The September Issue

The other day I was tired and in a bad mood so I thought I'd watch a low-impact, not too serious of a documentary and multitask by playing solitaire or something. And alas I came across The September Issue, a documentary about putting out an issue of Vogue. Simple and low-impact enough, right? Well, I didn't play any solitaire and have bought 3 issues of Vogue since. Sigh, I'm such a target for persuasion and consumerism.

The film documents the process of putting together the magazine's September issue, their most important and largest issue of each year. Though I'm known for liking clothes, I never follow the fashion industry - big names, how it works, etc. So this documentary blew my mind in terms of realizing what a HUGE and complex industry designer fashion is, the amount of money at stake, the power dynamic between people and companies, the power it has over consumerism, etc. The piece was not just a portrait of Vogue itself, but rather it's mysterious Editor in Chief Anna Wintour. Wintour has had this job for 22 years, and is 60 years old. She is a tiny, skinny 60 year old woman, and after watching this documentary, if I saw her on the street I'd turn a corner. The film as a whole was made to diffuse some of the mystery about Wintour and also give a backstage look at how Vogue works. I can't say I walked away with any life lesson or a changed perspective on anything, but filmmaker R.J. Cutler did a great job of capturing the essence of a world, industry, and idol of which I am completely unknowledgeable, and making me captivated viewer.

Though consistently interesting, I'd say one thing I felt was missing was a larger number of cohesive scenes and moments. The film does cover a great number of months, and has a lot it wants to show the viewer, but after a while some of the scenes and processes it was showing us (Anna reviewing photos from shoots, meeting with famous designers) seemed stringy and repetitive in topic, structure, and emotion. Every time a new facet to the world or magazine was introduced it was fascinating, but to keep coming back to similar things and not new ones caused the piece to start losing momentum.

Wintour is a mesmerizing lady, and I've been told that she did this documentary is a big deal, but by the end of it she wasn't as humanized as I would've expected or as I'm used to with documentary main characters. I understand that it's part of her personality and reputation to not be the most relatable person, surely she's not, and I'm amazed that this tiny 60 year old woman literally runs the fashion industry. But at the end of it, as a fashion outsider, I just felt kind of bitter that this is what she gets to do as her job, and the whole industry is this big crazy organism that I will never understand.