Inside the bubble

Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Photo / AP

What I often see is that people are scared of fashion - because they're frightened or insecure, so they put it down. On the whole, people who say demeaning things about our world, I think it's because they feel in some way excluded or not part of the 'cool group'.

"Just because you like to put on a beautiful Carolina Herrera dress or a pair of J Brand blue jeans instead of something basic from K-Mart doesn't mean you're a dumb person. There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous." - Anna Wintour, in The September Issue

To those not interested in the fashion world, names like Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, Emmanuelle Alt, Grace Coddington and Kate Lanphear will mean absolutely nothing. But these are the most powerful people in fashion; the magazine editors and stylists that decide what is fashion.

Sure, fashion designers are the ones who literally make the clothes that go on to become the trends, but it's the likes of these women who shape the way each fashion season goes. Their positions at magazines like Vogue and Elle mean they have a major influence over what women around the world want to wear, they can make or break a designer's career - and of course they also have incredible wardrobes.

It's easy to see why these powerful women have become as revered for their style as the celebrities they feature in their magazines: their jobs and lives are seemingly glamorous, with their fashion shows, first access to designer clothes, parties, photo shoots, international travel and more.

Lately, it seems as though the media has turned inwards to examine the lives of these women - CNN recently did a feature on French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, following her to fashion shows and shoots, and US Vogue's notoriously guarded editor Anna Wintour was profiled by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes. And who can forget The Devil Wears Prada, the film and book supposedly based on the working life of one of Wintour's ex-assistants, in which the assistant moans incessantly about getting her formidable fashion magazine editor boss a coffee.

The US Vogue office and Wintour are examined once again in The September Issue, a new documentary set to screen at the New Zealand Film Festival next month. I've seen it, and it's incredible.

Directed by R.J. Cutler (his previous documentaries include The War Room and A Perfect Candidate), the film is an intimate portrait of the legendary editor and the magazine she has edited since 1988.

Cutler followed 59-year-old Wintour and her team for eight months in 2007 as they created the September issue of the magazine (September issues are usually the biggest of the year for Vogue, in terms of content and advertising).

The crew follows Wintour as she attends designer go-sees (she is uncomfortably curt with Yves Saint Laurent designer Stefano Pilati when he shows her a collection featuring lots of black, Wintour's least favourite shade), sits front row at fashion shows (to which she is always early, never "fashionably late"), brutally cuts photo shoots from the magazine, grills her staff over whether pink is the "right message" for September and complains that covergirl Sienna Miller looks too "teethy".

While all of that may sound just a little bit vapid, it is inspiring to watch all of these larger than life fashion characters at work (or, in the case of editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, playing tennis in head-to-toe Louis Vuitton).

It is, however, Vogue's creative director Grace Coddington, described as "the greatest living stylist there is" by features director Sally Singer, who is the real star of the film. The ex-model, who began at Vogue on the same day as Wintour and charmingly clomps around the office in flat shoes and no makeup, is a friendly, romantic and upfront foil to the cold and intimidating Wintour.

Their relationship is a compelling and inspirational one - while everyone else seems to cower in fear whenever Wintour speaks, Coddington is ballsy enough to argue back and disagree over everything from fashion spreads being cut to photoshopping to budgets.

"I know when to stop pushing her ... she doesn't know when to stop pushing me," jokes Coddington to the crew, who also end up featuring in one of her photoshoots.

It's her story that makes up the heart of the film so it's interesting to note that she was at first opposed to the idea, threatening to quit if Wintour let a camera crew into the office. Her first words to Cutler? "Go away."

Wintour-isms

"My brothers and sister are very ... amused by what I do."

"I had just been on a trip to Minnesota where I can only kindly describe most of the people that I saw as little houses." - The notoriously fat-phobic Wintour in her 60 Minutes profile.

"I think when I find myself getting really, really angry it might be time to stop."

"You need to go to the gym!" - Wintour's advice to the cameraman that features in Coddington's fashion shoot

"I hope I'm not ... I try not to be, but I like people who represent the best of what they do and if that turns you into a perfectionist than maybe I am." - Wintour's response on 60 Minutes when asked if she thinks of herself as a bitch.

* The September Issue, New Zealand Film Festival, July 10 and 11, tickets from www.nzff.co.nz.