The September, 2007, Vogue, which sold 13 million copies, weighed nearly five pounds, and its 840 pages made it the single largest magazine ever published. Seven-hundred and twenty-seven of those pages were ads. When publisher Tom Florio exhorts the magazine's advertising sales team to "sell Vogue the brand like it's never been sold before," you feel it: this is what things were like when economic growth and consumer spending were lockstep in one upward trend, and magazines like Vogue could reliably put out Our Biggest Issue Ever, every year.

You feel it when Grace Coddington reports that Wintour, in killing shots from a lavish 1920s-themed spread, has "just thrown out probably $50,000 worth of work." You feel it when Wintour, having seen stills from an editorial with a color-blocking theme, orders a re-shoot, with different models, different clothes, and a different photographer. (No sum is supplied for the cost of that waste of daily rates, studio rental, and catering.)

You also feel it when Wintour is filmed with her deputy, Sally Singer, at a retailer luncheon the magazine has convened. Retailers are nervous about certain of the things they've seen on the fall runways, and they rely on Wintour as a kind of emissary to the design world; when Singer prompts her boss to share their "good news," Wintour tilts her head and reports that she has spoken to "Mrs. Prada" several times, and that she has agreed to "reinterpret" certain of her runway looks in a more wearable silk-mohair blend, instead of the wool-mohair she had shown on the catwalk. The assembled tableful of executives from Saks and Bergdorf's practically coo with appreciation.

After that decree is handed down to such a happy reception, Burt Tansky, the president and C.E.O. of Neiman Marcus, starts to ask Wintour a long question about delivery schedules. Designers, it seems, are making late and infrequent deliveries, which retailers feel cost them sales; customers want what's new right now. Tansky uses the phrase "demand outstripping supply" several times. It is a shocking moment: it's as if the incredible glut of oversupply, the $3,000 handbag bubble that rose through the market during the years of easy credit and burst last fall in a mess of steep discounting and steeper layoffs, had risen up, taken over Tansky's body, and thunderously demanded to be fed.

Wintour's response is equally shocking: given her magazine's role in pushing the culture of consumption, the culture of "aspirational" consumerism and "It" bags, one might expect Wintour to tell the titans of retail that she will speak to these tardy designers and tell them what's what. But instead she dresses down Tansky, giving him a politician's non-response about how she "hears what he is saying" and that it boils down to a problem of "editing." She says some of the younger designers have trouble editing their collections down, and she will see what she can do. Never mind that "editing" is almost the exact opposite of Tansky's concern; Wintour gets up from the table and leaves. And one is confronted with the surprising sense that, whether or not she knew it at the time, Wintour was on the right side of that issue.

There are a number of surprising things about The September Issue, which I finally saw last night. Although Wintour comes across as fairly warm and forthcoming, the camera cannot hide her staff's authentically fearful reactions to her presence; when Wintour is perusing photo spreads with her art director, she moves slowly and deliberately down a long bench, looking at photos one by one. When she approaches a young assistant who is lingering over, or perhaps just straightening, one of the shots, Wintour, without moving a muscle, says quietly, "Excuse me." The girl jumps out of Wintour's way like she's been bitten, and Wintour continues down the line of pictures without breaking stride.

Apparently, there also must be a rider in Patrick Demarchelier's contract about being able to shoot in beautiful locations, because we witness the production of one of those terrible, jumping, grey-background editorials of which Vogue is so very fond, and it doesn't take place at Milk Studios. Demarchelier, Caroline Trentini, Coddington, and the rest of the team are whisked away to a beautiful modernist house on a wide-open expanse of land; in the living room, a grey backdrop has been hung, and what emerges is a shoot which gives no inkling of its geographical origin. The location fees alone for that shoot boggle the mind.

The adversarial but respectful relationship between Grace Coddington, Vogue's top stylist, and Wintour is also explored. While other fashion editors crumble under Wintour's reproach — Edward Enninful says after a styling critique where Wintour rejects nearly every look he has put together that he wants to kill himself — Coddington fights, both in her editor's office and via backchannels. (She's always using the documentarians to try and find out how her spreads are faring — gaining pages, losing pages, or holding steady — in the layout room.) Wintour seems to respect Coddington all the more for her willingness to scrap; it's as though, like a good boss, she wants to be challenged.

When cover subject Sienna Miller steps into the scene, an instructive juxtaposition between celebrities and models is created. (We also see Raquel Zimmerman, Caroline Trentini, Coco Rocha, and numerous other no-name girls, do their thing; during a couture shoot in Paris, Zimmerman carefully eats a fruit tart the size of a saucer, while a distressed makeup artist looks on in preparation to re-perform her handiwork.) Sienna is full of life, giddy and excited and seemingly fun — also a canny business woman: she makes sure to introduce her designer sister, Savannah, to Wintour and the Vogue team — and the models are more subdued; there's a care taken in their movements. When a source makes the argument that women like Sienna got the idea to be models because they saw the supermodels of the late 80s and early 90s take over the fashion world, and grew to covet Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington's beautiful ubiquity, it's hard not to agree. Sienna poses and jumps and mugs for the camera like an actress trying to look like a bombastic 80s model, as if by sheer enthusiasm she could will a beautiful picture into existence, and consequently her shots take all manner of Photoshop trickery — fake backgrounds, a head from one shot Frankensteined onto the neck and shoulders from another — to finesse. Raquel and Coco know just how to move a hand or a shoulder to set off the lines of the garment, and they work at it until the shot is just right. Coddington says at one point that she wouldn't care if she never saw another celebrity again in her life; and after seeing the focus that Raquel brings to that couture shoot — which ended up in the October, 2007, issue — you can't help but kind of agree.

The film is a well-studied evocation of all the hard work that goes into producing a magazine; unfortunately, the beauty and editorial sides are a little under-represented (we briefly see a spread featuring the makeup artist Pat McGrath in the layout room, and Wintour spends one scene looking bored while a junior editor goes over story ideas for the issue. "We're focusing on the eye, because I think eyes are a real concern for all women, they're the first thing that starts to really show age, even girls in their 20s worry about their eyes," says the editor. It's like watching a need being manufactured.) Wintour emerges as a surprisingly insecure. "Just because you like to put on a beautiful Carolina Herrera dress or a pair of J Brand blue jeans instead of something basic from Kmart doesn't mean you're a dumb person" is the kind of pre-emptive defense that says more about the defender's perceptions of the attack than anything else. "People are scared of fashion — because they're frightened or insecure, so they put it down...There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous." The idea that people only hate what they do not understand — implicit in which is the idea that there are no valid grounds on which to criticize Wintour, her magazine, or the fashion industry, just hurt feelings — is about the oldest trick in the book. And it comes off like Wintour, with her intellectual heavyweight family, is shadow-boxing. Who seriously pretends these days that appreciating good design and being smart are incompatible? Wintour's eagerness to defend herself on the issue is telling.

Vogue editorial image via Luxx at The Fashion Spot

Like this one, which we could imagine actually taking flight.


The collection was presented at Dior's gray salon on Avenue Montaigne. The label's PR department tried to play the move as a return to the essence of the brand, but it can't be entirely coincidental that Dior has sought to avoid the expense of a location show in a year when all the major couture houses are expecting significant drops in orders.


Makeup artist Pat McGrath gave everyone Dovima brows.


Hat or sea anemone?


Hat.

Hat or daisy?


Hat.


John Galliano named this collection "C'est la fievre de la cabine", or Cabine Fever ("cabine" in French means both "cabin" and "dressing room.") Which explains all the lingerie-inspired touches, like visible girdles, visible slips, and visible stockings.


As well as occasional total bottomlessness.


Did we say occasional?


Clearly, the whole no pants thing remains hot for fall.


Not that Mr. Galliano doesn't throw toplessness a bone now and then!


There's a reason Tyra calls it "couture pose."


Let's hold an imaginary pose-off, right now!


Even 1987 Madonna can't deny the appeal of the clavicle-pushing shoulder hunch.


But this girl wins.


Chanel Iman's hat is giving off shades of Carrie Bradshaw's wedding.


Galliano loves his sheer fabrics. And when he can cut like that, who can blame him?


Some of these dresses, however, we have seen before.


Is this what we can expect from designers right now? Is it the economy, all those "consumers want to invest in classic pieces" warnings taken too much to heart? Whatever has driven Galliano back into the archives can't but disappoint those acquainted with the range of his genius. It remains to be seen whether customers will fork over tens of thousands for dresses that are merely beautiful.


But when he's on, he's on.

• Funny, this picture of Amy Winehouse looking "healthy and stylish" still looks off. British label PPQ is bringing the troubled singer's long-rumored fashion line to fruition — if you count PPQ "providing all materials and doing the design," as anything like having your own collection. [This is London]

• Here are about 500 words on how Michelle Obama sometimes lets the press know what she is wearing, and sometimes doesn't. [WWD]
• Designers at Sao Paulo Fashion Week have agreed to cast a minimum 10% quota of models of African or indigenous South American descent. Last year, only 2.3% of the models — 8 girls out of 344 — were non-white. The quota will be enforced by a hefty $120,000 fine. [BBC]
• In more news from the annals of New York real estate envy, Sally Singer, fashion news and features editor of American Vogue, lives in an eclectic apartment in the Chelsea Hotel. [The Selby]
• Pat McGrath, one of the sweetest and most talented makeup artists around, was in New York to publicize Dolce & Gabbana's new makeup line, which she helped develop. What McGrath would like most, however, would be the fountain of youth in a pill, or her own, namesake line, like François Nars, Laura Mercier, and Bobbi Brown. One of those things just might come true, in a just world. [NY Times]
• Since Gisele and Tom got married and became 78% more boring, voilà: your new model/quarterback couple is Hilary Rhoda and Mark Sanchez of the Jets. [P6]
• Complicated modern woman Miuccia Prada: "If you compare with philosophy, [fashion] is frivolous, but frivolity may be something good, something that is part of our lives, so I don't dislike it and what I like is the mix, that in your life you can have serious things, [and] more frivolous ones...Beauty is not something that is contrary; it is the right of everybody." [CNN]
• Thierry Mugler earned a kind of fashion comeback when Beyoncé chose him to design the costumes for her current world tour. And why not? Cinched waists, severely cut skirts, and padded shoulders are everywhere now. While Mugler has no plans to re-start his label, which he had already sold to Clarins long before he quit designing in 2000, this profile explains just how a ballet dancer from Strasbourg came to fashion prominence, via driving a van around Afghanistan and living in the Haight-Ashbury in the late 60s. Interesting start for a man who's made all his money from perfume since 1992. [Telegraph]
• "I don't like most perfumes," says Nicole Miller. Which is why she had to make another one of her own! Perfectly logical really. [WWD]
• And Armani, too, has a new perfume. His scent pays tribute to his muses. [WWD]
• How does El Museo Del Barrio in New York raise funds? Why, by getting Isabel and Ruben Toledo to tutor students from Spanish Harlem in art, and then auctioning their work — "portraits of Latin icons like Salvador Dalí and Christina Aguilera," reports Style.com. Also, by throwing a kick-ass party where Gloria Estefan took the stage. [Style.com]
• Burberry, which moved into the space vacated by New York magazine on Madison Avenue, will turn on its big neon sign next Thursday. Designer Christopher Bailey and CEO Angela Ahrendts will fly in from London for the vernissage. Neon signs of this type aren't normally permitted in that part of Midtown, but because of New York's iconic sign, now dismantled, Burberry has a rare opportunity to grandfather its own in. [HintMag]
• Oh, how cute. The Daily Mail have an anonymous fashion mole. Today, s/he reveals that — gasp — models aren't paid very much (but do get to meet a lot of the rich menz, which we of course totally love, since we're all privileged alphas doing this to snag hubbies anyway) and are often required to change their names. For practical reasons, such as our agencies not wanting four "Jennifers" on their books. Shocking. [Daily Mail]
• Aeropostale's profit for the first quarter grew a whopping 81% on last year. Sales were up 21%, and same-store sales jumped by 11%. [The Street]
• First quarterly profits at Gap Inc. dropped by 14%. [WSJ]
• Aquascutum's chief executive Kim Winser has resigned after the rejection of her bid to buy out the company. [WWD]
• Designer denim sales are one thing that is not going soft in the current economic climate — high-end jeans sales grew by 2.3% in the quarter just ended. [LA Times]
• Brooks Brothers luggage: launching just in time to take to Southampton for the opening of the summer place. What a relief! [WWD]
• Linda Morand, who runs this website — probably the best compendium of 60s fashion magazines out there, and the members who scan and post to it care about identifying models to boot — is to be one of the producers of a two-hour television tribute to the supermodels of the last six decades. The idea is to make it an annual event, and impanel judges of industry prominence to induct models into it. I can't lie; I would probably watch this. Especially if it turns out better than the Vogue/VH1 Fashion Awards. God knows I've happily killed far more than two hours on MiniMadMod60s. [PR Newswire]

• Helena Christensen told InStyle magazine that she's never lived with a man — although she was actually married for five years. [Daily Mail]

• Bill Clinton made a surprise appearance at the Tribeca Ball, an event that benefits the New York Academy of Art. A fashion crowd including designer Jason Wu mingled with performers like Liev Schreiber and Justin Timberlake, hotel impresario Andre Balazs, and socialites. The event was filled with student art; Timberlake and Schreiber reportedly took a lot of interest in an exhibit that included two live models whose bodies guests were invited to paint and decorate with eggshells. At the end of the night, Bill Clinton's security detail was also overheard muttering, "That man is a chick magnet." [WWD]
• Speaking of politico-sartorial news, Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, met with Michelle Obama for more than an hour during her husband's state visit. Brown's gift to the First Lady was kid's clothes from TopShop for Sasha and Malia; like Michelle Obama, Sarah Brown sometimes likes to mix inexpensive chain-store items in with her wardrobe. I know, right! [Telegraph]
• Arena, the British men's magazine, is another casualty of the recession. The April, 2009, issue will be its last. Arena Homme Plus, the twice-yearly fashion magazine spinoff, is supposedly not affected, and nor are the six international editions, all of which are published under license. [WWD]
• Tracy Feith for Target doesn't get into stores until May 17, but lookbook images have already surfaced. The clothes are — not great. (There's a romper with bloomer shorts.) But one of the models is Allie from The City, if that makes any difference to you. [Racked]
• That other, slightly better, Target designer collection — Alexander McQueen's McQ line — is now available online. [Racked]
• Badgley Mischka's spring campaign, shot by Annie Leibovitz, features Anjelica Huston, Brooke Shields, Lauren Hutton, Eva Longoria...and Carrie Underwood. [WWD]
• I really hope that Agent Provocateur, the lingerie label, won't be hurt by all this press about their "racy" and "saucy" new ad campaign. I mean, what if The Sun were to determine it "crosses" the line"? I imagine that'd be just terrible. [The Sun]
• An ad for Olay's Regenerist wrinkle cream has been banned in England for being "offensive and demeaning to women" — because the makers, Proctor and Gamble, lied about the results of a study of the cream's effectiveness, and implied that cosmetic injections were an inevitable step in as any woman aged. [Telegraph]
• In Milan, Roberto Cavalli showed an 80s-heavy collection that was so small the LA Times wondered if all his samples had arrived. Could the cash bleed of his diffusion line, Just Cavalli — whose licensee, Ittierre, went bankrupt, and then sued Cavalli this week for angry statements the designer had made to the media about his losses — be affecting his main line? [LA Times]
• Scarlett Johansson, face of Dolce & Gabbana cosmetics, was the inspiration for the makeup at Dolce & Gabbana. Pat McGrath recreated "modern Hollywood glamor" with false lashes, liquid eyeliner, and red lips, not that anyone's ever done that before. [WWD]
• The booker of Auguste Abeliunaite, the Lithuanian 16-year-old who cried on the Jil Sander runway, says Abeliunaite won't be going to Paris, despite walking four top shows in Milan, because she's too young. But Paris sets — and actually does a good job enforcing — 16 as the minimum age for runway work. (Milan has no age limit.) And a girl who'd walked any show cast by Russell Marsh, let alone Prada, would be sent to Paris yesterday if she were really 16. My guess is this pale-eyed schoolgirl has a passport that makes her out to be 15 or younger. [WSJ]
• There's good news and bad news on the retail front this morning. First, let's do bad: The Body Shop is cutting 275 jobs. [WWD]
• And Kenneth Cole's fourth quarter loss has increased, to $12 million. [WWD]
• Liz Claiborne's fourth quarter net loss also widened — to $828.9 million. The company also declined to provide an earnings forecast for 2009. [WSJ]
• Adidas, meanwhile, increased its fourth quarter profits by 151%, or to a net of $74 million. [WWD]
• And all the designers are cutting costs — by rooming together at the Ritz for the Paris shows. Alexander Wang, Brian Reyes, and Victoria Bartlett are reportedly sharing digs, which sounds like the most awesome sleepover, ever. [The Cut]
• There's an unusual juxtaposition of stories in WWD's brief items this morning: first up is Simon Doonan, who was asked about the fashion industry's troubles at an AIDS benefit auction he co-hosted with Tim Gunn, which is all standard fare. But then next is a paragraph about an ultrarunner who spent five years running across six continents, all of which was filmed by his wife for a documentary, and in so doing raised $400,000 for an Alaska-based charity. The fashion content of the latter story is unclear; the reporter, in being dragged so far from his realm of expertise, also seems to have gotten a little confused. Something about the sentence, "His wife was held with a knife to her throat for more than an hour at the Morocco-Gibraltar border," strikes one as off. Perhaps because there is no "Morocco-Gibraltar border" — only some 7.7 nautical miles of sea. [WWD]
• Paris Hilton's perfume will exist for another five years. Sigh. [WWD]

Her makeup for Dior's 2004 "Egypt" collection was exquisite: glittery, exaggerated eyes and metallic lips. Suzy Menkes says that McGrath, who was raised in England by a Jamaican immigrant mother, is responsible for "artist's creations." And looking at some of the bizarre, beautiful faces McGrath has created, you can't help but agree: It's art. Albeit art that gets washed down the drain with soap and water.

Menkes also asks McGrath about the lack of diversity on the runway. McGrath's answer is genius in its simplicity: "It's old fashioned, isn't it."

Brush Strokes [NY Times]
Earlier: Fashion Show: Dior