Documentary dissects the head and heart of fashion

NEW YORK - Anna Wintour admits that she "couldn't do without" Grace Coddington, the woman who has worked beside her for the past 15 years, producing the arbiter of fashion and high society, American Vogue.

But when Wintour, Vogue's feared and adored editor-in-chief, allowed cameras to film a warts-and-all documentary about the magazine, Coddington threatened to terminate the most powerful relationship in the fashion world and resign.

Wintour held firm and Coddington, Vogue's creative director, retracted her objection.

But, as the resulting award-winning film, The September Issue, reveals, Coddington refused to speak to the programme's crew for two months, except repeatedly to order them to "go away".

Strict secrecy surrounds the feature-length documentary, which won the United States Documentary Award for Best Cinematography at this year's Sundance film festival for Bob Richman's work, and was nominated for the grand jury prize.

Wintour even remained tight-lipped in an interview last week on American television's 60 Minutes. It will go on general release on September 11.

Details that have escaped the thick web of silence surrounding the documentary, however, describe the cameras shifting from runway to office to meetings to photo shoots as Wintour and Coddington assemble the magazine described by the New York Times as being so important that it is "to our era what the idea of God was, in Voltaire's famous parlance, to his: if it didn't exist, we would have to invent it".

Director R. J. Cutler films a meeting in Paris with Wintour and Burt Tansky, the CEO of the department store Neiman Marcus, in which he pleads with her to pressure designers to reduce the size of their collections and deliver their goods on time.

"Anna is fundamentally telling these men what to put on their shelves," said Cutler.

"She's sitting there as minister of fashion for the world - with her associates - and declaring what we shall wear. You not only see her advising Neiman Marcus on what to buy, but you see her selecting the designers who will design for Gap and the clothes they will design."

Wintour has become famous for inspiring fear and respect throughout the fashion industry since she took over in 1988: tales of her uncompromising management style are legion and are widely assumed to be the basis for The Devil Wears Prada, the film featuring Meryl Streep as the draconian editor of an influential fashion magazine and Edna Mode, the cartoon character in The Incredibles, who advised style-conscious superheroes against wearing capes.

But gaining Wintour's trust was just one of the challenges faced by Cutler, the award-winning filmmaker who also made The War Room, a documentary about the 1992 campaign for the US presidency, and is an executive producer of the FX's reality show, 30 Days With Morgan Spurlock.

"Coddington was scary. She's the second scariest person in the world," he said.

"The day I met Grace Coddington, the first thing she said to me was, 'Go away'. She threatened to quit and told us to stay away. Often."

Coddington and Wintour began working at American Vogue on the same day, and the creative director's trademark wild, red mane and refusal to use make-up is the absolute opposite of Wintour's perfectly coiffed and immaculate style.

"Grace really didn't like the idea [of us filming her work]," admitted Cutler. "It took a couple of months and a lot of hard work before she would speak to us.

"I eventually managed to say to her: 'Give us one chance [to film you working] and if you're not happy we won't come back again - but if you give us one chance, then maybe you'll give us a second chance' - and that's what happened."

The connection between the two women, said Cutler, is profound.

"Really, this is a story about two women, using the world of fashion as a background. Throughout the film, you see the collision between them: there is Grace, the person with the art and the craft, and there is Anna, who has the vision of the business," said Cutler.

"It takes Anna until the last possible second of our documentary, but she then acknowledges that she and Grace couldn't do without each other," said Cutler.

According to Cady Heron, a blogger at the online entertainment news site Collider.com who attended one of the few screenings, Grace soon becomes the "heart" of the documentary.

"Grace emerges from the pack of Vogue staffers as a brilliant artist with an unfaltering eye, but more importantly, as the only one brazen enough to question Anna's seemingly arbitrary decrees.

"Anna's opinion may be what everyone in fashion cares most about, but Grace demonstrates why we should care about fashion."

The two women have a fascinating, frustrating and fruitful relationship, and watching it is one of The September Issue's greatest pleasures."

The film also reveals that, for all her strength, Wintour has a softer side. "You also get a disarming, fascinating, occasional glimpse of vulnerability," said James Rocchi, a reviewer for Cinematical.com.

Heron agrees: "For all her ill-tempered lip pursing and cross-armed, imploring looks, Anna Wintour seems a delicate, insecure creature. Her highly successful siblings are quite amused by her line of work, revealing Anna as a person longing to be taken seriously."

- OBSERVER