What it was really like to work for Anna Wintourat Vogue

On Thursday, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour sent shock waves through the media world when the style icon announced that she was stepping away from the role after more than three decades running the fashion bible – with an iron fist.“Power for her was what it was all about. Power’s Anna’s aphrodisiac,” a magazine staffer told author Jerry Oppenheimer for his 2005 book “Front Row: Anna Wintour,” a tell-all on what it was like being in Wintour’s orbit.Winter, 73, famously inspired Meryl Streep’s ice queen lead in the “Devil Wears Prada,” and those who’ve worked with her say the portrayal was accurate.In “Anna: The Biography,” author Amy Odell writes of Wintour requiring her three assistants to do everything from handling her pets to organizing her clothes.One former editor who worked under Wintour recalled the expectation that she would be in heels, not flats, when the boss was on the floor. She also remembered that it was understood that Wintour only let the prettiest assistants work the Met Gala.Merle Ginsberg, a longtime fashion writer and former editor for Women’s Wear Daily, W Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar, among others, recalled first meeting Wintour during an interview for a senior editor job at Vogue back in the 90s, when she was working at W.A friend at Vogue had helped get her the interview, and gave Ginsberg strict advice on what to wear, telling her she should don “a matching dress and coat – with no stockings, Anna hates stockings – and Manolos.”Ginsbreg followed her instructions, but the interview didn’t go well.“[I] was really shaking when I went up there.

I recall her desk was far away from where I was sitting – like ‘Devil Wears Prada.’ First question: ‘Why should I hire you if Patrick McCarthy at W will hate Me?'” Ginsberg recalled.“She never looked me in the eye.”Then, Wintour asked her to pitch some stories.

Ginsberg started to offer up ideas, but they weren’t received well.“She s...