September Issue

Anna Wintour plays out as a sole pair of eyes, her only protruding body part, which is always in business mode, thus explaining her icy demeanor. "The Devil Wears Prada" was just exaggerated anti-heroism. Anna is actually a detail oriented visionary. She calls her best trait "decisiveness", her weakness, "her children." She can turn on the charm when she wants, she kept rubbing the arm of an older buyer at dinner, guess that's how she got her kids? Only her knockout daughter is shown, openly dismissing the royal lineage of fashion and opting for law school at their Hamptons home. Incidentally, I was floored to find out Wintour is married, to a child psychologist. She seems like such a lone wolfess, but may have chosen to keep her fam out of the film.

Grace is Anna's sidekick, the dreamer, an ex-model, who before I saw the film thought was horrific, now I think she's beautiful. She is gifted not only at creative direction but tempering Anna to prevent her tyranny of decision. Grace gives the love of fantasy, play and mood to fashion, dressing up and shooting spreads, like her 20s inspired Paris shoot, which was sublime.

I was surprised to see them airbrush Sienna Miller's teeth and neck! I realized that Anna's pickiness and selection was based on the assumption that all the work was already frameworthy, only the most striking survived. There is a scene where muscular and bony Anna calls a cameraman chubby, but it is true, plus she lets some dude - whose name I forget - in her club who is a super-freak! He's the only one living up the the ridiculously excessive image of fashion, showing up to tennis in LV head to toe, but Anna's office and her top assistants are moderately humble and they seem quite simply, like workaholics.

I realized I don't know the slightest thing about fashion now, but I remembered why I once fell in love. Past the dress up games my girlfriends and I played in our teens and twenties (and some still now) it was my library in the attic, a place for the play of being seen. When I left the theater I let my hair out long, and stalked the streets like a moody cat, New York as my backdrop, a stage for the scene.