What I liked most about the film was its focus on the work of making a magazine. Yes, it’s “Vogue” – a fashion magazine, and there are lots of designers, clothes, and models. But the heart of the documentary is about the magazine itself and the people who create it, not the clothes.

Although it would have probably been short a few of the more eccentric characters, I don’t believe the film would have been much different if they had decided to go behind the scenes of any major magazine. Where the fashion angle really comes to play is in the way Anna Wintour is regarded. The association of being part of the fashion world comes with the price that, although highly regarded by many, her work as seen as frivolous even by the members of her family. If she was the editor-in-chief of “National Geographic” – would she still be seen in the same light?

I knew of Wintour’s reputation for being icy before the film – and although the film isn’t essentially a biography, it does give a more accurate look at the woman behind the sunglasses on the front row at Fashion Week. The filmmakers juxtapose Wintour with Grace Coddington, the creative director who started at Vogue on the same day as Wintour. Grace is the artist who pours her soul into each fashion shoot and is devastated when one of her pictures is cut. Wintour is the editing eye – some see her as callous, but she is understandably guarded when working the business side of an artistic profession. While others can focus on their small part of the magazine, only Wintour is responsible for every page, picture and letter – and she is extremely involved in every step. I found it truly fascinating to watch.

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.