What I know about Haute Couture, I could fit in a shoebox (an infant's shoebox). Maybe that is why I found The September Issue SO fascinating. If I knew more about the lifestyle these people were talking about, maybe I would have been bored. Instead, I was riveted. Could people really be this focused on clothes and shoes and, most shocking of all, accessories? Well, this film and the real characters in it proves that yes, people can be this focused on all areas of fashion. Anna Wintour is the star of the film. A British ex-pat who came to New York and the world-renowned Vogue (American VOGUE, that is) from British Vogue and is now Vogue's editor-in-chief. Wintour is a fierce woman...who can make or break a designer’s career with just the nod or shake of her head. She is said to have represented the DEVIL character in The Devil Wears Prada.   She pretty much is the face of the New York fashion scene.  Simply put...what she says or wants GOES and if she doesn’t want it, it’s gone. More interesting, I thought, was her creative director at Vogue, Grace Coddington, who often clashes with Wintour and always loses (since Anna always gets her way). How Grace copes with her losses and her set-backs at Vogue and still manages to come to work every morning is beyond me. The dynamic between these two independent, strong and contrary women is what made this film work for me.  Without this relationship, this could have just been another documentary on the high-pressure fashion industry or the cutthroat magazine business.  But watching Wintour and Coddington, with their paradoxical styles, fight to work together adds that spice to hold interest and root for one of them to succeed.  This is highly interesting look at not only the ins and outs of Vogue, but also at the lives of two dominant fashion magazine matriarchs.

The September Issue: 2009, PG-13, directed by R.J. Cutler, starring Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, among other stars of fashion.

The Niles Public Library District owns this title on DVD.