Anna Wintour on Accuracy of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ | Letterman

pleasure to meet you you know i'm just a dope i don't know anything about fashion well you look lovely by the way thank you and uh and but you and i don't know anything about vogue i guess guys my age don't they're probably not your target audience old guys reading vogue probably not what you're looking for right i i see that you have some very interesting socks on sucks sure take a look at those honey um you know there's a there's a designer that you should look into called tom brown he cuts his pants like really short so you can focus entirely on the socks really yes well yeah let me let me get that number now um brooks brothers but but i guess my point is uh anna i i don't know anything about uh fashion and i don't read vogue regularly but i know a lot about you so that says to me that you are transcendent you you are bigger than what you do for a living is that a fair assessment um well i i read in the new york times this week that i'm an ice queen i'm the sun king i'm an alien fleeing from district 9 and i'm a dominatrix so i reckon that makes me a lukewarm royalty with a whip from outer space what do you think good gig this is maureen dowd among others and and then the other thing that people always say and there was that that uh that movie the devil wears prada and and it was made about you and your organization and and you uh good luck were the devil in the title well i seem to remember that actually the movie was was fiction and we really like fiction at vogue but you know what my point is a lot of people say oh she's tough look out she'll she'll chew you up and spit you out and fire you and then chew you up and spit you into a cab so there must be some truth to that or we wouldn't we wouldn't have that impression well i'm very decisive and i try and give very clear direction to the people that i'm working with and sometimes unfortunately they don't hear the answer that they would like to hear and as my publisher says uh in the movie i'm not always warm and cuddly but i appreciate wonderful work good work creative talented people and i what i liked about the movie is that it it it really showed all the hard work that goes into the making of the magazine have you ever put anybody in a headlock [Applause] why is the september issue uh so important what what tell us about that well the september issue is the benchmark for the fashion industry it's the biggest issue of the year it's where we talk about all the trends of the season um it's uh it's it's sort of the announcement of the full fashion season and particularly right now i think when all of us are having such a uh challenging time in in the industry whoops did you did you arrange that yeah you raised a good point there when during economic hardships what does the the world of fashion do because it's directly as everything in the world is linked to finances so so you have to then scale down your approach to i mean do you have to have a lot of money to be fashionable well i'm so glad that you you bring this up because actually what the fashion industry is doing to to help the retailers in the fashion world as a whole is we've organized an evening called fashion's night out on september the 10th when the whole uh the whole of new york city supported by the mayor and nyc and company and every designer celebrity politician that we could uh get to support us is going to be out in the streets of new york in every store in manhattan in queens uh all over new york creating this huge party and getting people back into the stores and get excited um about fashion again actually i was hoping that you might call it i'll be there but you know but uh that's that's part of the deal but are the are are these outlets also reducing prices i guess that's the more can you can you on a reduced budget on on a budget of subsistence living can you still appear fashionable i guess that's the of course i mean what's wonderful about fashion today is that it's available to so many different people at so many different prices and i'm actually starting the night myself in queens at macy's with hopefully the mayor and the cast of hair and michael kors and we're going to be signing t-shirts and talking to macy's customers about fashion and socks and you hate you hate my socks don't you but i i mean it's uh uh uh going back to this again say a person had used to have a hundred dollars in their fashion budget and lord knows i don't know anybody who has a fashion budget but they had a hundred dollars in their fashion budget and now they have twenty dollars in their fashion budget how do you do that on twenty bucks you could buy a lipstick um the the uh the other thing i noticed in the film and and why would you uh let people come in and make a documentary about where you work that's i wouldn't do that i don't care how drunk i was i would never allow i would never allow that to happen because i'm going to come off like an idiot people are going to say hey and i don't i don't need any more of that well i had great respect for what rj cutler had the documentaries that he'd made in the past he made a wonderful film about the clinton campaign called the war room and he actually came to see us to make a documentary about the creation of the costume institute dinner at the metropolitan museum uh and as i was talking to him we came up with the idea that we should do something about the making of the september issue because it is such a a benchmark as i said before for the fashion industry i thought it would be you know interesting documentary i i was impressed that uh with less than a week before the september issue had to go to to press it still was undecided that there were still being reshoots taking place and decisions still have not been made is that pretty typical for a magazine absolutely i mean as it is for a tv show i mean you guys didn't even call me till friday wow it takes you three days to get ready big deal um and but i'm happy you're here but you know the other thing i noticed in and and i went to this thinking well i don't know but you know i found myself interested in in the film and that just goes to show you any topic is interesting to anybody if it's well done and the film certainly is but i noticed also uh and i didn't expect this that the people in charge seem to be roughly my age and and i thought it would be a bunch of pardon the expression you know what i mean young younger people because you know but they're they're decisions not only run by senior citizens i mean we do have a lot of young we have a lot of younger people working at the magazine but the the director and his wisdom chose to uh to focus on the more mature uh people working right but that's interesting and i guess with maturity comes a greater vision and greater appreciation for everything that's in the fashion spectrum well what am i talking about um but you know who i i liked in this film was your buddy is it grace cody yeah she's an interesting character and you've and a contemporary you've known her forever right yes in fact when i first became editor-in-chief of american vogue grace was the very first phone call that i that i received the morning that i started and she came over to see me that day and she was at her desk the following monday morning and we've worked together since and in the movie she says she knows when to stop pushing you but you don't know when to stop pushing her is that is that a fair assessment of their relationship well in a recent interview she said uh that we had a lot of mutual respect for each other but there are lots of times when she would like to kill me yeah well the mutual respect homicide it all is just right and then the other thing and i've never been to a fashion show in my life but what we see on the news is people looking like they're from outer space you know beautiful women who who look like you know the neptunians have released them but but nobody buys that stuff do they is somebody walking around like they're from neptune lots of people yeah but by accident i'm an alien percentage of the decisions of the magazine do you make 80 90 50 100 100 so the responsibility is all yours and by the way this is not the the current september issue this is the september issue featured in the documentary the september issue well anna uh i hope you had a nice time it's all right right oh we're going to hit some balls too are we off yeah thank you thank you very much anna wintour ladies and gentlemen [Music]

Channel: Letterman

Views: 996,374

Keywords: letterman, david letterman, dave letterman, interview, letterman interview, letterman official, letterman late show, letterman late night, anna wintour, the devil wears prada, devil wears prada, anna wintour the devil wears prada, anna winntour, vogue, anna wintour vogue, anna wintour interview, anna wintour letterman, anna wintour letterman interview, devil wears prada anna wintour, devil, fashion, new york fashion, anna wintour movie, vogue movie, vogue magazine, magazine

Id: viTU747i6r8

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022