Anna Wintour has always understood the theater of power. The last one American Vogue the cover features the former editor alongside Meryl Streep, both performing a controlled elegance: Wintour, though to the side, is instantly recognizable in her bob and sunglasses; Streep mirrors that, blurring the line between actor and alter ego. It’s as if, captured in that image, fashion’s most enduring editor and her more famous fictional counterpart have collapsed into one.
The cover arrives under the guise of cultural synchronicity: the upcoming release of The Devil Wears Prada 2in which Streep reprises her role as Miranda Priestly, the icy fashion baron who demands steadfast exceptions from her terrified staff. Priestly first took shape, of course, in Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name, a semi-autobiographical book based on her experience as a personal assistant to VogueThe editor-in-chief at the time, Anna Wintour.
The conceit is this: art imitates life as much as life imitates art. It would be fruitless to try to define the differences between fiction and reality being presented as fiction. The cover is sold as a “moment”. But from what? No doubt it’s a big promotion for the movie, but there it is Vogue not just put one of her employees on her cover? (It’s ironic that such campaigns are considered necessary in the marketing landscape that Wintour, who constantly put celebrities on the cover, helped to cultivate.)
Wintour allegedly left the Vogue last June. She stepped down as its editor-in-chief, although she remained its global chief content officer as well as art director at VogueThe parent company of Condé Nast – a role it still holds. It was a move heralded by internet cultural commentators as the end of the reign of the high priestess of fashion. In practice, however, Wintour didn’t so much leave as move into a more elevated, albeit less visible, role within Condé Nast. For all the legacy talk, the new editor-in-chief, Chloe Malle, still reports up to Wintour. In the last one New York Times joint interview with Malle and Wintour, Malle is asked what he would do with the budget that Vogue enjoyed in the nineties. “Build a podcast studio,” Malle replies. “Pay everyone 30 percent more, make sure the social team has more people on it.” Wintour, clearly unsatisfied with Malle’s response, quickly adds: “To be clear, we have a very healthy budget in Vogue.”
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Which is to say, the cover suggests that Wintour is more removed from the magazine than she is. Its supposed absence has become an aesthetic, although the reality is that its presence remains structurally intact.
This is what gives the image its dissonance; it falsely signals a change in power. Streep as priestly as Wintour becomes a hall of mirrors in which authorship is impossible to find but control is unmistakable. Again, for the movie, it’s smart marketing. But for Vogueit’s something more ambiguous: a cover that points toward reinvention while insisting on continuity.
During her 37-year tenure in VogueWintour has refined art to become less visible while becoming more powerful — institutionally, politically, culturally. After stepping down as editor-in-chief, her influence is now less tied to the mechanics of photos and cover lines, and more embedded in the overarching logic of the institution. She is the invisible architect, the one who refuses to relinquish authority. While she may not be seen wandering the corridors of Vogue as much as ever, her voice continues to echo.
It is an invisibility that has precedent. During the production of the original film in 2005, Wintour was widely reported to have made life difficult for its creators by discouraging designers and industry figures from participating, with the implied suggestion that Vogue coverage may be affected. She denied it, of course. Only Valentino Garavani appeared as himself, illustrating the system of influence Wintour operates: one where presence is optional but power is understood.
All of this makes the current cover feel less like a breakthrough and more like a repeat. Streep and Wintour, both poised and sovereign, embody an authority that doesn’t need to be proclaimed in order to be felt. Together they produce an image that is composite but airless: a portrait of only the simulation of change.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 arrives in theaters on May 1, and this cover reaffirms the neat narrative cycle: character returns, icon reappears, myth renewed. But purity isn’t clarity, and the cover also reaffirms the carefully orchestrated blurring of the lines between low and tight. Because Wintour understands, perhaps more than most, that power lies not in what is shown, but in what is hidden. She has not left the institutions of power and from there, as always, she decides what the rest of us will see.
(Further reading: Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling is an obituary for Britain)
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