PARIS (Oct. 8) - French anti-fur activists said they struck Anna Wintour, editor of the U.S. edition of Vogue, in the face with a cream pie on Saturday to protest against her support for the use of animal fur by the fashion industry.

It was the second such attack this year on Wintour, an unapologetic fur supporter decried by animal rights groups as a "pelt pusher."

"Wintour is fur-bearing animals' worst enemy because her magazine continues to feature dozens of pages of pro-fur editorials and advertising each year," PETA campaigner Yvonne Taylor told Reuters by phone in Paris.

"She takes big glossy advertisements for fur and she refuses to run any anti-fur ads, even paid ones, so she's a big fur supporter," Taylor said.

Wintour was unavailable for comment on the incident.


10/08/05 16:38 ET



Anna Wintour gets a tofu cream pie in her face courtesy of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Paris Saturday.

I've kinda become obsessed with her since finding out she's the person behind the boss in the book The Devil Wears Prada.

Page SIx
SPOOKING ANNA

ANNA Wintour might want to stay in for lunch today. Two dozen animal-rights freaks from PETA will be dressed as "Wintour witches" in Anna masks, witches' hats and black dresses and carrying brooms. One vegan promised: "We will gather outside the office of the evil Vogue editor at noon tomorrow to protest her morbid relationship with fur . . . Anna doppelgangers will fly around on broomsticks with signs proclaiming, 'I Hate Animals! I'd Even Wear Kitten Mittens.' "

I hate this woman. Not because she chooses to wear fur but because she is a spiteful bitch who won't hire overweight receptionists or cleaning staff because she says that fat people reflect badly on Vogue (!!) But, I wish PETA would be a bit more logical in their attacks on her. I am just embarrassed for them - they come off as nutjobs.

gawker.com
October 19, 2004

Working For Anna Wintour Rots Your Brain

AnnaWintour_B.jpgLori Feldt, former nanny to Vogue editrix Anna Wintour, settled a lawsuit with the Vogue editrix today for $2.21 million. Feldt claimed that she suffered severe nerve damage when inhaling fumes from paint thinner, which was used to clean red paint thrown on Wintour's sidewalk by anti-fur activists (how predictable). Working for Anna Wintour is obviously a threat to one's health—forced starvation will definitely take its toll on your hair and teeth—but now it's official: being around the woman can cause brain damage. One look around the Conde Nast cafeteria and you could pretty much deduce the same, but at least we now have legal validation on our side.

Anna Wintour's Former Nanny Gets $2.21 Million Settlement [AP]
Related: We called it all the way back in May: Anna Wintour: Worker's Comp

CFDA 2004 Awards
Right: Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief Vogue/ Left: Bernadette Peters

Here's her bio from vogue.com

With her razor sharp bob, slim build and sunglasses - which she reportedly wears to shield her eyes from the fashion shows' flashbulbs - Anna Wintour is the fashion industry's ultimate icon.

Born in Britain, she started her career in 1970, working in the fashion department at Harpers & Queen in London. Six years later, she moved to New York to join sister publication Harper's Bazaar as its Fashion Editor. After a stint as Senior Editor at New York magazine, controlling the title's fashion and lifestyle coverage, Wintour was named Creative Director of American Vogue in 1983. British Vogue brought her home to London three years later. She stayed for almost two years as Editor in Chief and oversaw the memorable November 1987 issue, which carried a photograph of Christy Turlington shot by David Bailey in Calvin Klein on the cover.

In 1988, she rejoined American Vogue as Editor-in-Chief, leaving her deputy Liz Tilberis to succeed her. In that capacity, she has helped raise over $10 million for AIDS charities since 1990, by organising New York's 7th on Sale fundraising benefits.

Like her image, Wintour's daily regime is legendary. Now based in Manhattan, she wakes up at 5.45am every morning, to go to play tennis, before being professionally made-up, coiffed and chauffeured to the offices of American Vogue. Though one of New York's most prolific party throwers, she never stays at any one event for more than the first ten minutes, preferring to be in bed by 10pm.

Wintour, the daughter of Charles Wintour, former Editor of the Evening Standard, has two children by her first husband, Dr David Schaffer, Chief of Child Psychiatry at Columbia Presbyterian.

American Vogue, 4 Times Square, New York, New York 10036 M

Tel: +1 212 286 2860
Fax: +1 212 286 8169

T H E P O W E R L I S T
W O M E N I N F A S H I O N
http://www.time.com/time/2004/style/020904/power/3.html

3. Anna Wintour

Magazine Maven

She wields considerable influence over American fashion. Runway shows don't start until she arrives. Designers succeed because she anoints them. Trends are created or crippled on her command. But Anna Wintour, editor in chief of Vogue, says she is determined to use her power for good, not evil. Despite her reputation for being icy and inscrutable, despite the severe perfection of her hairstyle and wardrobe, Wintour has taken it upon herself to act as something of a den mother to fledgling designers and worthy causes.

Since taking over the Condé Nast publication in 1988, Wintour has guarded the magazine's No. 1 status among fashion publications—in both circulation and prestige. But she has brought the magazine's tone down from its Olympian heights, acknowledging that trends are as likely to start from the ground as be decreed from on high and offering tips on how to get runway looks for real-wage prices. Part of this is out of necessity: to maintain a high circulation, she must appeal to as broad an audience as possible. But she has proved herself committed to discovering and fostering new talent. In 2003, for example, she joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America in creating a fund that each year will bestow money and guidance on at least two emerging designers.

From her perch, she has also taken on social issues and urged others in the industry to do the same. "I have always believed that it is important to understand Vogue's mission in broad and socially responsible terms," she says. Last year she got Vogue to contribute money to open beauty salons in Kabul, creating jobs for newly liberated Afghan women; a story on the project ran in the magazine. After 9/11, she organized the sale of specially designed T shirts to benefit a Twin Towers fund and spearheaded a p.r. campaign to get people shopping again.

—By Michelle Orecklin

Here's a bit on the book The Devil Wears Prada




June 10, 2003, 9:30 a.m.
The Devil & the Gray Lady
All about vogue.
nationalreview.com
By Mark Goldblatt

Truman Capote, who had a stake in saying so, once famously declared, "All literature is gossip." He was wrong, of course, but it's the kind of declaration that bamboozles literary types by its very implausibility; something so obviously false must be profound, so it gets repeated at cocktail parties and invoked in book reviews (like this one) until it becomes an inside-out cliché, a false truism, a knowing nod towards nothing whatsoever.




Still, an interesting question emerges if you reverse Capote's dictum and ask whether all gossip is literature. It's a question that surrounds the most gossipy novel in recent years, The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, and percolates within the critical jihad the book ignited at the New York Times. The fact that the paper twice reviewed a literary debut by a previously unknown author would be noteworthy in itself; what's unprecedented is the fact that its reviewers twice ripped the book to shreds — arguing not simply that it fails as literature, but that it should never have been published in the first place.

Why all the fuss?

Weisberger, it seems, once worked as a personal assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and the novel is thinly veiled account of her nightmarish experiences at the magazine. That this should matter to reviewers at the Times is slightly bizarre — even if, unlike me, you care about Anna Wintour, or you think Vogue has made a significant contribution to Western Civilization. It's not as though Weisberger is sailing into morally uncharted waters. Saul Bellow's latest work, Ravelstein, is a thinly veiled account of his friendship with the critic Allan Bloom, and arguably Bellow's greatest work, Humboldt's Gift, is a thinly veiled account of his friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz. Both of Bellow's books are warts-and-all portraits, and the same can be said, in spades, for Weisberger's portrait of Wintour. The fact that Wintour is still alive, whereas Bloom and Schwartz were deceased when Bellow immortalized them, cuts both ways. Wintour may be psychically injured by the appearance of her fictional counterpart, Miranda Priestly, but at least she has the chance to distance herself from the ogre Weisberger gives us. With a nod to Capote, then, if at least some gossip is literature, why should Weisberger be pilloried for engaging in it?

None of which is to suggest that The Devil Wear Prada is great art. It is, rather, a wildly uneven book, by turns clumsily self-righteous and wickedly funny. The wafer-thin plot recounts the struggles of the narrator, Andrea Sachs, to maintain both her integrity and her sanity after she lands a "dream job" as personal assistant to Miranda Priestly at Runway. The detail that Andrea's real ambition is to write for The New Yorker would be a perfect ironic touch — she must endure the slickness of fashion in order to achieve fashionable slickness — except that the author seems to regard this as a altogether commendable goal. She is reminded to keep her eyes on the prize by her devoted boyfriend, Alex, who (gag me) teaches underprivileged children; also keeping Andrea grounded is her roommate Lily, whose hard drinking and promiscuity derive from the fact that "she loved anyone and anything that didn't love her back, so long as it made her feel alive."

The chapters with Alex and Lily are at times almost unbearable. Fortunately, they are offset by chapters in which Miranda Priestly takes center stage. Miranda is one of the great comic monsters of recent literature; Cruella de Ville is an obvious antecedent, but Miranda more closely resembles a Hermes-scarf wearing Ahab in pursuit of the great white whale of immediate, absolute indulgence. In Miranda's universe, two pre-publication copies of the latest Harry Potter book must be flown by private jet to Paris so that her twin daughters can read them before their friends; it's up to Andrea to make the arrangements on a moment's notice. Tough, but do-able. More finesse is required when Miranda asks Andrea to hunt down the address of "that antique store in the seventies, the one where I saw the vintage dresser." Of course, Andrea wasn't with Miranda when she saw the dresser, so she winds up trekking to every antique store — and, just to be safe, every furniture store — between 70th and 80th Street in Manhattan, grilling clerks to find out whether the famous Miranda Priestly had stopped by recently. Three days later, Andrea admits defeat . . . only to have Miranda inform her, impatiently, that she's just located the store's business card, the one she thought she'd lost. The address is on East 68th Street.

Miranda requires up to five breakfasts per morning so that whenever she arrives at the office, a hot meal will be waiting; reheating isn't an option. The other four must be thrown out because her assistants aren't permitted to eat in her presence. Nor are they permitted to hang their coats next to hers. Nor to request clarifications if her demands are indecipherable: "Cassidy wants one of those nylon bags all the little girls are carrying. Order her one in the medium size and a color she'd like."

There's a kind of grotesque heroism in this, an obliviousness to the feelings of others that is larger than life — and thus mesmerizing. When Weisberger's novel succeeds, it succeeds on these terms. No one who reads the book will forget Miranda Priestly.

Towards the end of The Devil Wears Prada, Andrea's novelist friend informs her, "What you don't seem to realize is that the writing world is a small one. Whether you write mysteries or feature stories or newspaper articles, everyone knows everyone." Indeed, it's hard for an outsider to grasp just how incestuous, how inbred, the New York publishing scene is nowadays. The odds of finding a non-conflicted reviewer for a gossipy roman a clef about the scene itself are therefore remote. In theory, this isn't a problem — as long as the reviewer approaches the task in good faith. (In good faith, for example, I should note that Weisberger's former writing teacher is a close friend and co-author of mine; on the other hand, her editor at Doubleday once turned down a book I wrote . . . and keep in mind that I'm really an academic, so I'm kind of bivouacked on the outskirts of the milieu Weisberger describes.) To say that the Times lacked good faith in reviewing The Devil Wears Prada understates the utterly unconscionable, and downright vindictive, way the paper went after the thing.

The onslaught began with a full-page review in its Sunday edition by former Harper's Bazaar editor Kate Betts. Betts herself was once Anna Wintour's protégé, a point Betts mentions in her final paragraph — not as a disclaimer but rather as an excuse to lecture Weisberger on the ethics of having written her novel: "I have to say Weisberger could have learned a few things in the year she sold her soul to the devil of fashion for $32,500. She had a ringside seat at one of the great editorial franchises in a business that exerts an enormous influence over women, but she seems to have understood almost nothing about the isolation and pressure of the job her boss was doing...."

This may or may not be true, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with what's between the covers of Weisberger's book. That, however, is the least of Bett's concerns in a review which alternates between sniping at the author and sucking up to former Vogue cronies. "Nobody would be interested in this book," Betts declares, "if Weisberger were spilling the beans about life under the tyrant of the New Yorker." (Tell that to Brendan Gill whose memoir Here at the New Yorker was a bestseller in 1975.) Betts refers to one of Weisberger's characters as "a pale imitation of the incomparable André Leon Talley" (For the record, I know more than a few people in the fashion industry, and they're all remarkably comparable.) and to another as "a cheap shot at the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, whom she [Weisberger] should have been studying for lessons in how to write." This is nasty stuff. And it's of a piece with the rest of Betts's review — which displays all the emotional maturity and intellectual balance of Leo Gorcey in the old Bowery Boys films. Betts is not critiquing a work of fiction; she's putting up her dukes to defend her home turf.

You'd think Betts's outburst would suffice, from the Times's point of view, would stand as an awkward lapse in editorial judgment but nothing more. You'd be wrong. The newspaper, it turns out, was not through with Weisberger by a long shot. One day later, Janet Maslin weighed in for the daily edition — and matched Betts's spitefulness point by point. Maslin's review begins: "If Cinderella were alive today, she would not be waiting patiently for Prince Charming. She would be writing a tell-all book about her ugly stepsisters and wicked stepmother . . . dishing the dirt, wreaking vengeance and complaining all the way. Cinderella may have been too nice for that, but Lauren Weisberger is not."

Again, what's actually between the covers of The Devil Wears Prada is mere background noise; first and foremost, Maslin is reviewing not the novel itself but the idea of the novel. She refers to it as "a mean-spirited 'Gotcha!' of a book, one that offers little indication that the author could interestingly sustain a gossip-free narrative." With an indignant nod towards Weisberger's recent publicity tour, Maslin speculates that the author "can devote a second career to insisting that [the novel] is not exactly, precisely, entirely one long swat at the editor of Vogue." And again: "The book's way of dropping names, labels and price tags while feigning disregard for these things is another of its unattractive qualities. It's fair to assume that nobody oblivious to names like Prada will be reading this story anyway."

Curiously, Maslin neglects to mention the name Anna Wintour even once in her review. "That was very deliberate on my part," she later explained to the Daily News. "I think that when a tell-all author takes a cheap shot at a well-known person — in a book that would have little reason to attract attention without that cheap shot — then reviewers need not compound the insult (or help promote a mediocre book) by reiterating the identity of the target."

Fair enough, but then why review the book in the first place? Given how many books are published each year, and how few the Times actually reviews, why would the paper twice in two days go out of its way to hammer a first novel by a hitherto unpublished writer? (Another point of disclosure: The Times did not review my first novel last year.) The answer cannot be that The Devil Wears Prada was heavily promoted . . . since even a cursory glance at its own bestseller lists will reveal many mega-hyped books the Times wouldn't touch with a ten-foot highlighter.

Of course, the Times has bigger problems these days — Jayson Blair's tendentious, fabricated reporting and subsequent resignation, Howell Raines's white-man's-burden agonizing and subsequent resignation, and Maureen Dowd's sneaky doctoring of a presidential quote — than the integrity of its book-reviewing process. In another sense, however, the treatment of Weisberger's novel is consistent with, for lack of a better phrase, an absence of adult supervision on 43rd Street.

— Mark Goldblatt is the author of Africa Speaks, now available in paperback.

I read the book over a year ago and while it wasn't great writing, it was great fun getting an inside peek into the world of Vogue. Also made me realize how little there was there to respect there.

Thanks for the articles, Princess!

NY Daily News

BAD CALORIES: Did Anna Wintour give the fisheye to a young lady who brought a big, steaming omelet and a jumbo muffin into the same elevator with the Vogue editrix at Conde Naste headquarters the other morning? "I swear she rolled her eyes at the girl. She is icy!" a Lowdown spy insisted. A rep for Wintour responded: "Total rubbish."

What a disgusting person. I bet she has an eating disorder.

Page SIx
CHANGES BLITZ PARIS RITZ

FASHIONISTAS are in a dither over the impending renovation of the Ritz in Paris. The hotel where Billy Wilder set "Love in the Afternoon," and where Anna Wintour stays every Fashion Week, plans a major restructuring. The Bar Vendome, the preferred lunch spot for retailers, editors and designers, will be moved to the garden terrace to make room for a big, new concierge desk, and the garden terrace - the lone peaceful, bird-filled space in the center of the city - will be covered with a glass roof. Expat scribes all over Paris fear Ritz owner Mohamed al-Fayed will also wreck their favorite watering hole, the Hemingway Bar, tucked way in the back of the hotel. Back in the late '80s, al-Fayed turned the bar's adjoining coat-check room into a salon-like wing that is now regularly infested with such unliterary sorts as Johnny Depp, Kate Moss and model agents. Some worry that if al-Fayed messes with the Hemingway, he'll drive away legendary bartender Colin Field, who makes the best mojito outside of Havana. "The only place Colin could go is the George V, and that's owned by Four Seasons and wholly without charm or history," a Hemingway regular cried. "What'll we do?"

The thread for the movie version of THe Devil Wears Prada is here.

NY Daily News

....[Naomi] Campbell's rep was also short on details about where the 35-year-old beauty, who was allowed to keep her passport, will be heading next.

She's expected next month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute gala. Although she's due to sit at the table of co-host Anna Wintour, one source says, "I suspect Anna is nervous."...


Oh man, what a great celeb death match - Naomi vs. Anna!

Awesome Anna W. sighting in Gawker Stalker

http://www.gawker.com/news/stalker/classic...duty-169492.php

Hi—just sat near Anna Wintour at Jury Duty downtown at 111 Centre Street. She was wearing a really expensive dress and had to sit with the common people. She huffed as I discussed the cheap Prada sold in nearby Chinatown with another potential juror. She must have thought I was talking about that crap book because she looked up and made a bit of a groan. We all got release from jury service at 12:35pm

Totally Out-of-Left-Field Rumor of the Day: Is Anna Wintour Sick?
READ MORE: anna wintour, conde nast, health, rumors, top

An email we received last night:

Tuesday night at the National Arts Club, I saw Anna Wintour with her husband or whatever, Dr. Shaffer, and some other important types I could not identify. They were huddled at the center table for the Dahesh Museum Gala. She was crying very visibly and our table was next to theirs and we overheard them discuss Parkinson’s disease. All three people, including Shaffer were trying to console Wintour. Does Anna Wintour have Parkinson’s? I know she is considered evil and all, but this is terrible.
We have no idea why Wintour was with David Shaffer, whom she divorced in 1999, and not her consort since then, Shelby Bryan. (But the source insists it was indeed Shaffer and not Bryan.) We also have no idea — and certainly no confirmation — about the rest of it. Do with this information what you will.
Gawker

Has she ever been spotted crying in public before??

I didn't think she had tear ducts?

Saw this pic and "celebrity death match" just popped into my head

Hope this isn't true- I LOVE Anna!

Anna Wintour and daughter Bee
"AngloMania" Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

another shot of Anna, she sure does look evil!!

Her bob haircut, while very flattering to her face in general, looks very mis-matched with a fancy ballgown and a huge diamond necklace..... I like the dress & coat though!!

NY Daily News

Anna Wintour nemesis Lauren Weisberger might be ruing the day she ever wished for fame and fortune.

Trying to produce the second of two novels with Simon & Schuster - with which she has a seven-figure deal - Weisberger apparently has a case of writer's block.

Lowdown hears that Vogue editor Wintour's 29-year-old former assistant - whose thinly veiled first novel, "The Devil Wears Prada," lampooned her ex-boss and sold more than a million copies for Doubleday - is in agony over her book-in-progress, which her editor has allegedly advised her to trash.

A Lowdown spy claims: "She actually wrote several chapters, but she was basically told they sucked and she has to start over."

Weisberger, meanwhile, has apparently been trying to put the best face on the situation, telling friends she has yet to begin the novel.

While "The Devil Wears Prada" was a rousing commercial success - scoring the author a $200,000 movie option for a Meryl Streep vehicle that will be released this summer - Weisberger's next novel, "Everyone Worth Knowing," earned declining sales when it was published last year.

Neither Weisberger's agent, Deborah Schneider, nor Simon & Schuster would comment on Weisberger's rumored troubles. But Wintour spokesman Patrick O'Connell couldn't resist gloating.

"Maybe she should get another job as someone's assistant," O'Connell sniped.

Meow.

NY Daily News
A punk costume drama

Pop provocateur Malcolm McLaren may be 60, but he sounded every bit the angry young man yesterday after getting snubbed by Vogue editrix Anna Wintour and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

McLaren is often credited with masterminding the British punk movement. Not only did he dream up the Sex Pistols, he and his ex-wife, designer Vivienne Westwood, created the era's leather and safety-pin costumes.

About 20 of the former couple's pieces are in the Met's Costume Institute show "Anglomania." But McLaren learned only last weekend about the Institute's opening gala last night.

Yesterday, McLaren's office brought the oversight to the attention of Wintour and gala organizers. He says Wintour promised him a seat at the dinner.

But later a Met staffer told him he was no longer invited. A Met spokeswoman argues that the fund-raiser was "sold out for months" and he was never assured a table.

Says McLaren: "It's not gracious, its not elegant, it's not polite and it's a kind of an attack upon the artists themselves!"

She's a Bitch

More like the c word.

Is C*** worse than Bitch? For realz?

Uh, yeah.

NY Daily News

... Anna Wintour's daughter, Bee Shaffer, 18, is following in her footsteps. We hear the stunning Shaffer will be interning at New York magazine this summer, where her editrix mom once shocked co-workers by replacing her cubicle's regulation-ugly gray metal desk with her own gorgeous custom-made desk - long before taking over Vogue. ...

I read a post somewhere that said Jake Gyllenhaal had been involved with Wintour's son. Don't remember where I read it or if it's true.

But I'm still curious.

Does anyone have a pic of the son?

Chanel Cruise Collection show

For Hephaiston:
The son is attractive, well from the tiny pictures I can see on WireImage. He looks kind of young. Jake's robbing the cradle? See, if he was walking to and fro from this dude's house and Austin's house and that snowboarder's house and Kiki's house, that would be quite the site to behold. But I don't think he is. Here's one of the family, the best one I can find:

What a miserable looking bunch. Can you imagine having her for a mother? Brrrrrr!

ANNA WINTOUR SKIPS PIX WITH STREEP

ANNA Wintour has a sense of humor, but there are limits. The icy Vogue editrix accepted Meryl Streep's invitation to Tuesday's screening of "The Devil Wears Prada" - which she wore - but avoided posing for a photo with Streep, who plays an icy fashion magazine editrix in the film. Wintour bolted from the Paris Theatre with her entourage as soon as the credits rolled, skipping the dinner and charity auction at the St. Regis. Wintour, whose entourage included boyfriend Shelby Bryant, daughter Bee Shaffer, and Dixon and Arianna Boardman, "thought the movie was very funny," said her spokesman, who also said Wintour never planned on staying for dinner. One insider denied Wintour purposely avoided posing with Streep, who had never met Wintour before publicist Peggy Siegal introduced them. "It was so chaotic, we couldn't set up the shot," said our source. In the chaos were Streep's castmates Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Bridget Hall, plus News Corp. president Peter Chernin and 20th Century Fox co-chair Tom Rothman. Martha Stewart, in the elevator after ward, said, "Wow! Who ever had a boss like that?" Silence.

Anyone got any scoop on him?? I thought Anna was married, but maybe that's just because her character was in Devil Wears Prada.

She divorced Shaffer (father of the kids) a couple years ago. Can't remember when she started dating Bryant. He's a doctor? Can't remember.....New York papers usually have little blurbs on them at charity events together or stuff like that....I'll go search and see if I can come up with anything juicy.....

I can only imagine what kind of personality he must have to date Anna.

OK, this is from 1999, just as they were both divorcing their spouses:

This 1999 affair-pre-divorce is more interesting than the stuff from today, when they're just "companions" who are always together

Hum, sounds like they're a good match for eachother.

More recent--2004--when the unauth. biography was being worked on. Is that out yet? Could be a good read--I loved the Martha Stewart one! I've been trying to avoid the business articles that keep popping up, but apparently he's not quite a multi-billionaire as his telecom company had some problems....



I love Lexis/Nexis

NY Daily News
Wintour gives the
'Devil' its due


Fashionistas must have thought there was peyote in their popcorn Tuesday night when Vogue editrix Anna Wintour showed up at a VIP screening of "The Devil Wears Prada."

Could the imperious style queen have deigned to see the movie based on the book that had so mercilessly lampooned her?

But, sure enough, it was Wintour.

She felt brave enough to dispense with her signature runway safety goggles. But she took care to surround herself with a posse that included boyfriend Shelby Bryan and daughter Bee Schaffer.

Word is Meryl Streep, who plays editor Miranda Priestly, had persuaded Wintour to come by, assuring her that her character was an amalgam of other fashion arbiters - ladies like Diana Vreeland, Polly Mellon, Grace Mirabella and Liz Tilberis. Plus, Streep had been nice enough to strip Priestly of her Wintourish British accent.

It was fine to see Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott, Martha Stewart and Candice Bergen. But what if she got caught in an elevator with Lauren Weisberger, the former Vogue assistant who turned her stint at the mag into a best seller. Ever since the book's publication in 2003, Wintour had refused to dignify it with a comment.

What if Wintour ran into the willowy Weisberger? Organizers were determined not to let it happen.

"They purposely seated Lauren and Anna on opposite sides of the theater," says one source. "As far away as humanly possible."

Disappointingly, the plan worked. Wintour escaped the theater without a confrontation with the young woman who'd gotten rich off her.

"I heard she was there," Weisberger told us. "I haven't run into her since the book came out. We travel in different circles. All I know is that it was one of the most exciting nights of my life."

And how did Wintour like the film?

"She thought it was very entertaining," said her spokesman. "It was satire. What's not to like?"

I thought the whole purpose of inviting her was to get her involved in some real-life bitch fight with Meryl Streep and Weisberger. It would have been glorious...and provided a sequel.

I think Wintour would beat a bitch's ass in ANY fight and look great doing it
Sorry, I've developed a new appreciation for her lately. At least she can dish it out AND take it.

Same here Soho.

I'm sure when she stomped on some bitch that crossed her's ass...her hair would be perfect and undamaged. Plus, I will always root for the bitch in any situation. If it wasn't for them, life wouldn't be entertaining.

All hail Ms. Wintour.

Now she's one I would love "poke the bear" a bit just to see what she'd do

And speaking of Bryan...his daughter is an editor at another Conde Nast magazine. I belive it's Vanity Fair.

If you want to get the low down on Anna, I suggest you read "Front Row". It is an unauthorized bio of her and very very juicy. One story tells of her youth in London when she would by her "best friend" clothes that were purposely a size too small so that the girl would feel bad about herself.

Holy hell! That's so ridiculously mean it would be the bset thing in a camp classic type movie. They should make a bio-pic about Anna Wintour...and cast some over the top bitch actress in it...it would be the single greatest camp movie ever!