IN VOGUE

DOCUMENTING THE MAKING OF FALL'S FASHION BIBLE

As a magazine writer and editor, I couldn't help but approach The September Issue with a tear or two puddling in my eyes. This fascinating documentary, directed by R. J. Cutler (a producer of The War Room), details the making of Vogue's September 2007 issue. Perhaps you remember it? Sienna Miller was on the cover, looking gorgeous in Marchesa despite a Kewpie-esque updo, but what's striking today are the cover lines: EXTRA-EXTRA LARGE! OUR BIGGEST ISSUE EVER: 840 PAGES OF FEARLESS FASHION. Ah yes, those were the days when Neiman Marcus alone would buy 41 pages of ads—a golden, magical era teetering on a precipice of doom. Not that Cutler set out to create The Garden of the Finzi-Continis for people who work in print. The point, as in The War Room, was to capture the craft, dignity, and esprit behind hard if rarefied labor, whether electing a president or putting out a fashion magazine's most important annual issue. The expected star is Vogue's editor in chief, Anna Wintour, as exacting as her caricature, but here letting her human seams show. The unexpected co-star, at least for people outside fashion, is Grace Coddington, the magazine's redheaded creative director, a onetime model who styled three of the issue's six major fashion features. Both women have strong points of view, both are stubborn, each grumbles about but ultimately needs the other. They're like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in a Lethal Weapon movie, only British, female, and very nicely dressed. Their belief in fashion's artistry and power is infectious.

BRUCE HANDY