Customer Reviews

Front Row: Anna Wintour: What Lies Beneath the Chic Exterior of Vogue's Editor in Chief

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I stopped reading Vogue years ago. I dress simply in classic styles and have little interest in the fashions shown by Vogue and many other magazines. And Vogue seems out of touch with its readers with stodgy articles and clownish fashions. (I find Elle to be more fresh and appealing). But I am always interested in a good bio and decided to read about the mystery behind the woman at the helm of Vogue.

It appears that Ms. Wintour was very "cool" from the get go. Nice when she needed to be but rarely covering her true frosty nature. Confident and collected she knew what she wanted from an early age and went after it.

Ms. Wintour did not graduate from high school and does not write very well, according to the author..so luck, family background, a strong sense of fashion and animal agressiveness played a large role in her rise to the helm of Vogue's masthead.

As I read throught the book, I couldnt help but be glad that I have no desire to enter the apparent competitiveness and cattiness that marks the world of fashion magazines. A cutthroat business where wearing the wrong shoes or skirt style will send smirks your way.

As Anna climbs to the top you read about how she loses friends, alienates people (yet somehow many come back for more abuse),and tramples on others to get where she wants to be. All the while she appears to fascinate others with her cool demeanor and aloof attitude. She is portrayed by the author as a shallow individual whose interests center around herself and clothes and thats about it.

The author is exhaustive in his research. As another reviewer pointed out, more photographs would have been nice. But overall an interesting read and one that may have you studying Vogue magazine to see how much the masthead varies from month to month as Ms. Wintour fires and hires at her imperious leisure.

Anna Wintour is one of those people that it's almost absurdly easy to hate... especially if you've worked under her. "Front Row: Anna Wintour" opens with a description of the poor girls who show up bare-legged in freezing temperatures, all to cater to the fashion diva's whims. It gives a taste of what is to come.

Anna Wintour was born the daughter of high-ranking British parents, one a social do-gooder and the other a major newspaper editor. She followed in neither parent's footsteps -- from her early schooldays, it became obvious that Anna cared first and foremost about fashion, shortening her gym skirts and defying strict dress codes (which led to expulsion from high school).

As a teen, she was a minor club goddess. Then with her father's credentials as a calling card, Anna started delving into the world of fashion writing, including brief stints at magazines like Harper's Bazaar, the ill-fated Viva, and Home and Gardens, which she singlehandedly destroyed. Finally "nuclear Wintour" got her dream job: editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine.

Jerry Oppenheimer isn't exactly the ideal biographer, having written some truly awful biographies of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and Martha Stewart. However, he does a passable job with "Front Row," by coolly and calmly exposing the many flaws of Vogue's editor-in-chief, including how she incited rebellion and destroyed at least one magazine with her celebrity-obsessed revamps.

He also does an excellent job of deflating Wintour's imposing image, by revealing the times she was found sobbing, played "little girl," or acted in a manner that could have gotten her sued. For example, we find out that she pettily fired people for not being young and attractive enough, and scuppered a bestselling author's essay because he wasn't good looking. Juicy juicy.

Unfortunately, Oppenheimer's writing is not up to the challenge. At best, his writing is dry and distant, with the odd embarrassing moment (such as a lame erection joke early in the book). He also gives detailed exposes of Wintour's assorted paramours, but her kids get almost no coverage at all. He seems more interested in the "fashion wars."

Her icy attitude and ruthlessness have made her a legend in fashion circles, but "the devil who wears Prada" loses some of her sting after this book has been read.

I read "The Devil Wears Prada" by Lauren Weisenberger last summer, knowing it was written by a former assistant of Anna Wintour. I expected to be entertained with reports of the outrageous behavior by the rich and famous and wasn't disappointed. I found myself humorously horrified at the extent to which the Miranda Priestly character reigned with terror over her subordinates and colleagues and astonished at the number of people who took her abuse as "just part of the job." I also recall thinking at the time, "if these were real people, I'd recommend therapy...and fast."

Well, I've just finished "Front Row" and it appears that much of what is set forth in "The Devil Wears Prada" is closer to the truth than one might have originally thought. The book appears to be well-researched and unbiased. He gives a solid reporting of her life from childhood to present and never does the reader get the idea that Mr. Oppenheimer is "out to get" Ms. Wintour or that he is only reporting the negative side of things. While there were a few positive comments here and there, however, most reports related to Ms. Wintour do tend toward the negative. Given the the number of people willing to comment "on the record" and be quoted by name, I'm guessing this is just a simple case of "the truth hurts."

Okay...now pardon me while I pull out my soapbox for a minute...

After reading this book, the saddest thing to me is the fact that there are so many people -- starting with Anna Wintour herself, her colleagues, photographers, writers, assistants, etc. -- who actually perpetuate this type of behavior and treat it as if it were to be taken seriously. Anna Wintour is a fashion editor, for God's sake! She isn't a teacher or a scientist or a doctor or a law enforcement officer...she's a fashion editor. She tells a very small segment of self-important society what to wear. If everyone in the world started wearing togas or Catholic-school uniforms tomorrow and Vogue closed it's doors, putting Ms. Wintour out of a job, how many people would be worse off than they are today? How many people would actually even notice? Perhaps "Nuclear Wintour" should give that some thought the next time she rides alone in the elevator up to her office to berate her latest assistant.

One last thought as I put the soapbox away...

If you're interested in reading "The Devil Wears Prada" in addition to this book (and I recommend both), you should definitely read "The Devil Wears Prada" first. Somehow, I can't imagine "The Devil Wears Prada" is quite as funny once you've read "Front Row" and realize how close to reality Ms. Weisenberger's "fictional novel" might actually be.

I read the reviews -- all of which are highly positive about Front Row, and decided to hit Barnes & Noble here in Cleveland and buy a copy to see what all the fuss is about. I've never seen a book get so much press...well, except for Kitty Kelley's Bush hatchet job. I even saw that that cool media website -- Gawker.Com -- was picking a page at random from Front Row and running an anecdote daily. Okay, so I sat down at my favorite Starbucks and what do I see -- three other c hick-lit types like me all reading Front Row avidly, and by the way, like me, they were not what I would call fashionista types. So I dug in, read the book in two night and have come away understading what all the hubub is about. Oppenheimer has really done his homework. I read "The Devil Waers Prada," but that was mostly fantasy and lots of whining. This certainly is the real deal. Oppenheimer is specific with his facts, names names and in the end I came away with the feeling that he did a very share job of balancing Anna Wintour's bad witrh her good, her private life and her public life. That's rare today when so much of wehat I read, even in the NY Times, is grossly inaccurate, or twisted or was written with an agenda. If you are interested in powrful women, in the bitchy fashion world, in learning some valueable lessons about how to become successful in the business and media world...this is the book to read.

I'm not into fashion, but I saw this on display at Barnes & Noble near my house and picked it up just to glannce through it. I could not put it down. This is truly a fascinating read about a powerful woman who I guess is onwe of the most powerful in the world. I had read the author's book on Martha Stewart so I knew he was good and had all the dish. But this one really goes much deeper. Based on all of his interviews, he nails Anna to the wall as tough, ambitious, driven -- and REAL bitchy. This is a great beach read, but since there's slush on the ground it'll keep me warm and cozy. I read i Devil Wears Prada but this is superiour -- and REAL!

I picked this book up during Fashion Week in NYC and could not put it down until I came to the back cover. The author has captured the Queen of fashion in exquisite detail, giving the reader an immaculate portrait of Wintour's rise to the pinnacle of power from her childhood in London, her wild&crazy teenage years during the swinging sixties, her climb up through the fashion magazines over fellow aspirants with her 4" Manolos and lovers&friends lost and won along the way. This biography is so well researched and well sourced. Kudos to the author for not only giving us those details so that we have an accurate portrayal of the woman who determines what's hot and what's not in fashion but also for recognizing that she certainly deserves to be on the top rung of the ladder. It is only by detailing her early years that we fully understand how she ascended to this throne.
I don't think previous reviewers read the same book. You don't have to be a fashionista to want to read about one of the most powerful women in business today in the world.
I also read Oppenheimer's book on Martha Stewart, the first and last biography on the doyenne of domesticity. As a lover of biographies, I think he interviews hundreds of subjects and lets those who know the subject well tell the story -- unlike other popular biographers who write only from news clips. This is the real deal. If you are remotely interested in who decides what's in or out in fashion and how she acquired this extraordinary power, you'll love this page-turner on Anna Wintour.

The happiest day of my month is when American Vogue arrives at the newsagency, so I was really looking forward to reading this biography, and ordered it the day it was published. I loved it, and found it was hard to put down. I agree with the other reviewer that there should have been more pictures of a younger Anna. So much detail was supplied about her beauty, and how she used her looks to get ahead and manipulate men. Apparently men found her looks irresistable- it would have been nice to see what she looked like.

They say a picture worth a thousand words, well, one look at Anna Wintour ooze the following thing, pure, absolute morgue. Jerry Oppenheimer's book is a fabulous, well-reaserched piece about the most powerful woman of fashion, revealing eloquent examples of her icy, ruthless, gross carreerism. As a reader of French,Italian and American Vogue, I always found the latter to be boring, sterile, cold, lacking the edginess, soul and warmth of its european counterparts. I've always found Wintour to have a dry, not particularly articulate writing style and Oppenheimer confirmed my beliefs when he reveals she was a high school drop-out, without any communication or writing skills. The woman is a pure case for the 48 Laws of Power (by Robert Greene), where cunning, maliciousness, seduction, backstabbing and using men become main instruments to claw at the top.

Wintour, we learn in this book, is no woman's woman, despite heading the first fashion magazine in the world. We learn everything about her outright catty bitchiness and petty competitiveness with other women, yet how she is needy for male attention (craving time with her father among this), playing little girl, seducing,flirting and even hiding a lascivious soul behind that icy, morgue-ish exterior.

A tremendous pleasure to read- plus the Arab drag queen story, where "she" and a macho French photographer terrorize Anna is hilarious!!! Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power and Samuel Vaknin book about Malignant Narcissists complete very well this book, in order to understand the woman's persona.

Oppenheimer bills himself as an investigative biographer and if Anna Wintour is Watergate, Oppenheimer is Bernstein and Woodward. He does an incredible job of tracing her life from the Swinging '60s in London to the most powerful job in fashion magazines. I read the Devil wears Prada, but this is the REAL story. A fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. I posted a review earlier but a note popped up saying Amazon had a problem. So I may be posted twice.

Loved it! Yes, I'm surprised because I'm a novel reader who never picks up a biography. Oppenheimer's gift for story telling, however, made this one read more like a wonderful work of fiction. What's more, it's well known that this author is a well respected journalist who does a great deal of research so this tale is all true. Wow. What a bizarre world behind all those fashion mags and the big "philanthropic" events of the New York aristocracy. Bottom line...if you're not the type to read this kind of book, you'll love it. If you enjoy biographies, you'll love it. Can't wait for the movie (and Oppenheimer's next book). Two thumbs up.