The Devil Rarely Wore Prada
Rebecca Johnson
Word Count 805
Whenever I tell people I worked as a writer for Vogue for almost twenty years, they inevitably ask, “What’s Anna like?”
“Great,” I tell them. Meetings were short, decisions were quick and binding. Wintour is smart, disciplined, with good taste and a wide ranging curiosity. Inevitably, they look disappointed because what they really want to know is, how closely does Wintour resemble Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada?
A different question, which requires a different answer. When the book, which was written by a former Vogue assistant came out, Wintour summoned the then managing editor of the magazine to her office. “Who,” she demanded to know, “is she?” She had no memory of the author ever working at the magazine.
I don’t think I have ever met anyone as indifferent to bland social niceties as Anna Wintour. When necessary, she could turn on her kittenish charm, a beguiling mixture of upperclass English crossed with sly gamine. You saw this side whenever Si Newhouse, the owner of the parent company, Conde Nast, would wander the halls. But around the office and in meetings, she was mostly tightlipped and blank faced, avoiding eye contact whenever possible. Her nickname—Nuclear Wintour—was apt but cruel, and, to my mind, hypocritical. Feminism is all about getting more women into the c-suite but only, it seems, if it’s done with a smile. In America, coldness is perceived as rude. We are a nation of people pleasers, even if it’s mostly performative. In a melting pot, we’re all equal. The English labor under no such delusions. As Andre Leon Talley, Anna’s once beloved sidekick used to say, “Anna is a real colonial dame.”
Working for Anna meant accepting these eccentricities of character. In monthly editorial meetings, contributing editors like myself, were expected to come prepared with ideas to discuss. These were odd, stilted affairs. For one thing, the meetings would be called for 10 a.m., but if Anna was running early, she’d go ahead and start. One day, I joined the meeting at 9:55 and Anna said sarcastically, “Thanks for joining us.” I glanced at the clock and reminded her that the meeting was called for 10:00.
Well dressed strangers would show up at these meetings with ideas scribbled on moleskin notebooks but nobody was ever introduced so you had no idea who anybody was. When you pitched your idea, Wintour never said ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, she would sort of smirk at you (a yes) or glare at you (a no), then look away. In his recently released memoir, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter describes attending one such meeting, “..(As) I got off the elevator onto the Vogue floor, I could almost smell the fear. Attractive young women skittered by with terrified looks on their faces.”
Having one’s worth reduced to a measure of usefulness was shocking to the daughters of Larchmont and graduates of Sarah Lawrence who tended to people the halls of Conde Nast back in the day.
The editors saw themselves as equals and expected to be treated accordingly. Anna saw it differently—we worked for her, not with her. One year, long before the Met gala became the high stakes cash register it is today, Anna decided to decorate the steps of the Great Hall of the museum on that night with female employees of the magazine. Everyone, from fashion assistants to senior editors, was told to wear a little black cocktail dress and stand at attention. As a freelancer, I was exempted from the request, but I remember thinking, what the hell?
The next day, the staff was in revolt. I found the whole thing amusing but, in retrospect, it sowed the seeds of an exodus among the more serious minded editors at the magazine. “I mean,” my friend Ilena said when explaining her move shortly thereafter to the New York Times magazine, “I don’t want to be fifty and working here.” (How right she was--my contract at the magazine was cancelled the year I turned fifty, though I can’t blame Anna. By then, I literally had no idea who the celebrities being discussed were.)
One thing the book got wrong was the Prada reference. You’d think somebody with Anna’s personality would have been attracted to the severe monochromatic blacks and navy favored by Miuccia Prada in the early 2000’s but, in fact, she preferred soft pastels and busy patterns of pink and pistachio. The first time I attended a party in her house, I was shocked by the cheerful yellow walls and drapes bursting with cabbage rose blooms. It all seemed so utterly un-Anna but, then again, as I learned from her, that’s what fashion is, a readily accessible tool that allows you to remake the actual self into a preferred version. Fashion isn’t who you are—it’s who you want to be.
Rebecca is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in various publications including (alphabetically) Elle, Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The NYT Magazine, Salon, Vogue (contributing editor 1999-2020). Johnson is the author of the novel And Sometimes Why. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
