The past few years haven’t worked out exactly as planned for Anna Wintour, the legendary Vogue editor and model for the Meryl Streep character in “The Devil Wears Prada.”
By rights and her sights, the longtime friend, bundler, and fundraiser for Hillary Clinton should have been by this time representing the U.S. in the Court of St. James, having tea with the queen (and with Kate and with Meghan) when not dashing back stateside to confer with her president-friend.
Instead, Wintour has had to make do without friends in high places, doing her best to turn the venerable fashion bible she edits into the least likely vehicle for The Resistance, all the while resisting the vogue for ugly pink hats.
But can a magazine founded on excess, luxury, self-indulgence, and external appearances over all other concerns also sell itself as a political sage and purveyor of values without looking ridiculous? The answer so far appears to be, “No.”
In December 1998, Wintour and Vogue had launched Hillary’s rise from the pit of impeachment with a cover shot of a young-enough Clinton in a stunning black ball gown. But that was then. In the lavishly produced puff-piece of February 2016, the photos were so retouched as to be unrecognizable. And by the time the magazine got around on Oct. 18 to the formal endorsement, they were using a photo from 1993.
Vogue’s fallback glamor-wise in Clintonworld had always been Huma Abedin, Clinton’s eye-catching young aide, whom the magazine had profiled in 2007 and again in 2010 in her lavish wedding to rising young congressman Anthony Weiner. Weiner was expected to run one day for mayor or governor, making her one day first lady of something, and a coming political star.
In August 2016, the magazine profiled her again as the girl who had everything, including the job in the White House she would certainly have once Clinton was president. But while the issue was still on the stands, her husband was arrested for Internet sexting with minors, and the girl who had everything had a divorce and a scandal and a husband in jail on her hands.
She soldiered on, working with Wintour to make everything perfect for the win they expected on Nov. 8, when the glass ceiling in the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan would pretend to be broken, and the country would lie at the feet of its first woman president.
“With advice from Vogue’s Anna Wintour, Huma had choreographed the Javits Center festivities,” Amy Chozick wrote in her book Chasing Hillary. “It looked as tasteful as she was, the custom-made stage shaped like the U.S. and blanketed in royal-blue carpet,” waiting to hail the new chief.
Alas, Clinton’s feet would never come near it. And in October 2018 Chozick was writing for Vogue about porn star Stormy Daniels, the new left-wing fave. Daniels is currently famous because of her charges that Donald Trump purchased her services for a session or two in 2006, and then in 2015 tried to buy her silence about it.
True, Stormy seems a big improvement on Hillary Clinton, (and on many Democrats currently serving in Congress), but this seems the appropriate moment for Vogue and some others to look at their options, and move back into covering fashion again.
