Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Fashion World Fitness Models Agency

Aug. 27, 2009 | R.J. Cutler's vibrant and mischievous documentary "The September Issue" is only partly a movie about fashion world. At its heart, it's really a movie about work, about the ways individuals compete with, grate against and inspire one another in the workplace. The movie documents the creation of the largest and most anticipated issue of Vogue models agency magazine's yearly cycle -- in this case, specifically, the September 2007 issue, the fattest in Vogue's history -- by tracking the frustrations, confrontations and backstage machinations of the players who put it together, from the fashion editors to the art director to the guy who mans the office's color copier. Fashion World Models Agency Presiding over this aesthetically attuned circus is editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who, as Candy Pratts Price, the executive fitness models fashion director of Vogue's online adjunct, Style.com, says in the movie, is not just the high priestess of the whole enterprise but the pope. Wintour is considered the most formidable figure in the fashion world (she's the tiny titan guarding the gateway to the modeling agencies pages of the most influential fashion magazine in the world) and also has a reputation for being an arrogant, sometimes unreasonable boss (as detailed by Lauren Weisberger, one of Wintour's former assistants, in her gossipy novel "The Devil Wears Prada," which in turn inspired Meryl Streep's icy, campy performance in the movie version). "The September Issue" doesn't fully dispel either of those notions, though it does fill them in with additional fashion world shades of color. What really drives Cutler's picture is the dynamic between Wintour and her right-hand woman, creative director Grace Coddington, who has, for more than 20 years (she started at American Vogue at the same time Wintour did, in 1988), been the mastermind behind the magazine's most imaginative fashion spreads. Wintour may be the elusive minx who first captured Cutler's interest. But with Coddington as the other half of this highly mismatched fitness models tag team, Cutler has struck documentary gold. Coddington -- a former model and flame-haired Welsh giantess who pads around the Vogue office in billowy black trousers and sturdy flat sandals, a chic but earthbound contrast to Wintour in her tiny, fur-trimmed jackets and spiky heels -- is the not-so-secret star of "The September Issue." Radiating equal parts flamboyance and good common sense, Coddington needles Wintour in a way no one else on staff dares. Their working relationship is an uneasy chemistry of mutual regard and know-it-all stubbornness, a fascinating models agency -- not easily described, nor, alas, readily reproducible -- of the way creativity and friction can coexist in the workplace. But first, the dirt. The fashion modeling agencies blogs have been buzzing for months in anticipation of Cutler's film; some of them have been doling out bonbon-like snippets, including footage of Wintour making a funny little frown -- she looks as if she's just gotten a whiff of rotten egg -- as the issue's cover girl, Sienna Miller, twirls around in a strange feathery dress that curls around her like a malevolent nautilus. Fashion people are fascinated by Wintour, and the bloggers' clips have been intended to foster a view of the film as gossipy and bitchy, an inside look at how nasty Wintour can be. But in the context of the movie, Wintour's disapproving frown means something else: She isn't cutting Miller down; it's simply that the dress some editor has put Miller in is just weird. It doesn't look good. Source: salon.com Check more about plus-size-fashions

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