I have just finished reading the unauthorised biography of Anna Wintour. It took me ages to get through. Not because it was bad — to the contrary — but because I was getting so much out of it. I needed to read a chapter, assimilate the information, make sense of it and then move on. Despite all the Machiavellian, brutish, unfeeling actions of her life, Anna Wintour has influenced an enormous part of mine without me even knowing it.
As the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue US, her life couldn't be more dissimilar to mine — in fact in my fashion self-identity I see myself far more as Suzy Menkes as opposed to Nuclear Wintour. However, I am inextricably connected to her in all that I do as she has set the pace in this industry, impervious to criticism, for so many years.
Read it if you can.
Thanks to Dan Pinch for the lending of the book.