and devotion to fairness and objectivity helped make this book possible, as did Caroline Walton Howe’s brilliant investigative work and sharp eye for detail.

  In London, Elizabeth Fay and Jessica Barrington did important legwork and research. There are many more who assisted on both sides of the Atlantic, and I hold you in great esteem.

  An author cannot make it through the many pitfalls of the publishing world without men (and women) who are made of steel: the literary agent. I have been blessed with having the crème de la crème—Dan Strone and Robert Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. A special thanks to Dan’s assistant, Hilary Rubin.

  At St. Martin’s, I’d like to thank Jennifer Weis, Stefanie Lindskog, Sally Richardson, John Murphy, and the rest of the team for making it all happen.

  Prologue

  Though the Manhattan sidewalks were coated with grimy slush and patches of ice, the thirty-something woman wore strappy Jimmy Choos and was bare-legged, something even Carrie Bradshaw wouldn’t have done for Mr. Big at his weirdest. But an exception had to be made in this case, despite the wintry weather, for what was to be a memorable moment. This was the woman’s big day—her first and final job interview with the goddess of the world’s fashion bible, Anna Wintour.

  A ranking candidate for a six-figure-a-year-with-perks features editor job, the woman had been well-briefed by a friend, a Voguette already safely ensconced in the elite fold, as to the toe-cleavage shoes sans stockings. Anna, the bosom buddy had warned the job seeker, dictates everything that goes into the magazine, along with the behavior and attitude in its hallowed halls, from how subordinates should act on the elevators when she’s aboard—subdued, respectful, no eye contact—to how they are supposed to dress if they want to work there, or continue working there.

  Thus, naked legs and open-toed stilettos in the bitter New York winter were requirements of the famed and feared editrix’s unwritten dress code. It’s known among the fashion world cognoscenti that Anna is prone to hire based on dress and looks, let alone spike stories if someone is not photogenic enough for her. “If we’re talking about fashion editors, on the whole it’s important to me that they have a sense of style,” she’s intoned. “And on the editorial side”—where the candidate in question hoped to work—“after a few months they will end up looking like Vogue. It just rubs off that way.” As a Vogue editor who knows and abides by Anna’s rules notes, “People who work here have to look a certain way If somebody hasn’t changed their appearance within six months . . . something isn’t going right.”

  Besides the bare legs and towering heels, the Vogue wannabe has been advised by her friend to wear little makeup and a coat with a matching dress. To pass Anna’s muster, she’s told, one must strictly comply. And she was finally instructed not to be fashionably late; Anna fumes when she’s made to wait.

  The candidate arrived at the appointed hour, confident in securing the job she had always dreamed of. She’d already passed muster with flying colors in interviews with Vogue’s managing editor who does screening and with Condé Nast’s human resources department. Her résumé—and pedigree—have been thoroughly checked. In her mind, the job’s in the bag; in her case a four-figure Hermès Birkin for which her name had sat on a waiting list at Bergdorf ’s for more than a year.

  She also has gilt-edged credentials and a solid reputation for writing about fashion and boldfaced names—celebrities, artists, designers, society types—and possesses a dynamite chic red leather Filofax brimming with all the right names and private numbers. She knows all the dirt and how to dish it—also prerequisites for getting the nod from the editor in chief.

  Besides all of that, she’s a fashionista par excellence—all in all, a perfect Vogue candidate.

  Last step, the final interview with Anna of the dominatrix power bob.

  But things do not go well from the moment the boss woman’s assistant—one in a relatively long and harried line—summons her to enter the royal chamber in the Condé Nast palace that towers high above Times Square.

  The first thing that strikes her is the immensity of Anna’s office and the long, long approach from the door to where the editor once dubbed “nuclear Wintour” is holding court behind her enormous, sleek, and devoid-of-any-semblance-of-work prototype Buchsbaum desk; the distance seems to the interviewee like the seemingly endless runway at the Versace shows in Milan. The office itself is stark and cold, much like the pin-thin, famously glacial woman who inhabits it. Anna, in a little Chanel number and her signature sunglasses—which make eye contact all but impossible—never rises to greet the candidate, just briskly commands, “Sit, please.”

  “I really thought I was going to get the job untilI met her,” says the Vogue aspirant, well known and respected in fashion and celebrity media. “Anna was very, very cool and contradicted everythingI said. She would ask me questions and I would answer in the most intelligent way I could, and then she would contradict me. For instance, she said, ‘What would you do in the music section?’ I said something about ‘going very upscale.’ And she said, ‘We’re a populist magazine.’ She asked me what I’d do with another section, and I told her I thought that deserved a populist view. She said, ‘We’re an upscale magazine.’ She just didn’t want me to win. She’s very scary. And I’ve never been scared in journalism.

  “I’ve gotten almost every job I’ve interviewed for because I’m really good on interviews,” continues the Vogue hopeful, “but I knew within just a few minutes that I would never get that job because I felt she was looking for me to fail, there was something almost sadistic about what was going on.

  “I thought, ‘What’s my best mode of behavior here? I truly cannot contradict her. I don’t want to get into a battle, or competitive mode with her.’ I wasn’t intimidated, but I wouldn’t allow her to make me contradict myself. I wasn’t going to be spineless, so I tried to stick to my guns. I thought, ‘Why let her fuck with my head?’”

  After twenty minutes, Anna, looking bored, brusquely concluded the interview.

  It’s the last time the woman heard from Vogue.

  Afterward, her friend and others at the magazine told her she was better off because “everyone at Vogue is miserable, and everyone’s terrified of Anna.”

  The woman, who went on to other desirable media jobs and a book deal, observes, “A lot of people around Anna, and this is true at every fashion magazine, are gay men, and they’re the only ones at Vogue who are not terrorized by her. The thing is, she doesn’t really like women, which is certainly curious for the editor of the world’s most influential fashion magazine for women. I’ve always wondered, what’s with her? Why is she like that? What makes her tick? What’s her story?”

  People want to read about

  fashion and controversy and gossip.

  If Vogue can’t give it to them, who can?

  —ANNA WINTOUR,

  The New York Times, October 31, 1988

  Front Row

  one

  Family Roots

  Born on November 3, 1949, Anna was a healthy tot with a mop of straight, shiny dark brown hair and intelligent, dreamy grayish-green eyes set in a beautiful, tiny oval face. She was late to talk, and when she did, she spoke very little and was thought by her parents to be a shy and distant flower. Anna had come into the world at an ir
onic moment in time; only weeks before her birth, years of clothing rationing had ended in war-torn Britain—and clothing and fashion would become her passion.

  As the first daughter in what was then a family of two sons whose father came from a line of military men and who had become a steely, ambitious newspaperman, the dainty girl would have much to live up to. She was the second of Charles Vere Wintour and Eleanor Trego Baker Wintour’s children who were born in London after the Nazi bombs and rockets had stopped raining death and destruction. The other postwar child was James Charles, a gentle, easy-to-handle tyke who was born two and a half years before Anna.

  But the Wintours’ first, Gerald Jackson, born almost a decade before Anna, was the parents’ true pride and joy, the one the others would be compared to.

  Charles Wintour felt certain that Gerald would follow in his footsteps as a journalist. For his eighth birthday, the father had given the fair-haired son a toy printing kit from Harrods, complete with various faces of little rubber type with wooden blocks to set them in, a messy black ink pad, and a sheaf of blank newsprint. It was his favorite gift of all. On his own, Gerald produced a little newspaper, a diary about his small world, and proudly presented the first edition of the Wintour Daily to his father, a memento Charles Wintour would treasure his entire life.

  Eleanor Baker, an American, who was nicknamed Nonie, met Wintour at Cambridge University in England in the fall of 1939. The petite, bright, bespectacled, and extremely plain-looking twenty-two-year-old Bostonian, who had a prettier sister named Jean, had gone to a fancy girls’ boarding school in Connecticut called Westover and was just out of Radcliffe.

  She had initially tried to get to England as a correspondent for a small weekly newspaper, The Daily Republican, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, owned by close relatives, but when that failed, she enrolled at Newnham College, one of the two schools for women at Cambridge. “It was just something to do—Nonie had no particular ties to England,” notes an American cousin, Elizabeth Gilkyson Stewart Thorpe, known as “Neal,” who became a prominent women’s magazine editor in New York. Always known for her sharp tongue, critical manner, and liberal politics, Nonie Baker had dreams of becoming a writer or journalist. Instead, she would marry one and become a dedicated social worker.