Top 10 Anna Wintour Quotes on Fashion and Style

Who doesn't know Anna Wintour? Or, let me rephrase it - who in any of the industries that have at least something to do with the fashion world does not know Anna Wintour? 

Anna Wintour, the Editor-in-Chief of the world’s most famous and prestigious fashion magazine, American Vogue, has been holding this position for 25 years. Anna is known to have a rather strong and demanding personality in her profession, securing herself the nickname ‘Nuclear Wintour’.

Following in her father's footsteps Charles Wintour, who was the editor of the London Evening Standard, Anna Wintour is an extremely influential name in the fashion industry – nothing in the Vogue pages will be seen by the public without being approved by herself. Some of you might have 'remembered' her from the Hollywood film "Devil Wears Prada", where Anna Wintour was brilliantly portrayed by Meryl Streep - the movie was based on the New York Times' best-seller book with the same name, written by a former personal assistant to Wintour. How much of the film/book was the actual truth, we'd never know. Only the author herself and the Vogue's staff know it. Nevertheless, the film has become a sort of break-through film that 'finally' showed the world who was behind that 'Nuclear Wintour' and what it's like working at Vogue: do they really starve themselves and call the women in fashion with a size of 6 - fat? We will never know, but we do know that the film to follow "Devil Wears Prada" - the documentary "September Issue" did show the actual situation at the Vogue. Not only the camera followed the top people of Vogue and the staff who assisted them, but it showed behind the scenes, what's it's like to be Anna Wintour - the many decisions that she's making on a daily basis, a little bit of life outside Vogue: didn't her daughter say that she finds the fashion industry a 'joke' and that she has no desire to do what her mother does and that she wants to be a lawyer...Either way, both films do show how much Wintour handles and the pressure of the fashion industry for the Vogue to be THE BIBLE to anything that's trending and to be way ahead all other fashion magazines. 

Anna has promoted and reinvented fashion magazines by being the first editor to feature movie stars and singers on Vogue‘s covers, and could very well be seen as the high priestess of fashion editorial with her keen eye for detail, perfectionist personality and trademark bob haircut. Her quotes on fashion and style have been shared and re-shared many times. Here they are:

Here are our Top 10 Anna Wintour quotes.

1. “There is something about fashion that can make people really nervous.”

2. “Create your own style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.”

3. “It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.”

4. “You either know fashion or you don’t.”

5. “If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what’s going on in the world as a headline in The New York Times.”

6. “Just be true to yourself, and listen as much as one is able to to other people whose opinions you respect and look up to but in the end it has to come from you. You can’t really worry too much by looking to the left and the right about what the competition is doing or what other people in your field are doing. It has to be a true vision.”

7. “[The democratization of luxury] means more people are going to get better fashion. And the more people who can have fashion, the better.”

8. “Fashion’s not about looking back. It’s always about looking forward.”

9. “Fashion is not beautiful, neither is it ugly. Why should it be either? Fashion is Fashion”

10. And finally one from British journalist, Barbara Amiel on Anna Wintour “The notion that Anna would want something done “now” and not “shortly” is accurate.”