The September Issue: Behind Fashion’s Most Elegant Curtain

Grace Coddington, despite her apparent lack of enthusiasm toward the director’s presence in the office, is the documentary’s unexpected star. When Cutler entered the Vogue offices, Coddington was apprehensive about participating in the film. But after Cutler realized she was “the only one who argued,” as Coddington said in an interview with Style.com, she was left with no other choice. Coddington began at Vogue after winning a Vogue model search as a teenager, which launched her career into fashion — first as a successful model and then on the other side, starting at UK Vogue as a junior fashion editor and eventually working her way to becoming American Vogue’s creative director. Her first day at U.S. Vogue was on Wintour’s first day as editor-in-chief.

As we watch Coddington work with and against Anna, it becomes apparent that Cutler has decided to use her as the lens through which we experience Anna and the creation of the issue. Every spread is wrought with tensions between the two — Coddington continuously checks the status of her shots to find out which outfits Anna has approved of, what Anna has decided should be kept in the magazine, what Anna insists must be taken out — but regardless, the duo’s immense amount of respect for one another is consistently apparent.

I have seen few things as visually beautiful on screen as the scene where we see Coddington at work with Steven Meisel for the twenties shoot. While her work is, like everything else at Vogue overruled by Anna’s opinion, Coddington holds her own and makes her thoughts known in a way few are able to do in her presence. Grace Coddington personifies what true love of fashion is: She is an artist in her own right, while allowing herself to be overshadowed by Anna’s decisions when necessary (she declares in one scene, “I know when to stop pushing Anna”). In many ways, their relationship can be seen as the backbone of Cutler’s film.

There are other relationships too, of course — the movie gives less screen time than expected to André Leon Talley, who has always been Anna’s larger-than-life fur-draped diamond-studded right-hand man, and who lights up the screen whenever he is on — and they all make up the totality of how it is to work at Vogue on what is clearly one of the most stressful magazine issues to create. From the assistant to jumps away, as if scalded, to Anna’s quiet “excuse me” to Neiman Marcus CEO Burt Tansky imploring Anna to somehow make the designers deliver their orders on time, you get a sense of her far-reaching and very real power within that world; but from the quiet moments looking at Bee with a slight smile or even taking a moment to entertain Coddington’s suggestion of an excruciating pink-and-black blouse with rubber hands sewn onto the front, you get a sense of the many more moments of teamwork and collaboration that went into making the 2007 September issue of Vogue — all five pounds and 840 pages of it.

While Anna may remain in the front row wearing fur and sunglasses, arms folded, inscrutable as ever, Cutler has humanized her and her publication, if only a bit. The black curtain so heavily thrown over Vogue, while still draped strategically as to not allow complete access, is now a shade lighter — a slate gray if you will — and a lighter, sheerer fabric.

Related:

PHOTOGALLERY: The September Issue
The September Issue [Film Site]
Paris, Je T’Aime – The 20s Shoot [Style.com]
Andre Leon Talley Plays Tennis [Thumbwar TV]

Related on Wintour:
The Summer of Her Discontent [NYMag, 1999]

Trailer: