There’s one game everyone plays at Condé Nast. Every magazine headquartered in the Times Square skyscraper has a corresponding floor, marked plainly in the elevators. Every rider’s job – indeed, their instinct – is to predict who’s getting off where. Ding: Lucky. Off goes the over-accessorized co-ed. GQ: the only man in the elevator gets off, and he’s dressed better than most of the women. SELF: the only spunky girl leaves. And then there’s Vogue. You can make a safe bet that the most beautiful, cold and statuesque girl in the stilettos clacks away there. You’ll always be right.
The September Issue follows her in, past the secretary, past the glass doors and the wall-mounted silver letters. It’s a brief look into the world’s fashion bible, and from what I gathered during my three months as a Condé Nast intern, it’s pretty dead-on. The film flits from cubicle to cubicle, snatching bits of insight about how the magazine is made, from the brainstorming meetings through the endless page proofs to the newsstand product. The excesses that characterized Condé Nast until just recently are duly noted and especially fascinating now that the Golden Age of journalistic decadence is decidedly over.
But the one thing you can still say about Condé Nast is that it’s ripe with characters – the brand demands it. (At one point, you see the Editor at Large bumble around a tennis court in full Louis Vuitton garb.) Editor in Chief Anna Wintour is the implied star, on whom the hellish boss from The Devil Wears Prada is based. The real-life version is, not surprisingly, every bit as venerated and feared. But The September Issue’s spotlight takes an unexpected turn with Grace Coddington, Vogue’s fiery veteran creative director. She and Wintour started working at Vogue on the same day, and even now, she’s the only one tough enough to stand up to her superior. She’s the whimsical artistic genius – even Wintour admits it – scrabbling to save the art of Vogue from her axe-wielding boss determined to keep the magazine moving forward at any cost. On her cherished photo shoots, Coddington accessorizes the models herself, encourages them to eat the desserts she brings and even uses one of the film’s cameramen in a shoot as a last-minute solution.
And as an extra jab to Wintour, Coddington demands the cameraman’s belly fat remain digitally unaltered. The personality dichotomy is what drives the highly entertaining movie – and presumably what drives the entire magazine.