Anna Wintour

Her father, Charles Wintour, who was Editor of the London-based Evening Standard from 1959 to 1976, consulted with her on how to make the newspaper relevant to the youth of the era. She became interested in fashion as a teenager and her career in fashion journalism began at two British magazines. Later, she moved to the United States, with stints at New York and House & Garden. She returned to London and was the Editor of British Vogue between 1985 and 1987. A year later, she assumed control of the franchise's magazine in New York, reviving what many saw as a stagnating publication. Her use of the magazine to shape the fashion industry has been the subject of debate within it. Animal rights activists have attacked her for promoting fur, while other critics have charged her with using the magazine to promote elitist and unattainable views of femininity and beauty.


A former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 bestselling roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada, later made into a successful 2006 film starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a fashion editor, believed to be based on Wintour. In 2009, Wintour's editorship of Vogue was the original focus of a documentary film, R. J. Cutler's The September Issue. The film's focus switched to the creative teams and more senior fashion editors as filming progressed.^[5]

Early life and education[edit]

Wintour was born in Hampstead, London, to Charles Wintour (1917–1999), editor of the Evening Standard, and Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker (1917–1995), an American and the daughter of a Harvard Law School professor.^[6] Her parents were married in 1940 and divorced in 1979.^[7] Wintour was named after her maternal grandmother, Anna Baker (née Gilkyson), a merchant's daughter from Pennsylvania.^[8] Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded publications such as Honey and Petticoat, was her stepmother.^[9][10]


Wintour's grandfather was Major-General Fitzgerald Wintour, a British military officer and descendant of Prime Minister George Grenville. Through her paternal grandmother, Alice Jane Blanche Foster, Wintour is a great-great-great-granddaughter of the late-18th-century novelist Lady Elizabeth Foster, who was later the Duchess of Devonshire, and her first husband, the Irish politician John Thomas Foster. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather was Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, who served as the Anglican Bishop of Derry. Sir Augustus Vere Foster, 4th Baronet, the last Baronet of that name, was a granduncle of Wintour's.^[11] She is a niece of Cordelia James, Baroness James of Rusholme, the daughter of Fitzgerald Wintour.^[12]


Wintour had four siblings. Her older brother, Gerald, died in a traffic accident as a child.^[13] One of her younger brothers, Patrick, is also a journalist, currently diplomatic editor of The Guardian.^[14] James and Nora Wintour have worked in London local government and for international non-governmental organisations, respectively.^[15]


Wintour attended North London Collegiate School, where she frequently rebelled against the dress code by taking up the hemlines of her skirts.^[16] At the age of 14, she began wearing her hair in a bob.^[17] She developed an interest in fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!,^[18] and from reading Seventeen, which her grandmother sent from the United States.^[19] "Growing up in London in the '60s, you'd have to have had Irving Penn's sack over your head not to know something extraordinary was happening in fashion", she recalled.^[20] Her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market.^[18]