Vogue has been the most powerful and best-respected fashion magazine in the world for decades, and each year the journal devotes a fall issue to the designs and designers that the editors feel will be influential in the coming year. The September 2007 issue of Vogue, that year's annual Fall Fashion issue, became the biggest single issue in the magazine's long history, and filmmaker R.J. Cutler was given unprecedented access to Vogue's creative team as the issue was being prepared. The September
Issue is a documentary which focuses on Vogue editor Anna Wintour as she visits the annual Fashion Week shows, accepts or dismisses the latest creations of the biggest names in fashion, works with the models, photographers, and writers who help bring her vision to the page, and labors with her staff to determine what the world's fashionistas will be wearing for the next 12 months. The September Issue received its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where it received an award for excellence in documentary cinematography. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Coddington, at least, gives us an appreciation of the talent seeing to it that the grandest fashion magazine of them all still sells the dream of glamour with style.
The September Issue is like the world's most perfect accessory; pointless, but difficult not to look at. And look at it long enough, you might actually find you like it.
The War Room director R J Cutler is a serious filmmaker, and while some may think fashion is a less than serious subject (Wintour's daughter Bee being one of them, as we find out in one amusing scene), his film is a riveting insight.
R. J. Cutler's documentary appears to gloss over many pertinent details and the filmmaker has been accused of being too easy on Wintour, but The September Issue is incisive, detailed and somewhat cruel.
sporadically successful, but mostly feels stranded at the surface, possibly because its insider-ism gets the best of the filmmakers by keeping them so trapped inside the Vogue universe that we never hear any outside voices
For some, fashion might not seem like exciting material, but director R.J. Cutler is able to create some genuine suspense and tension, as the days and hours count down to the "close" of the issue.
While it's fun for fashionholics just to watch a movie in which people say "It's a famine of beauty!" and "The jacket is the new coat," the film becomes more substantial as it narrows its focus to two people: an artist and a curator.
They say that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. Looking into the sunglasses of Vogue editor Anna Wintour must be kind of like that. Except that you never think to yourself, "I wonder if the abyss thinks I look fat in these jeans?"
Cutler takes an often riveting nuts-and-bolts look at what goes into creating the Vogue September issue, and it's a shame that he isn't more focused on the procedural.
Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director, is the secret weapon the movie needs. One sits through all the Anna Wintour stuff just to get back to her.
You're screen will practically frost over from Anna Wintour's icy personality but this is an interesting inside look at the organization of Vogue's big issue.
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