The Devil might have worn Prada but Anna Wintour proves the right fit for Vogue

 

It may be the holiday season but the best gift a number of members of the media can hope for is keeping their jobs.

Time and Sports Illustrated are getting rid of people, Gawker let a number of employees go and in the newspaper and TV biz, the pink slips are being pinned on people's backs as they are walked out the door.

Hard times, and, as happens in such times, a boiling cauldron of schadenfreude has been bubbling up over the future of Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

Widely hailed as one of the most powerful person in fashion, Wintour's contract with Vogue’s parent company Conde Nast is up soon. That, combined with the recently announced cost cutting cancellations of Fashion Rocks, the closing of Vogue Living and the dramatically scaling back of Men's Vogue, could save publisher S.I. Newhouse a nice chunk of change by replacing the $2 million plus a year 59-year old editor with someone cheaper - like French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, who the ruthless Newhouse was said to be off to Paris to make an offer to..

There is no doubt that Wintour's empire is getting smaller. 

She lost all those events and publications she was behind and things are bad at the Mothership. In 2004, American Vogue put out a record breaking 832-page September issue. This month, the magazine's suffering an ad page drop of over 22% - which in a high cost, high profile publication is much more than a mere ripped bodice, especially with other fashion mags not doing nearly as badly.

A couple of week's ago The New York Post's Page Six had insider sources claiming that in the current climate, Wintour was "thinking of retiring." The item claimed that it was just a matter of finding a successor and crafting the exit. “She feels she’s done it all," said the unnamed source, "and had enough."

There is no doubt that Wintour has done it all or certainly a lot.

For one thing, the British-born and recently OBE-awarded Wintour inspired a best seller and a hit movie as the demanding and exacting Runway editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. 

OK, that inspiration, which if you read between the whiny Ivy League author's hackneyed lines unconsciously revealed a dedicated and incredibly hard working perfectionist who asked no more of others that she had or would do herself, might not be the best press release Wintour has ever seen sent out on herself. What is a clear source of news is that she has also, since taking over Vogue in 1988, injected relevance and new life into the magazine that was, for many who love fashion and the culture of aesthetics, more institution than inspiration. 

If Vogue is hitting a low now, it is partially due to the heights that Wintour raised it up to.

Which predictably, in an industry that loves a messy pratfall much more than a striding success, has lead to more than a few detractors.

Along with her trademark bob haircut, sunglasses and eye for clobber and cloth, Wintour's other constant companions seem to be descriptions of her as ruthless, aloof, imperious, and temperamental and a word that rhymes with witch. The 2005 bio Front Row: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor In Chief, with which as you can guess, Wintour did not participate, gave page after page of negative anecdotes about the fashion monarch, leaving one wondering how someone so seemingly horrible could have gotten where she did.

The guarded Wintour's stiff upper lip silence on such matters didn't do anything, to put it lightly, to dispel the assumptions. Witlessly nicknamed "Nuclear Wintour," her accomplishments, such as the more than $10 million she has raised for AIDS/HIV charities, celebrating the achievements and history of the multi-billion dollar fashion industry and promoting photographers such as the late Helmut Newton and innovative designers such as John Galliano, Jonathan Saunders and Marc Jacobs, are buried by sideshow psychologists beneath the supposed bad behavior. On the other bejeweled hand, her failures, such as the controversy of her fur wearing, the recent Conde Nast cuts and the ad lull, are widely circulated.

In short, Anna Wintour's little head and sharp elbows made the perfect scalping for a depressed industry looking to see one of the mighty sacrificed to the Gods. 

Unfortunately for the braying mob, it looks like it ain't gonna happen anytime soon

Yesterday, S.I. Newhouse issued a statement calling the rumblings "the silliest rumor I ever heard" and making it that when it comes to Anna Wintour leaving her position, “there’s no truth to it."

She may not be a virgin like Elizabeth I, but the pink slipless Queen of Fashion looks destined to reign for years more to come.

I believe the Buddhists call that mudita.