Reuters

If you think that that Meryl Streep was over the top in The Dev­ils Wears Prada as Run­way edi­tor Miranda Priestly, you are sadly mis­taken. In case you didn’t know it, she was based on real life Vogue Editor-In-Chief  Anna “Nuclear” Wintour.

Known to be quite fero­cious, demand­ing, con­de­scend­ing, pow­er­ful and any other adjec­tive you want to throw in that implies she may eat her young, have been used to describe her.

What can’t be denied is her work ethic and sur­vival instincts. Ms. Win­tour has been Editor-in-Chief at vogue mag­a­zine for 20 years.

She is prob­a­bly not on your radar at all. But in my world, as a fash­ion designer, she is IT. I would say Rockstar…but, that implies like-ability.

Of course, I don’t know Anna. Who does? She appears to be one of the most aloof peo­ple you will ever come across. I am only going by second-hand accounts and the his­tory of her cov­er­age in the press. Plus, how would one acquire the nick­name “Nuclear Win­tour”, that takes dedication.

Con­sid­er­ing that aloof­ness and Anna’s seem­ing plea­sure of being a force-to-be-reckoned-with that is mainly rec­og­nized on the fash­ion front, it is quite amaz­ing that now that there is a doc­u­men­tary on her and Vogue. With Project Run­way, The Fash­ion Show and var­i­ous fash­ion doc­u­men­taries on promi­nent design­ers, Anna prob­a­bly grew tired of the spot­light being taken off of her crown.

The Sep­tem­ber Issue will pre­mière in the United States on August 28th in all it’s glo­ri­ous wicked­ness, I’m sure. I can­not wait until it comes to my town, at the very least, it’s going on my Net­flix wait­ing list.

The Sep­tem­ber 2007 issue of Vogue mag­a­zine weighed nearly five pounds, and was the sin­gle largest issue of a mag­a­zine ever pub­lished. With unprece­dented access, The Sep­tem­ber Issue, directed and pro­duced by R.J. Cut­ler, tells the story of leg­endary Vogue edi­tor in chief Anna Win­tour and her larger-than-life team of edi­tors cre­at­ing the issue and rul­ing the world of fashion.

The Sep­tem­ber Issue won the Grand Jury Prize for Excel­lence in Cin­e­matog­ra­phy at the 2009 Sun­dance Film Festival.

You can also view a 60 min­utes piece here.

I am embar­rassed to say that this is the type of stuff that gets me excited, I love the fash­ion indus­try. I love that the more you dig the shal­lower it gets. But what I espe­cially love is that peo­ple write off fash­ion as unim­por­tant. They don’t get it.

Here is my favorite scene from The Devil Wear Prada..

Miranda Priestly: [Miranda and some assis­tants are decid­ing between two sim­i­lar belts for an out­fit. Andy snig­gers because she thinks they look exactly the same] Some­thing funny?
Andy Sachs (her female bohemian assis­tant who doesn’t “get” it at first): No, no, noth­ing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learn­ing about all this stuff.
Miranda Priestly: This… ‘stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has noth­ing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re try­ing to tell the world that you take your­self too seri­ously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actu­ally cerulean. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a col­lec­tion of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Lau­rent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean mil­i­tary jack­ets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the col­lec­tions of 8 dif­fer­ent design­ers. Then it fil­tered down through the depart­ment stores and then trick­led on down into some tragic casual cor­ner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clear­ance bin. How­ever, that blue rep­re­sents mil­lions of dol­lars and count­less jobs and so it’s sort of com­i­cal how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fash­ion indus­try when, in fact, you’re wear­ing the sweater that was selected for you by the peo­ple in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Let me know what you think. Do you get it? Or do you not even care?

P.S. If you are want­ing to know even more, here is a review from The Inde­pen­dent.