"The Devil Wears Prada"

An excerpt from my review in the upcoming issue of The American Conservative:

Perhaps you shouldn't mention this around the feminist thought police, but women often hate working for other women. While men compete for status by including as many underlings as possible in their hierarchies, women gain prestige by excluding the maximum number from their cliques.

Running Vogue, the most celebrated fashion magazine, might be the ultimate in cliquishness, and Anna Wintour, who in 1996 became the industry's first million dollar per year editor, is famously frosty toward anyone beneath her in celebrityhood.

English journalist Toby Young tells the story of a Vogue executive's teenage daughter interning at the office. Once, as the intimidating editor bore down upon the awestruck girl in a hallway, the stiletto heel of one of Wintour's Manolo Blahniks snapped, sending her sprawling at the intern's feet. The teenager had been warned by her mother that "under no circumstances was she to speak to Ms. Wintour -- ever. Consequently, she gingerly stepped over Anna's prostrate form. As soon as she turned the corner, she sprinted to her mother's office… Had she done the right thing? Yes, her mother assured her. She'd done exactly the right thing."

Wintour has erected a persona for herself that "glories in self-created aristocratic solitude," like a character in a Camille Paglia-directed revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. Wintour resembles an earnest cross between Oscar Wilde's fashion-fixated duo, Gwendolen, whose motto is, "In matters of utmost importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing," and her Gorgon mother, Lady Bracknell, who observes, "Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present."

Personally, I find Wintour's blatant snobbery refreshing compared to the faux-egalitarianism of the high tech world. When interviewing for a job at chipmaker Intel in 1982, I was told that no employee got an office, not even vice-chairman Robert Noyce, the co-inventor of the silicon chip. Of course, I had to stand on my tiptoes and peek into the billionaire's cubicle, which turned out to be 600 square feet, with Impressionist masterpieces hanging on the gray fabric dividing walls.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer