1. Anna Wintour was born on 3 November 1949.
2. She is the English editor-in-chief of American Vogue, a position she has held since 1988.
3. In 2013, she became artistic director for Condé Nast, Vogue’s publisher.
4. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and dark sunglasses, Wintour has become an important figure in much of the fashion world, widely praised for her eye for fashion trends and her support for younger designers.
5. Her reportedly aloof and demanding personality has earned her the nickname “Nuclear Wintour.”
6. She is the eldest daughter of Charles Wintour, editor of the London Evening Standard.
7. Her father consulted her on how to make the newspaper relevant to the youth of the era.
8. Anna became interested in fashion as a teenager.
9. Her career in fashion journalism began at two British magazines.
10. Later, she moved to the United States, with stints at New York and House & Garden.
11. She returned home for a year to turn around British Vogue, and later assumed control of the franchise’s magazine in New York, reviving what many saw as a stagnating publication.
12. Her use of the magazine to shape the fashion industry has been the subject of debate within it.
13. Her use of the magazine to shape the fashion industry has been the subject of debate within it.
14. A former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 best selling roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada, later made into a successful film starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a fashion editor, believed to be based on Wintour.
15. In 2009, she was the focus of another film, R.J. Cutler’s documentary The September Issue.
16. Her parents married in 1940 and divorced in 1979.
17. Wintour was named after her maternal grandmother, Anna Baker (born Gilkynson), a merchant’s daughter from Pennsylvania.
18. Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded publications such as Honey and Petticoat, is her stepmother.
19. The late-18th-century novelist Lady Elizabeth Foster, Duchess of Devonshire, was Wintour’s great-great-great-grandmother, and Sir Augustus Vere Foster, the last Baronet of that name, was a granduncle.
20. She had four siblings. Her older brother, Gerald, died in a traffic accident as a child.
21. James and Nora Wintour have worked in London local government and for international non-governmental organisations respectively.
22. In her youth, Wintour was educated at the independent North London Collegiate School, where she frequently rebelled against the dress code by taking up the hemlines of her skirts.
23. At the age of 14, she began wearing her hair in a bob.
24. She developed an interest in fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!, and from the issues of Seventeen her grandmother sent from America.
25. At the age of 15, she began dating well-connected older men. She was involved briefly with Piers Paul Read, then 24. In her later teens, she and gossip columnist Nigel Dempster became a fixture on the London club circuit.
26. Because of her position, Wintour’s wardrobe is often closely scrutinised and imitated.
27. Earlier in her career, she mixed fashionable T-shirts and vests with designer jeans. When she started at Vogue as creative director she switched to Chanel suits with miniskirts. She continued to wear them during both pregnancies, opening the skirts slightly in back and keeping her jacket on to cover up. Wintour was listed as “one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s” by the Guardian in March 2013.
28. According to biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, her ubiquitous sunglasses are actually corrective lenses, since she suffers from deteriorating vision as her father did. A former colleague he interviewed recalls trying on her Wayfarers in her absence and getting dizzy. “I think at this point they’ve become, you know, really armour,” Wintour herself told 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer, explaining that they allow her to keep her reactions to a show private. As she rebounded from the end of her marriage and the turnover in the magazine’s editorial staff, a fellow editor and friend noted that “she’s not hiding behind her glasses anymore. Now she’s having fun again.”
29. Wintour has been a supporter of the Democratic Party since Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate run and John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run and serving Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential runs as a “bundler” of contributions. In 2008 and 2012, she co-hosted fundraisers with Sarah Jessica Parker, the latter being a 50-person, $40,000-a-plate dinner at Parker’s West Village town house with Meryl Streep, Michael Kors, and Trey Laird, an advertising executive, among the attendees.
30. She has also teamed with Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein on fundraisers during Obama’s first term and Donna Karan has been amongst the attendees. In 2013 when Vogue’s former director of communications stepped down, Wintour was rumoured to be looking to hire someone with a political background. Soon after, Wintour hired Hildy Kuryk, a former fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s first campaign. She also supported Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign, forming part of Clinton’s long list of wealthy donators or “Hillblazers”.
31. She had two children by David Shaffer following their 1984 marriage: Charles (Charlie) born 1985, and Katherine (known as Bee) born 1987.
32. The latter wrote occasional columns for The Daily Telegraph in 2006, but says she won’t follow her mother into fashion.
33. The couple divorced in 1999. Newspapers and gossip columnists claimed her affair with investor Shelby Bryan ended the marriage. She declined to comment.
34. Wintour is also a philanthropist. She serves as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she has organised benefits that have raised $50 million for the museum’s Costume Institute. She began the CFDA/Vogue Fund in order to encourage, support and mentor unknown fashion designers. She has also raised over $10 million for AIDS charities since 1990, by organising various high profile benefits.
35. She claims to rise before 6 am, plays tennis and has her hair and makeup done, then gets to Vogue’s offices two hours later.
36. According to the BBC documentary series Boss Woman, she rarely stays at parties for more than 20 minutes at a time and gets to bed by 10:15 every night.
37. She exerts a great deal of control over the magazine’s visual content. Since her first days as editor, she has required that photographers not begin until she has approved Polaroids of the setup and clothing. Afterwards, they must submit all their work to the magazine, not just their personal choices.
38. Her control over the text is less certain. Her staffers claim she reads everything written for publication, but former editor Richard Story has claimed she rarely, if ever, read any of Vogue’s arts coverage or book reviews. Earlier in her career, she often left the task of writing the text accompanying her layouts to others; former coworkers claim she has minimal skills in that area.
39. She reportedly has three full-time assistants but sometimes surprises callers by answering the phone herself.
40. Today, she writes little for the magazine save the monthly editor’s letter.
41. She often turns her cell phone off in order to eat her lunch, usually a steak (or bunless hamburger), undisturbed.
42. High-protein meals have been a habit of hers for a long time. “It was smoked salmon and scrambled eggs every single day” for lunch, says a coworker at Harpers & Queen. “She would eat nothing else.”
43. Her former assistant Lauren Weisberger (1999-2000) wrote the book “The Devil Wears Prada”, which was a thinly veiled account of the hellish life of a fashion magazine editor’s assistant and is based upon Weisberger’s own experiences. The main character Miranda Priestly is supposedly based upon Wintour. The book was eventually made into the movie The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
44. Showed a good sense of humor when she attended the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada (2006) wearing Prada.
45. Has raised over $ 10 million dollar for AIDS charities since 1990.
46. She was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honors List for her services to British journalism and British fashion in the USA.
47. Is a good friend of Roger Federer and she attended some of his matches at the US Open. Counts his Wimbledon 2009 final victory over Andy Roddick as her all-time favorite match.
48. Mother of producer Bee Shaffer from her marriage to child psychiatrist David Shaffer.
49. In the 1970s, Anna worked as a fashion editor for Penthouse Magazine publisher Bob Guccione’s erotic publication, “VIVA – International Magazine for Women”.
50. Is a big fan of Game of Thrones (2011), even finding the costume design to be particularly appealing.
51. Is a teetotaler.
52. Counts Scarlett O’Hara as the most fashionable literary figure.
53. Suffers from arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
54. Some of her favorite things include: (play) “Skylight” by David Hare / (musical) “Kiss Me, Kate” by Cole Porter / (comedian) James Corden / (action star) Hugh Jackman / (game) Tennis / (book) “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen / (museum) Metropolitan (NYC) / (flower) Tuberose / (restaurant) Balthazar / (food) avocado (hates broccoli) / (dessert) Coffee Ice Cream / (invention) any Apple product /(guilty pleasure) Homeland (2011), etc.
55. An absolute no-no in her fashion books: head-to-toe black.
56. Brother Patrick is the Political Editor of the UK’s The Guardian newspaper.
57. Her father was English and her mother was American, from Pennsylvania. Her ancestry includes English, Scottish, distant Dutch, and remote French Huguenot.
Got anything to add?