The Changing Tide of Anna Wintour

A recent article in WSJ (Just Asking: Anna Wintour) profiles a fashion guru’s opinion on the developments of the fashion world today. As she sees it, designers have to mix the high priced items with the low. One of her ludicrous quotes states fashion was “excessive, and there’s a very correct correction going on.”  Let’s talk about excess. According to Jerry Oppenheimer’s book Front Row: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue’s Editor In Chief, Anna Wintour perks as recent as 2005 included:

• Salary equating $2 million a year
• A chauffeured Mercedes S-Class (both in New York and abroad)
• A $50,000 shopping allowance
• The Coco Chanel Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris while attending European fashion shows
• Condé Nast president Si Newhouse also had the company make her an interest-free $1.6 million loan to purchase her townhouse in Greenwich Village

Not only were her perks excessive, but also her magazine was excessive. The September 2004 issue boasted a record 832 pages, the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time.

Media certainly shapes how consumers shop.  Before the downturn hit, Wintour’s publications fueled the excessive price points and designs, thus feeding the need for consumption and gluttonous shopping sprees.  Is the downturn directly correlated to her role as an editor? Of course not. Did she direct a trend towards opulence, luxury, excess, greed, a wanting for high fashion through spreads, editors, photographs, and cover articles? Yes.

The WSJ article is like collagen filler – completely futile and temporary. Ultimately, Wintour herself is a trend-follower.  Her ebb and flow fashion logic is indicative of her intelligence as a fashion maven.  Once on the economic upside, make sure to tune in to the Anna Wintour chronicles. She may just engender another contraction and shift of the rank in file opinion.