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Dame Anna Wintour (; born 3 November 1949) is a British and American "Obama supporter Anna Wintour reportedly considered for ambassadorial post by administration" , The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 10 August 2016.Chris Rovzar, "Anna Wintour, Rest of City Turn Out to Vote" , New York, November 2008. Retrieved 11 August 2016. media executive who served as editor-in-chief of Vogue from 1988 to 2025. Currently, Wintour serves as global chief content officer and artist director at Condé Nast. Known for her trademark pageboy bob cut and dark sunglasses, Wintour is regarded as the most powerful woman in publishing, and has become an important figure in the fashion world, serving as the lead chairperson of the annual haute couture Met Gala global fashion spectacle in Manhattan since the 1990s. Wintour is praised for her skill in identifying emerging fashion trends, but has been criticised for her reportedly aloof and demanding personality.
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 bestselling 2003 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.
Wintour's paternal grandfather was Major-General Fitzgerald Wintour, a British military officer and descendant of George Grenville, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 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 Ireland 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. Foster baronets, the last Baronet of that name, was a granduncle of Wintour's. She is a niece of Cordelia James, Baroness James of Rusholme, the daughter of Fitzgerald Wintour.
Wintour had four siblings. Her older brother, Gerald, died in a traffic accident as a child.Oppenheimer, 6 One of her younger brothers, Patrick Wintour, is also a journalist, currently diplomatic editor of The Guardian. Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent ; The Guardian. Retrieved 6 December 2006
Wintour attended North London Collegiate School, where she rebelled against the dress code by taking up the of her skirts.Oppenheimer, 15 At the age of 14, she began wearing her hair in a bob cut.Oppenheimer, 21. She developed an interest in fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!,Oppenheimer, 22. and from reading Seventeen, which her grandmother sent from the United States. The September Issue, 0:19. "Growing up in Swinging London, you'd have to have had Irving Penn's sack over your head not to know something extraordinary was happening in fashion", she recalled. The September Issue, 0:18. Her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market.
In 1970, when Harper's Bazaar UK merged with Queen to become Harper's & Queen, Wintour was hired as one of its first editorial assistants, beginning her career in fashion journalism.Oppenheimer, 63. She told her co-workers that she wanted to edit Vogue.Oppenheimer, 70. While there, she discovered model Annabel Hodin, a former North London classmate. Her connections helped her secure locations for shoots by Helmut Newton, Jim Lee and other fashion photographers.Oppenheimer, 81. "She quickly built up a reputation of being able to round up the best people and locations, mainly because of her connections through her father, pals like Nigel Dempster, and other well-placed people she met socially." One recreated the works of Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots.Metropolitan Museum of Art; 12 January 1999; Anna Wintour elected honorary trustee. Retrieved 6 December 2006. After chronic disagreements with her rival, Min Hogg,Oppenheimer, 96. she quit and moved to New York with her boyfriend, freelance journalist Jon Bradshaw.Oppenheimer, 100.
In late 1978, Guccione shut down the unprofitable magazine. Wintour decided to take some time off from work. She broke up with Bradshaw and began a relationship with French record producer Michel Esteban, for two years dividing her time with him between Paris and New York.Oppenheimer, 152. She returned to work in 1980, succeeding Elsa Klensch as fashion editor for a new women's magazine named Savvy.Larson, Christina; April 2005; From Venus To Minerva ; Washington Monthly. Retrieved 11 December 2006. It sought to appeal to career-conscious professional women who spent their own money,Oppenheimer, p. 159. the readers Wintour would later target at Vogue.Fortini, Amanda; 10 February 2005; Defending Vogue evil genius ; Slate. Retrieved 6 December 2006.
The following year, she became fashion editor of New York. There, the fashion spreads and photo shoots she had been putting together for years finally began attracting attention. Editor Edward Kosner sometimes bent very strict rules for her and let her work on other sections of the magazine. She learned through her work on a cover involving Rachel Ward how effectively celebrity covers sold copies.Oppenheimer, 188. "Anna saw the celebrity thing coming before everyone else did", Grace Coddington said three decades later. The September Issue, 1:12:00. A former colleague arranged for an interview with Vogue editor Grace Mirabella that ended when Wintour told Mirabella she wanted her job.Gray, 4.Oppenheimer, p. 190.
In 1985, Wintour attained her first editorship, taking over the UK edition of Vogue after Beatrix Miller retired.Oppenheimer, 230. Once in charge, she replaced many of the staff and exerted far more control over the magazine than previous editors, earning the nickname "Nuclear Wintour" in the process.Oppenheimer, 243. Those editors who were retained called the period "The Wintour of Our Discontent".Oppenheimer, 240. Her changes moved the magazine from its traditional eccentricity to a direction more in line with the American magazine. "There's a new kind of woman out there", she told the Evening Standard. "She's interested in business and money. She doesn't have time to shop anymore. She wants to know what and why and where and how."
In 1987, Wintour returned to New York City to take over House & Garden. Its circulation had long lagged behind rival Architectural Digest,Oppenheimer, 269. and Condé Nast hoped she could improve it. Again, she made radical changes to staff and look, canceling $2 million worth of photo spreads and articles in her first week.Zuckerman, Lawrence; 13 June 1988; The Dynamic Duo at Condé Nast, Time. Retrieved 8 February 2007. She put so much fashion in photo spreads that it became known as " House & Garment", and enough celebrities that it was referred to as " Vanity Chair" within the industry. These changes worsened the magazine's problems. When the title was shortened to just HG, many longtime subscribers thought they were getting a new magazine and put it aside for the real thing to arrive. Most of those subscriptions were eventually canceled and, while some fashion advertisers came over, most of the magazine's traditional advertisers pulled out.Oppenheimer, 271.
Ten months later, she became editor of U.S. Vogue. Industry insiders worried that under Mirabella, the magazine was losing ground to the recently introduced American edition of Elle. Prior to her appointment as editor of Vogue, Eve Pollard had offered Wintour the position of editor-in-chief at Elle.
After making sweeping changes in staff, Wintour changed the style of the cover pictures. Mirabella had preferred tight of well-known models in studios; Wintour's covers showed more of the body and were taken outside, like those Diana Vreeland had done years earlier. She used less well-known models, and mixed inexpensive clothes with high fashion: the first issue she was in charge of, November 1988, featured a Peter Lindbergh photograph of 19-year-old Michaela Bercu in a $50 pair of faded jeans and a bejeweled T-shirt by Christian Lacroix worth $10,000. It was the first time a Vogue cover model had worn jeans, swapped in at the last minute since the skirt Bercu was originally to wear did not fit properly. When the printer saw it, they called the magazine's offices, thinking it was the wrong image.
In 2012, Wintour reflected on the cover:
Years later, Wintour admitted the photo had never been planned as the cover shot. In 2011, when Vogue put its entire archive online, Wintour was quoted as saying, "I just said, 'Well, let's just try this.'" In 2015, she said if she had to pick a favorite of her covers, it would be that one. "It was a leap of faith and it was certainly a big change for Vogue."
"Wintour's approach hit a nerve—this was the way real women put clothes together (with the likely exception of wearing multi-thousand-dollar T-shirts)", one reviewer said. On the June 1989 cover, model Estelle Lefebure was shown in wet hair, with just a bathrobe and no apparent makeup. Photographers, makeup artists, and hairstylists got credited along with the models. In August 2014, Gigi Hadid paid tribute to Wintour's first cover.
She exerted a great deal of control over the magazine's visual content. Since her first days as editor, she has required that photographers not begin until she has approved Instant film of the setup and clothing. Afterwards, they must submit all their work to the magazine, not just their personal choices.Oppenheimer, p. 244.
Her control over the text is less certain. Her staff claim she reads everything written for publication,Oppenheimer, 325. but former editor Richard Story has claimed she rarely, if ever, reads any of Vogues arts coverage or book reviews.Oppenheimer, 326. Earlier in her career, she often left writing of the text that accompanied her layouts to others; former coworkers claim she has minimal skills in that area.Oppenheimer, pp. 70–71, 123–24, 161–62, 179–80. Today, she writes little for the magazine save the monthly editor's letter. She reportedly has three full-time assistants, but sometimes surprises callers by answering the phone herself.Horyn, "Citizen Anna", 2.
At the end of the decade, another of Wintour's inner circle left to run Harper's Bazaar. Kate Betts, seen as Wintour's likely successor, had broadened the magazine's reach by commissioning stories with a more hard-news edge, about women in politics, street culture, and the financial difficulties of some major designers. She had also added the "Index" section, a few pages of tips meant to be torn out of the magazine. At staff meetings, she earned Wintour's respect as the only person who publicly challenged her.Gray, pg. 2.
The two began to disagree about the magazine's direction. Betts felt Vogue fashion coverage was getting too limited. Wintour in turn thought that the stories with popular culture angles Betts was assigning were beneath readers, and began pairing Betts with Plum Sykes, whom Betts reportedly detested as a "pretentious airhead". Eventually, she left, complaining to The New York Times that Wintour had not even sent her a baby gift. Wintour wrote an editor's letter that complimented Betts and wished her well.Gray, pg. 3.
The September 2004 issue was 832 pages, the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time, since exceeded by the September 2007 issue covered in Cutler's documentary. Wintour oversaw the introduction of three spinoffs: Teen Vogue, Vogue Living and Men's Vogue. Teen Vogue has published more ad pages and earned more advertiser revenue than either Elle Girl and Cosmo Girl, and the 164 ad pages in the début issue of Men's Vogue were the most for a first issue in Condé Nast history. Advertising Age named her "Editor of the Year" for this brand expansion. "Magazine Editor of the Year: Anna Wintour" , Advertising Age, 22 October 2006. Retrieved 8 February 2007.
Wintour was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Anna Wintour awarded OBE, The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 June 2008. However, 2008 was a particularly difficult year for Vogue, partially as a result of the Great Recession, but also related to several controversies. The April issue's cover image of LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen brought criticism for its evocation of racial stereotypes. The next month, a lavish Karl Lagerfeld gown she wore to the Met's Costume Institute Gala was called "the worst fashion faux pas of 2008". In the fall, Vogue Living was suspended indefinitely, and Men's Vogue cut back to two issues a year as an outsert or supplement to the women's magazine. At the end of the year, December's cover highlighted a disparaging comment Jennifer Aniston made about Angelina Jolie, to the former's displeasure; media observers began speculating that Wintour had lost her touch. In 2008, rumours arose that she would retire, and be replaced by French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. An editor at Russian GQ reportedly introduced Russian Vogue editor Aliona Doletskaya as the next editor of American Vogue. Condé Nast responded by taking out a two-page ad in The New York Times defending Wintour's record. In that same publication, Cathy Horyn later wrote that while Wintour had not lost her touch, the magazine had become "stale and predictable", as a reader had recently complained. "To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the 'villa in Tuscany' story", Horyn added. The magazine also dealt awkwardly with the recession, she commented.
In 2009, Wintour began making more media appearances. On a 60 Minutes profile, she said she would not retire. "To me, this is a really interesting time to be in this position and I think it would be in a way irresponsible not to put my best foot forward and lead us into a different time."Safer, 4. A documentary film, The September Issue, by The War Room producer R.J. Cutler, about the production of the September 2007 issue, was released in September. It focused on the sometimes-difficult relationship between Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington. Wintour appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote it, defending the relevance of fashion in a tough economy. The American Society of Magazine Editors elected her to its Hall of Fame in 2010.
In January 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art named its Costume Institute complex after Wintour; First Lady Michelle Obama opened it in May of that year. Wintour starred in The Fashion Fund, which aired on Ovation TV that year as well; she was named the 39th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of The Devil Wears Prada release, in 2016, The Ringer noted how Wintour's personal image had evolved since that film's depiction of Miranda Priestley. "A decade ago this summer, Wintour became a living, breathing avatar for a certain kind of boss—the terrible kind, with 'great' a halfhearted asterisk", wrote Alison Herman. " The Devil Wears Prada transformed Wintour's image from that of a mere public figure into that of a cultural icon."
But since then, "Wintour isn't just redeemed. She's openly admired, Arctic chill and all." The grievances reflected in the novel and film "seem like an increasingly petty complaint when held up against a readership that remains well into the seven figures and the undisputed edge in ad sales that comes with it. Wintour is seemingly the only person on earth who knows how to run a steady print operation in 2016 ... At 10 years old, Miranda Priestley is iconic but ever-so-slightly out of date. Anna Wintour is still the boss..."
Wintour was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to fashion and journalism and invested by Queen Elizabeth II in May 2017 at Buckingham Palace. According to a January 2017 report in The Nation, an American news magazine, it was rumored that Wintour would have become the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom had Hillary Clinton been elected President of the United States the previous November.
In 2020, Condé Nast promoted Wintour to the role of worldwide chief content officer, as part of a company restructuring. In addition, she will be working as global editorial director of Vogue.
In 2023, Wintour suggested the creation of an event similar to the Met Gala in London to raise funds for the local arts scene, which has struggled to recover in the aftermath of COVID.
Wintour was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to fashion. In 2025, she was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wintour stepped down as editor-in-chief of Vogue in June 2025. On 1 September 2025, Vogue announced she would be replaced by Chloe Malle, who was promoted from editor of vogue.com. Wintour retains her position as global chief content officer of Vogue internationally.
Her salary was reported to be $2 million a year in 2005.26 September 2005; Who Makes How Much – New York's Salary Guide ; New York. Retrieved 3 March 2007. In addition, she receives several perks, such as a chauffeured Mercedes-Benz S-Class (both in New York and abroad), a $200,000 shopping allowance, and the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris while attending European fashion shows. Condé Nast president Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr. had the company make her an interest-free $1.6 million loan to purchase her townhouse in Greenwich Village.Oppenheimer, pg. 29.
Wintour married child psychiatrist David Shaffer in 1984, and they had a son named Charles (born 1985) and a daughter named Katherine (born 1987) before divorcing in 1999. Charles is a graduate of the University of Oxford and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Katherine wrote occasional columns for The Daily Telegraph in 2006 and graduated from Columbia University in 2009,Alexander, Hilary; 15 February 2006; Wintour comes in from the cold; The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 7 February 2007. and is a New York-based producer with Ambassador Theatre Group. Katherine married Italian filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini, son of Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani, in 2018.
Newspapers and claimed that Wintour's affair with investor Shelby Bryan ended her marriage to Shaffer.Oppenheimer, 341–42, She declined to comment.Gray, 1.Oppenheimer, 342. A former colleague quoted in the The Observer said that Bryan "mellowed her" and that she "smiles now and has been seen to laugh".25 June 2006; " Meet the acid queen of New York fashion "; The Observer. Retrieved 7 February 2007.
According to biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, her ubiquitous sunglasses are actually corrective lenses, since she has deteriorating vision as her father did. A former colleague he interviewed recalls trying on her Wayfarers in her absence and getting dizzy.Oppenheimer, 215–16. "I think at this point they've become, you know, really armour", Wintour herself told 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer, explaining that they allow her to keep her reactions to a show private.Safer, 3. As she rebounded from the end of her marriage and the turnover in the magazine's editorial staff, a fellow editor and friend noted that "she's not hiding behind her glasses anymore. Now she's having fun again."
In 2013, when Vogues former director of communications stepped down, Wintour was rumoured to be looking to hire someone with a political background. Soon after, she hired Hildy Kuryk, who worked as a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and Obama's 2008 campaign. She supported Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, forming part of Clinton's long list of wealthy donors and served as Clinton's consultant on wardrobe choices for key moments of the campaign. Wintour endorsed Joe Biden for the 2020 United States presidential election. She has written in favour of fur in Vogue, and has used fur in photo spreads. The September Issue, 0:05. Her changes to Vogue have been described as advancing the status of women. She has defended the democratisation of what were once exclusive luxury brands, stating that it is good that "more people are going to get better fashion". An investigation in The New York Times indicated that black women had been sidelined at Vogue during her time there. Wintour apologized to staff for the magazine's complicity in racism.
In the novel, Priestly has many similarities to Wintour—among them, she is British, has two children,Weisberger, 38–39. "I had Googled her and was surprised to find Miranda Priestly was born Miriam Princhek in London's East End ... Her rough, Cockney-girl accent was soon replaced by a carefully cultivated, educated one ... She moved her two daughters and her then rock-star husband ..." and is described as a major contributor to the Met.Weisberger, 267. Priestly is a tyrant who makes impossible demands of her subordinates, gives them almost none of the information or time necessary to comply and then berates them for their failures to do so.Weisberger, 145. " Ah yes. Mrs. Whitmore. I am a lucky girl indeed . I'm so lucky, you have no idea. I can't tell you how lucky I felt when I was sent out to get tampons for my boss, only to be told that I'd bought the wrong ones and asked why I do nothing right. And luck is probably the only way to explain why I get to sort another person's sweat- and food-stained clothing each morning before eight and arrange to have it cleaned. Oh wait! I think what actually makes me luckiest of all is getting to talk to breeders all over the tristate area for three straight weeks in search of the perfect French bulldog puppy so two incredibly spoiled and unfriendly little girls can each have their own pet. Yes, that's it!"
Kate Betts, who had been fired by Harper's after two years during which staffers said she tried too hard to emulate Wintour, reviewed it harshly in The New York Times Book Review:
Priestly has some positive qualities. Andrea Sachs, the novel's main character, notes that she makes all the magazine's key editorial decisions by herselfWeisberger, 208. "Miranda was as far as I could tell, a truly fantastic editor. Not a single word of copy made it into the magazine without her explicit, hard-to-obtain approval ... Although the various fashion editors called in the clothes they wanted to shoot, Miranda alone selected the looks she wanted and which models she wanted wearing each one ... That made her, in my mind, the main reason for the magazine's stunning success each month. Runway wouldn't be Runway — hell, it wouldn't be much of anything at all – without Miranda Priestly. I knew it and so did everyone else." and that she has genuine class and style.Weisberger, 271–72. "I never grew tired of watching Miranda. She was the true lady and the envy of every woman in the museum that night."
The film was released, in mid-2006, to great commercial success. The Devil Wears Prada at boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved 8 February 2007. Wintour attended the première wearing Prada. In the film, actress Meryl Streep plays Priestly different enough from the book to receive critical praise as an entirely original (and more sympathetic) character. Streep's office in the film was similar enough to Wintour's that Wintour reportedly had hers redecorated.
Wintour reportedly said the film would probably go straight-to-DVD. It made over $300 million in worldwide box-office receipts. Later in 2006, in an interview with Barbara Walters that aired the day of the DVD's release, Wintour said she found the film "really entertaining" and praised it for making fashion "entertaining and glamorous and interesting ... I was 100 percent behind it."
That opinion of the film has not yet led her to forgive Weisberger.Oppenheimer, 328. When it was reported that the novelist's editor told her to start her third novel over, Wintour's spokesman suggested she "should get a job as someone else's assistant."
Oppenheimer suggests The Devil Wears Prada may have done Wintour a favour by increasing her name recognition. "Besides giving Weisberger her fifteen minutes", he says, "it ... placed Anna squarely in the mainstream celebrity pantheon. She was now known and talked about over Big Macs and french fries under the Golden Arches by young fashion victim in Wal-Mart denim in Davenport and Dubuque."
When The September Issue was released three years later, critics compared it with the earlier, fictional film. "For the past year or so, she's been on the media warpath to win back her image", said Paul Schrodt in Slant Magazine. Many considered the question of how similar she was to Streep's Priestly, and praised the film for showing the real person. Manohla Dargis at The New York Times said that Priestly had helped humanise Wintour, and "the documentary continues this". "The movie offers insights that lift it beyond a realist version of The Devil Wears Prada", agreed Mary Pols in Time.
The film version of the Weisberger novel (screenplay penned by Aline Brosh McKenna) has not been the only film to have a character borrowing some aspects of Wintour. Edna Mode's similar hairstyle in The Incredibles (2004) has been noted, Johnny Depp said he partially based the demeanour of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) on Wintour. Fey Sommers in Ugly Betty (2006–2010) was also likened to Wintour, from the trademark bob and sunglasses, to Wintour's last name homophonous with 'Winter', while Sommers' is homophonous with 'Summer'.
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