 What R.J Cutler has done with this film is to document and ascertain the influence and importance this 300 billion dollar global fashion industry has over our lives. While not much of what this film reveals is news to fashion insiders, it takes your average viewer on a fascinating journey behind the doors of fashion's most influential mouth piece: Vogue. At Vogue, it dwells on the personalities that drive the force that this widely circulated fashion magazine has become; the most iconic of them being American Vogue's British editor, Anna Wintour.
"Vogue is the fashion bible and so would you call Anna Wintour the high priestess of fashion," a reporter questions Candy Pratts Price, Vogue's fashion director, in the film.
"The pope," she corrects him, driving home the fact that what Anna Wintour says is gospel. Wintour is portrayed as the single most influential woman in the fashion industry today and Cutler puts together a very glamorously crafted film on what exactly that means: she brings fur back into Vogue when no one could ever imagine wearing it, she foresees the need of replacing models with celebrities on the covers, she puts the first African American model on the cover, she pushes new talent (like designer Thankoon, Vogue's Fashion Fund recipient) into hugely lucrative deals. And at the Vogue Annual Retailers Breakfast at The Ritz in Paris, Burton Tanksy of the Neiman Marcus stores pleads her help in pushing designers to deliver stocks in time (just imagine, they have that problem at Neiman Marcus too!).
"What do you want us to do, hire delivery trucks?" she laughs off his request.
This is just the tip of what it means to be Anna Wintour and Cutler has unprecedented access behind the doors of Vogue to discover more.
While films like Prêt a Porter and The Devil Wears Prada have tapped into the lighter and brighter side of fashion, The September Issue - being a documentary - makes all of what we've seen before very real. And Cutler thankfully sticks to the beautiful basics of trends, creativity and (the less desirable) consumerism without indulging into the darker side. What damage Madhur Bhandarkar did to the fashion industry in his film Fashion, R.J Cutler somewhat salvages in The September Issue. Here in Pakistan, one can hope that this film will somewhat elevate 'fashion' to people who love to hate it. Since fashion here does not even touch the numbers that it accounts for globally, it is more often trivialized than respected. Cynics love to refer it as frivolous stuff. In Miranda Priestley's words (Priestley, a portrayal of Anna Wintour in the film The Devil Wears Prada, was brilliantly played by Meryl Streep):
"This… 'stuff'? Oh… OK, I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out 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. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight 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."
And Anna Wintour herself says in the opening scene of The September Issue, "People who don't understand fashion love to mock it. There is something about fashion that makes people nervous."
This film is about fashion and the one woman who makes everyone nervous, though at times she does appear over defensive - even human - in trying to prove her true worth to her own family. Her father and brothers have jobs that cut fashion out of their lives and even Anna's daughter says in the film that she cannot see herself do what her mother does and would rather study to be a lawyer.
What Cutler gently does is scratch the veneer off this glossy to reveal the real world of Vogue which may be just as glamorous, beautiful and high pressure as we know it, but it has a surprising face too. And the biggest most pleasant surprise is Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director who joined the magazine the same day as Anna Wintour. Coddington is in fact the one person who puts the romance back in fashion after Wintour constantly cuts it out to accommodate what will sell more. Grace is the one who always has a kind word to say to people, which makes the heart break they suffer at the hands of Wintour bearable. Cutler catches her constantly mumbling after Wintour - because they often disagree on things - but never playing it out in discussion or argument. No one argues with Wintour and often in meetings when she asks questions, her staff replies with more questions as to avoid giving her an answer she'd disapprove of. Coddington is the one person not intimidated by Anna Wintour, though she admits to knowing when to stop pushing her.
Though films like The Devil Wears Prada have portrayed the character of Anna Wintour somewhat accurately - she seems to enjoy the 'ice queen' title she has earned over the years - this is the first film ever that offers a non fictional account of who she is and what she does. The September issue literally refers to the September edition of Vogue that is celebrated as the most important issue of the year as it heralds fashion's most important season - winter.
"September," Candy Pratts reasserts, "is the January of fashion." This issue always has a record number of pages (of course through heavy advertising) and is in a continuous challenge to break its own record. Cutler's film documents the making of this issue in 2007 when the issue weighed a record breaking 4 pounds and sold over 13 million copies. The making of that issue was filmed over a nine-month stretch. By the end of it all one realizes that while Wintour may be the fiercely driven jacket cover that sells this book, Coddington is actually the backbone and soul that makes it what it is. This film isn't just a must watch for people in the fashion industry but very simply for all people who wear clothes. That's all. |
