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Fashion icon Anna Wintour was born in London, England, on November 3, 1949. She is the eldest
daughter of Charles Wintour, the editor of the London Evening Standard newspaper. Wintour landed
the editorship of American Vogue in 1988. She revived the publication and became one of the most
influential figures in the fashion industry, known widely for her iconic pageboy haircut and chilly
demeanor.
Born on November 3, 1949, in London, England, to newspaper editor Charles Wintour and
philanthropist Elinor Wintour, magazine editor Anna Wintour has become an international fashion icon
in her role as editor-in-chief of the highly influential Vogue magazine. She is known for her oversized
dark glasses, high heels, sharp bob hairstyle and icy demeanor.
Born into a family with considerable wealth, Wintour demonstrated a tendency to do things her own
way at an early age. As a teenager, she made the decision to forgo academics, dropping out of her
fancy finishing school and opting instead for a life that revolved around the tony London life of the
1960s that she so clearly adored. With her signature hairstyle—she first went to the bob at the age of
15 and has changed it very little since then—Wintour frequented the same London clubs of pop
culture’s biggest stars, including members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones. The management style
and drive that Wintour would later show as a magazine editor was in part inspired by her late father, a
decorated World War II veteran who’d earned a tough, stern, and talented reputation as editor of the
London Evening Standard. Wintour never shied away from the similarities she shared with the man
known as “Chilly Charlie.” “People respond well to people who are sure of what they want,” Wintour
told 60 Minutes in May 2009.
Long before Vogue, however, Anna Wintour started out in the fashion department of Harper’s &
Queen in London. Over the years, she rose up the editorial ladder and bounced from publication to
publication between New York and London. In 1976, she moved to New York and took over as fashion
editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Still in her 20s and still in New York, Wintour left Harper’s for a job at Viva, a
publication owned by the same outfit that managed Penthouse. There, Wintour essentially became the
magazine’s fashion department, cutting her teeth as a high-end editor and manager. Wintour spent
generously on photographers and shoots, arranging for expensive trips to places like the Caribbean
and Japan. Following a brief stop at Savvy, where she served again as the magazine’s fashion editor,
Wintour took a job with New York magazine in 1981. From the start, Wintour displayed her own sense
of style and direction, even going so far as to bring her own desk to her new office. It’s look: “A
contemporary Formica-topped affair on two metal sawhorses as legs…along with a high-tech chromeframed chair with a seat and back made of bungee cords,” wrote Jerry Oppenheimer, in his 2005
unauthorized biography of Wintour, Front Row. In 1986, two years after she married South African
psychiatrist David Shaffer, Wintour returned to London as chief editor of the Condé Nast-owned British
Vogue. Not surprisingly, Wintour had her own ideas about the magazine and where it needed to go.
“There is a new kind of woman out there. 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.”
Wintour’s sharp critiques and lack of patience soon earned a few memorable nicknames: “Nuclear
Wintour” and “Wintour of Our Discontent.” The editor, though, relished it. “I’m the Condé Nast hit man,”
she told a friend. “I love coming in and changing magazines.” Her next big makeover came in 1987
with another Condé Nast publication, Home and Garden, where she summarily changed the
publication’s title to HG and managed to reject nearly $2 million of already-paid-for photos and articles.
Grumblings about Wintour’s changes were quick to appear, but her bosses at Condé Nast were clearly
behind her, doling out a salary of more than $200,000 to its demanding editor, and allowing a $25,000
annual allowance for clothes and other amenities. In addition, the magazine’s owners arranged for
Concorde flights between New York and London so Wintour and her husband could be together.

Wintour’s stay at HG didn’t last long. In 1988 she was named editor-in-chief of Vogue, allowing for her
return to New York. The move by Condé Nast came at a time when its signature fashion publication
was at a crossroads. A magazine that had been at the forefront of the fashion world since the early
1960s, Vogue suddenly found itself losing ground to a three-year-old upstart, Elle, which had already
reached a paid circulation of 850,000. Vogue’s subscriber base meanwhile, was a stagnant 1.2 million.
Fearing that the magazine had become complacent or worse, boring, Wintour was placed atop the
editorial masthead with all the freedom, not to mention financial backing, that she needed to revitalize
the publication. In her more than two-decade reign at the magazine, Wintour more than accomplished
her mission, restoring Vogue,’s preeminence while producing some truly mammoth magazines. The
September 2004 edition, for example, clocked in at 832 pages, the most ever for a monthly magazine.
Along the way, Wintour demonstrated fearlessness about forging new ground. She decisively called
an end to the supermodel era, showcasing a preference for celebrities rather than models on her
covers. Wintour was also the first to truly mix low-end fashion items with more expensive pieces in her
photo shoots. Her debut cover in November 1988 included a 19-year-old Israeli model outfitted in a
pair of $50 jeans and a $10,000 jewel-encrusted t-shirt. Despite her claims to the contrary, Wintour
became a force in the fashion world, not only through her decisions about what to feature in her
magazine, but also by breaking in newer designers and celebrating their styles. She helped make the
careers of such designers as Marc Jacobs and Alexander McQueen. In recent years, her work has
made her a power broker between designers and retailers. In 2006, she initiated a deal between
men’s designer Thom Browne and Brooks Brothers, which resulted Brown’s work appearing in 90 of
the retailer’s stores.
Over the years Wintour also demonstrated an ability to speak her mind. As gentle as she could be
about the matter, the editor informed Oprah that she’d need to lose 20 pounds before she would put
her on the cover of her magazine. And early in 2008, when Hillary Clinton snubbed Vogue out of fears
that appearing too feminine might undermine her presidential ambitions, Wintour fired back at the
Clinton camp with a letter in the February issue of her magazine. “The notion that a contemporary
woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying,”
she wrote. “This is America, not Saudi Arabia. It’s also 2008: Margaret Thatcher may have looked
terrific in a blue power suit, but that was 20 years ago. I do think Americans have moved on from the
power-suit mentality.” Of course, with that power and influence comes a well-documented ego.
Through the years, Wintour developed a reputation for being aloof and cold. It has been said that she
is difficult to work for, and insists that her staff always look fashion-forward and rail-thin. Wintour, a
mother of two who famously wore Chanel micro-mini skirts throughout her pregnancies, doesn’t
exactly deny she can be a demanding person for which to work. “I’m very driven by what I do,” Wintour
has said. “I am certainly very competitive. I like people who represent the best at what they do, and if
that turns you into a perfectionist than maybe I am.”
One of Wintour’s former assistants, Lauren Weisberger, wrote The Devil Wears Prada (2003), a
fictionalized account of her days at Vogue. Her main character, played by Meryl Streep, was a
demanding boss not unlike Wintour. The book was made into a film in 2006, and Wintour turned heads
when she arrived at the film’s premiere dressed in Prada. This move showed critics and fans alike that
Wintour was not without a sense of humor. “The thing about Lauren’s book and this film is that I do not
think fiction could surpass the reality,” a UK fashion editor told a reporter around the time of the
movie’s release. “You only have to see Anna’s requests for seats at the New York shows to get an
inkling of how art in this instance is only a poor imitation of life. Most of us just ask for seats in the first
or second row. She has her people request a seat from which she will not have to see or be seen by
specific rival editors. We spend our working lives telling people which it-bag to carry but Anna is so
above the rest of us she does not even have a handbag.