I'm 74, never bought a copy of Vogue in my life, my brief exposure to the rag trade didn't (to say the least) endear it to me, I'm not even a movie fan. But I was utterly enthralled by this movie. Most thought-provoking documentary I've ever seen and certainly the most visually beautiful.I admire Anna Wintour. I like that she's kept the same hair style since her teens--it's just right for her. I love the way she dresses; feminine, graceful, mostly soft print silks & handsome jackets. I love the way her face lights up and softens when she looks at her daughter. I like the colorful primitive pottery she seems to collect. I love the oriental rug in her office. I love her Golden Doodle dog.I don't wonder at her brusque detachment; a sweet empathetic soul would be eaten alive in that jealous back-stabbing industry.I adored honest, authentic, intelligent, sensitive, durable, tersely eloquent Grace Coddington: duck-footed in flat shoes, black sack dress, trademark wild red hair. The shots of Paris/London/Milan/Rome are the most gorgeous travelogue ever. There are so many marvelous things about the movie. The whole concept, the script, the pace, the film editing, the music, the glimpses into the mechanics of the business and the ordinary-to-surreal characters who people it.I'll watch it again and probably more than once, and that's the highest accolade I can give.

My fashionable daughter insisted that my wife and I watch this movie. I liked it very much even though I am not into fashion. I think the movie gave some interesting insights into Vogue magazine and the power it wields.However, my reaction to Anna Wintour, the Editor in Chief, and Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director is what reinforced in me a conclusion that I became aware of years before. Anna Wintour, who most would say is very good looking, came off as very cold and distant and not especially likable. Grace Coddington on the other hand, who is eight years older and does very little to enhance her looks, especially with her hair, came off as smart, honest, thoughtful and very likable. By the conclusion of the movie, I found Grace Coddington to be by far the better looking of the two. The reason is that she had an inner beauty that shined through while, in my opinion, Anna did not.I learned at an early age that your conception of looks and beauty of a person can change greatly when you get to know that person.

In this documentary we follow Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her colleagues through their sleek Manhattan offices, beautifully appointed homes, European catwalks and design houses and photo shoots as they meticulously assemble the contents of the titular September issue that is supposed to be the most important of the year. After about a half an hour of chic fashionistas going through their paces (examining fabrics and photos, judging color schemes, sipping various liquids, gliding around big cities in chauffeured limos) it starts to get dull and repetitious and we can better appreciate the genius of the 2006 comedy The Devil Wears Prada which took the same basic set of people, heightened their personalities, spiced up their interrelationships, infused drama and plot into their routine professional activities and served up a sumptuously entertaining satire on the world of haute couture while also educating the general public about the nuts, bolts and economic and cultural role of that enterprise. There is far too much ennui and unoriginal glimpses behind the scenes which have been well covered in other documentaries and on countless televised celebrity magazine programs. Every once in a while there is a worthwhile insight, such as Wintour's description of the social atmosphere of London in the 1960s, a time of deep change, which formed her. She is certainly cool and reserved, but not the Ice Queen that Meryl Streep played in the fictionalized version. If anything, the point of this documentary would seem to be the humanization of Miss Wintour. By the time the fabled September issue starts rolling off the presses, all we can do is shrug.

At the start of this documentary, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief for American Vogue, is credited by one of her co-workers for single-handedly having brought fur back into fashion during the start of the 90s. While I feel that this accolade is similar to gleefully stating that Hitler did a splendid job on increasing the number of deaths during the start of the 40s, the rest of the documentary is interesting and stressful. Wintour, rumored to be the one whom Meryl Streep based her character in "The Devil Wears Prada" on, comes across as a person who knows what she likes - but mostly lets shows what she doesn't like, usually by sneers and semi-passive-aggressive comments. As such, she may come across as highly unsympathetic and sneering, but I say I feel she gets the job done; navigating the biggest fashion magazine in the world must carry quite some burdens and hard decisions. The documentary follows her quest through Vogue's September 2007 issue, which is that year's version of their annual apex. Also, Grace Coddington is focused on. She works as creative director at Vogue, started at the magazine at the same time as Wintour and watching the documentary it's very interesting to see her clash with not only Wintour - who by the flick of a hand dismisses pictures in one of Coddington's "$50,000 shoots" - but a barrage of people in order to try and get her pictorials into the issue on hand. Otherwise, it's a lot of singular little things happening throughout: André Leon Talley plays tennis by fashion rather than sport, designers are flaunted, dissed and hailed by Wintour back and forth and a tiny speck of Wintour's private life is shown, as her daughter says she's definitely not going for a career in fashion but in law. All in all, entertaining, frustrating (often in a funny way) but not in-depth.