The case for Anna

I recently watched The September Issue. Again. Love it. Especially the scene when Candy Pratts Price declares "September is the January of Fashion". I'm more interested in the office dynamic than the fashion. Scary as it is, it is not so different from my on experiences.


Having said that, whenever anyone mentions the documentary, they end up gushing about much they love Grace (Sarah, you especially). In fact it has happened twice this week already. 


See, for me, The September Issue (like Vogue) is Anna's show. Maybe it is because I come from working in a creative environment, but every time i watch that film, I can't help but admiring (and yes liking) Anna, not Grace. How can you not after hearing her recount the contempt of her siblings (and daughter)? After all, she's the most powerful woman in the world!! She's efficient, she knows what she wants and even funny. 


The fact is you can't always be the nice guy. So Anna cut some of Grace's shoot. Welcome to my world.


Just read this charming account of Anna from political columnist Paul Sheenan:


Life trumps fiction. Wintour also starred in my own experiences at the Paris fashion shows, transient and marginal as they were. As I was leaving the tent during one of the first shows, I noticed on the floor beneath Wintour's front-row chair her invitation, cast aside. I collect interesting ephemera, and picked it up. It said, ''Anna Wintour, seat A1''. The queen's invitation. From Dior.

After the next show, I noticed the same thing and retrieved a second invitation. This time, entirely by accident, I found myself shoulder to shoulder with the queen in the scrum shuffling out of the tent and on to the next show. I said something about keeping her invitation as a keepsake, and showed what I had in my hand. She looked at me as if I were a stalker.

The relationship evolved. Wintour kept discarding, I kept collecting. The fourth invitation I asked her to sign. She did. I left promptly. When I went to retrieve a fifth invitation it was not there.

Outside the tent she handed it to me. She had saved it. She did so again for the next show, and the next. Finally there was the final show of the season. Yves Saint Laurent.

After it was over I found the queen, and she had done her duty. She handed me the invitation. She even smiled. When I looked down at my final treasure I found the words, ''To Paul, bon voyage, love Anna. 

Now Grace Coddington is a different story:

The one time I encountered Coddington first-hand, while covering the Paris fashion shows in the mid-1990s, I found her cold and aloof, not even remotely interested in talking to a stranger, and not even remotely interested in hiding the impression that she was royalty in the fashion tents and I was a nobody.

The fact is I don't think of Grace as such an amazing stylist, not  compared to Carine Roitfeld or Emmanuelle Alt. You have to admit American Vogue can't compete with French Vogue.(More on Carine later.)


So Sarah, have I converted you?