Malcolm Gladwell feeds us book titles like Jay-Z feeds us coolness and Starbucks feeds us crappy coffee. Anna Wintour stars as the 'Outlier' we need her to be. Her home on Long Island is as quintessentially outlier-esque as her story of filling in "Editor of Vogue" on a future occupation survey is. To belabor this point, she is Gladwell's thesis as she dominates because she has figured out how to dominate - hours worked and self nomination as the determinant of cool (I will one day tell my children that this attribute is more important for their material success than any other - P.Diddy doesn't really have that much talent and he is just kind of annoying but he decided he would define cool and pretend to really believe it, thus he is cool). The fashion industry is pestering in it's gloating of being a 300 billion dollar industry. I suppose a documentary depicting the "pope" (as she is referred to in the film) of that many dough stacks is bound for AMCs as well as the The Tricycle Theatre. At any rate, the industry under inspection in this film was shown in a rather submissive light. Do we decide what magazines publish or do magazines tell us what we should care about? This film entertained us with what we wanted to see. Maybe what we saw in this movie is really how it is; I don't really think so because I think humanity trumps Louis V. tennis outfits. Nonetheless, audiences that enjoy laughing at the bits before movies about silencing cell (I literally hold my ears shut when I see this before movies in the UK, it is so awful. Click on cinema ad, it's so terrible.) phones would really enjoy the blatant comical silences after a lowly assistant stumbles over her words in Anna's office. The directors probably got really jacked whenever she barely resembled Miranda Priestly (the lead character in The Devil Wears Prada that is supposed to be Anna - they aren't really that much alike but their offices look exactly the same).
I thought the best part of the movie was definitely when she was talking about her brothers and sisters. She lists their occupations haphazardly (they are human rights workers and newspaper editors) and resolutely admits that she knows they don't value her work. Outliers are viewed as the 'lucky ones' because they seem to never question their purpose. Rick Warren and Joel Olsteen have made stupid money by giving people purpose. If Jesus would have had better publishers than Vatican I he would still be raking it in. But, I tell you what, there is no getting around the acceptance of your family. It trumps everything. Vogue causes Anna to be really busy. She gets to make a bunch of decisions each day that effect millions of dollars and millions of people. Her most standout trait is decisiveness. Purpose is always in the cutting room and in the 13 million subscribers. Based on her facial expressions in these few candid moments, I think she would give up the 13 million subscribing strangers for three familial subscribers.
This movie is 'worth seeing' because it gives us a neat look into the fashion world. The facts are true. 13 million people subscribe to Vogue. We spend, collectively, $300 billion on all that goes into fashion. I wear running shoes with a V-neck sweater in London because I want to make a statement. I have friends that are scared of all things gay and do things like tuck in half of their shirt tail. At a soccer tournament in Coco Beach my entire team bought the same belt from Ron Jon's surf shop. Watching one of the young designers working on a Gap commission was truly watching a dude create some really cool art. These designers live in a fantasy world and it's enjoyable to hear them talk about feathers vs. fur. Fashion, like any other art form, gives us a little escape from hunger, poverty, and doing the dishes.
It would be cool to see the fashion industry approach some of our seemingly intractable problems. Big questions are worth asking. What effect could Anna's reach have on free-trade? What would it mean for Vogue to scale back intentionally as a protest to our debt ridden lives (this year's issue was a couple hundred pages shorter than 2007 due to the economy)? Or maybe just creating beautiful things is enough. No one should judge the flamboyance and excess that accompanies the fashion industry, as if Los Angeles draining the Colorado River is not flamboyant or excessive.
