A Vogue Idea

So, yeah – I totally mined the Sex and the City episode guide to come up with a fitting headline for my review of The September Issue, but the truth is that title of a fourth-season SATC episode can best sum up what filmmaker R.J. Cutler had when he thought about making a documentary about the travails of Vogue editrix Anna Wintour.

Cutler, by the way, shot the thing two years ago, so I’m sure you’ll be watching the movie with ever trendy nostalgia-tinged eyes given the current TETs (that’s tough economic times).

Nevertheless, though, spending a remarkably taut and precise 88 minutes lost in Wintour’s realm at Vogue is a treat for nostalgics and cinephiles alike.

The September Issue is a documentary about the single most important figure in the $300 billion global fashion industry – that would be Wintour, natch. It chronicles the year Cutler spent with her and her team as they readied the record-setting September 2007 issue of Vogue, the largest they’ve produced, down to the last brutal nitpick of cover girl Sienna Miller’s neck and teeth.

But the film, which is fascinating and funny and insightful, transcends Wintour. It’s about Vogue, of course, but it’s also about an industry that can make people very nervous (as Wintour puts it), and it’s about what it really takes to assemble an iconic piece of pop and put it out there for all to see and dissect.

That all of this goes back to Wintour is a testament to her significance and power. “Anna’s like…Madonna,” says designer Thakoon. She’s an influence.

We have this image of her, don’t we – we don’t call her an editrix for nothing – and this film debunks it a little bit.

Wintour’s a complicated woman of the world. She’s able and smart and tough, not to mention successful and respected. I could say she’s feared, but I think misunderstood (by some) is more like it.

She’s impervious, indeed, but she’s also quite fair with her colleagues. Just ask Vogue’s longtime creative director Grace Coddington.

She and Wintour have worked together for decades. They understand each other and they respect each other. Coddington probably knows better than anyone what is Wintour’s taste, let alone the pressure she’s under, so when we see in the doc that Wintour has 86d some of the (very expensive) photos Coddington has produced, we get a sense that she’s not making those cuts to be a bitch.

Wintour has been tasked – and proven (she’s the one who thought to put celebrities instead of models on the cover of fashion magazines) – with the task of being a tastemaker. Designers don’t make a move without consulting her.

She knows her s---, and she’s good at it, too. She rules with an iron, if perfectly accessorized fist, and if she were a man no one would ever call her “the devil.”

The September Issue is a breezy watch, and that’s because I don’t think Wintour was too keen on revealing too much about herself. But when she did, like when she said her family’s “amused” by what she does, it reminds us, it shows us that she’s very much human.

Her mystique and allure remains well-preserved, though. We’ve learned just enough not to vilify her so much.

I really enjoyed this doc because of the people in it – you really haven’t lived until you see André Leon Talley leaving Vera Wang’s high-five hanging – and because I’m in that magazine-production world, although in a considerably much smaller scale.

It captured the essence of the process so well, Cutler should be proud – and nominated.

My Rating ****

Photo: Roadside Attractions.