Anna Wintour By Vanessa Lee

Editor-in-chief for 20 years of American Vogue, Anna Wintour is widely known as the ‘most powerful woman in fashion’, a fashion icon and ‘Nuclear Wintour’ for her demanding reputation. Starting at the tender age of 15 years old, she worked at the hip BIBA store in London till she was 16 years old and decided to drop out of education at North London Collegiate School, much to her parents disapproval.

A young Wintour was regularly consulted by her father Charles the editor of the Evening Standard, as-well as wearing her hair in her now trademark bob.
However after dropping out of school she enrolled in a fashion course at Harrods, as-well as taking fashion classes nearby, but a determined Wintour stopped after famously declaring “ you either know fashion, or you don’t “.

Beginning a pattern of dating older and well-known gentlemen, she briefly dated Nigel Dempster and Piers Paul Read and became a regular on the party scene in London. However, as her career began to take off in fashion journalism, Wintour travelled over the Atlantic where she worked briefly at Home & Garden and New York, before working as editorial assistant at Harpers & Queen making it known to her fellow colleagues that she wanted to edit Vogue in the future.
Along the way she discovered Annabel Hodin the model, making connections with the likes of Helmut Newton.

She left in 1975 over rumors of a disagreement with the editor Min Hogg and moved to New York with Jon Bradshaw a well known freelance journalist at the time, with his help she secured a position as a fashion editor at Viva a woman’s magazine. After several months, Bradshaw's help got her first position as a fashion editor, then left to work at a new women’s magazine titled Savvy.

The following year Wintour promoted herself to fashion editor of New York which would become the turning point for her career attracting attention for her fashion spreads and shoots for the magazine.

She was then offered a job at British Vogue which she accepted after a bidding war which ended in a salary twice as big for Wintour, another sign of her demanding personality.
During this time she revolutionized the magazine becoming the editor-in-chief at the time as-well , and then finally was offered the job of editing American Vogue.

She fell pregnant twice to David Shaffer, husband at the time with daughter Elizabeth and Charles and reportedly Vogue paid for her expenses including a townhouse nanny and regular concord trips.

Now after 20 years of Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has changed American Vogue as-well as helped unknown designers become known, made over $10 million for AIDS charity and organized high-profile events in the Fashion industry; she is a woman of class and effortless style and is still reining after so many years on the top. - FASHION