WINTOUR CHILL

She's the queen of fashion, and thanks to her "fictional" depiction in The Devil Wears Prada, Anna Wintour is also a household name. A new book investigates her famed froideur.

- AMY ODELE

A familiar look at New York Fashion Week in September 2011.

Anna Wintour has been the editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988, and one of the most powerful figures in media. "I don't know what it is about Anna exactly," said Laurie Schechter, an early assistant, "but if she could bottle it she'd make a million billion dollars because it just was like fairytale stuff."

Across more than three decades of Vogue and its spin-offs, she has defined fashion trends and beauty standards, telling millions of people what to buy, how to look and who to care about. She decides which celebrities and models to photograph and which clothes to dress them in. If she wants a designer to have more influence, she recommends them to bigger labels, and she has this power because the owners of those larger labels seek and follow - her advice.

Editors of Vogue were powerful before Anna Wintour had the job, but she expanded that power remarkably, making the magazine, and herself, a brand that powerful people want to be associated with. "The amazing thing about Anna is the average person knows who she is," said designer Tom Ford. "You show them a picture and they say, 'That's Anna Wintour from Vogue'." Particularly thanks to the novel and film The Devil Wears Prada, how Anna speaks, hires and fires, eats, and shops are topics of obsession and scrutiny.