Anna Wintour: Stuck in a time warp?

We realise our current fascination with Anna Winter is starting to verge on obsessive, but having worked in the fashion industry for more years than we care to count, we have heard lots of stories about her, many of which have become fashion folklore. We have also worked for our fair share of nightmare female fashion bosses and find these sort of women spookily intriguing! 

Ok, so Anna Wintour might look fabulous and her magazine may be read by over 13 million Americans, but watching the trailer for the new film The September Issue, which follows Anna and her team as they put together the September issue of Vogue, we are in two minds about her management style. For a product to have a clearly defined handwriting there is no doubt there must be a vision and a passion from the people at the top. But when that vision blocks other people ideas, as it appears to in this film, does this become detrimental to things moving on? Listening to younger more inexperienced colleagues ideas can often be time consuming and sometimes fruitless, but equally they can come up with a new slant on something, which opens up whole new avenues of possibility.

Anna's management style is very much at odds with the current thinking being proposed by many futurologists. They think the pyramid structure will become obsolete as more and more small forward thinking (mainly internet companies) introduce a flat structure where everyone has their say and things become more democratic. If staff live in fear of saying what they think (as they appear to on this film) surely they become reactive rather than proactive, second guessing what they think the boss wants rather than what they instinctively believe, resulting in no-one reaching their potential.

We also have an issue with Anna seemingly emulating a male management style, unemotional, cold and competitive. We strongly believe that Michelle Obama's way of combining emotion and strength, is a far more modern, effective way to communicate with others. Isn't it about about opening up the conversation, inviting opinion and listening; something women are good at.

What do you think?

'The September Issue' opens on 11 September

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