Vogue boss Anna Wintour on her public persona and being told ‘no’.

Anna Wintour walked into our interview with her trademark dark glasses firmly on.

I’m meeting the woman who has been the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine since 1988 for VOGUE: Inventing the Runway, the show Wintour dreamed up about the history of the catwalk.

Our meeting is in a large underground space and we are surrounded by three wide screens. It is quite dark inside but the sunglasses stay in place during our conversation.

I tentatively ask what they are for. Are they shields or for something else, perhaps shortsightedness?

“They help me see and they help me not see,” Wintour told me somewhat cryptically. “They help me see and not be seen. They are a prop, I would say”.

The Lightroom in London uses digital projection and audio technology in a high-walled space to create an immersive experience for visitors.

He has previously hosted a blockbuster David Hockney show and Tom Hanks’ exhibition on the history of space travel.

Now the exhibition space gives audiences a front-row seat to some of the most iconic fashion shows in history, tapping into Vogue’s archive and collaborative network.

“For someone who goes to a lot of shows, you get a little bit, not bored, but you get used to the experience,” Wintour admitted.

Since most visitors to the exhibition won’t have the opportunity to participate in events like this, she says she wanted to make sure it felt like they were really there.

As the reigning queen of the fashion world, Wintour has had a veritable front-row seat for decades — often in a delicate gold chair, the kind of furniture that’s ubiquitous on high-end catwalk views. His invitation is always a dead cert.

In the blurb for the exhibition, Wintour writes that she has “probably spent a year of her life waiting for fashion shows, which are notoriously late”.

She tells me that the American designer Marc Jacobs once held a runway show that was an hour and a half late, but “after we all made a big fuss about it, the next season, he not only made the show on time.” Started, actually he started the show. Five minutes ago.”

Italian designer Gianni Versace, though, was “always on time.”

“It didn’t matter who wasn’t there, it could have been the Pope, he didn’t care”.

It would have suited Wintour, who is “terribly punctual, usually rushed”.

She arrives early for our interview. Fortunately, I had been warned that this was a character trait and we were prepared.

The Vogue show offers audiences a series of animated chapters, narrated by Cate Blanchett, that tell the story of fashion and the runway.

“It’s quite nostalgic to sit in a vacuum and watch the incredible changes in fashion,” Wintour told me.

We are treated to a series of magazine front covers from the early days, black and white footage of the first catwalk shows and images of early twentieth century couture salons.

Fashion at the time was “very elitist — you had to be invited and it was a very narrow world,” says Wintour.

Competition for musician and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams’ debut show for Louis Vuitton in 2023. A pop culture event, it was held on the Pont Neuf in Paris, attended by Beyoncé, Rihanna and of course Wintour, and received over a billion views online.

The democratization of fashion means, as Wintour says, “now everyone can come to the party, as it should be”.

The exhibit also takes us back to 2017 when Karl Lagerfeld created a space station-inspired runway set, complete with a rocket exploding as models decked out in the channel next to him. Wintour told me it’s “extraordinary… and you can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next”.

Lagerfeld was in shape. Ten years ago for Fendi, it broke new ground, using the Great Wall of China as a catwalk, with its models parading along the stone. Fashion designers of her stature clearly don’t do things by halves.

To insiders, Wintour has been one of fashion’s most important players for the best part of 40 years — a career-builder, an advocate of fashion’s power alongside the A-list of entertainers.

She is the driving force behind the annual Met Gala in New York, which sees the worlds of fashion and fame collide on the first Monday of every May and go viral in a display of outrageous outfits and celebrities.

Those not on the inside are more likely to wonder how closely Wintour resembles Miranda Priestly, the legendary tyrannical magazine boss from The Devil Wears Prada, portrayed by Meryl Streep in fans’ memories.

“Is there a reason why my coffee isn’t here? Did she die or something?” the priest inquires of her assistant disapprovingly.

“I’m not interested in the details of your incompetence,” she says later.

On Wintour’s trip to London, she bowed to the competition, attending a gala performance of a new musical version of the film. There, she told the BBC that “it’s for the audience and the people I work with to decide if there’s any similarity between me and Miranda Priestly”.

As we talked, I wanted to know if she found Anna Wintour’s public persona — the edgy, bobbed hair, the intricate dress, the glasses — a role she felt she had to play.

“I don’t really think about it,” she says. “What I’m really interested in is the creative side of my job.”

Wintour told me she only brought a suitcase or two with her to London and wouldn’t mind if she wore clothes while at home in America. “It’s really about respecting how you present yourself.”

More than one person has told me that no one ever says ‘no’ to Wintour. Donatella Versace says the same thing in the recent Disney documentary, In Vogue: The ’90s.

Wintour demurs. “That’s just wrong. They don’t say it often, but it’s a good thing. No is a wonderful word.”

Do you think people are afraid of you, I ask him. “I hope not,” she replies.

Under her leadership, through talent, force of personality and an eye for what sells, Wintour has strove to transform Vogue into a global brand of the future. She is also a global content consultant for magazine publisher Condé Nast.

In the modern era, when influencers can take photos of fashion moments and push them out instantly, Wintour has successfully positioned Vogue as an arbiter of taste and style.

Fashion and advertising are intertwined in Vogue’s content, but Wintour Marie doesn’t accept that fashion journalism can be brutal.

“It’s just not true and I think it’s sometimes frustrating for us who work in fashion, that there’s an outside perception of fashion that’s frivolous and superficial.

“It’s actually a huge business. We employ millions of people around the world.”

I take this answer to mean that Betty Wintour, the former editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, sees herself more as a fashion ambassador than a journalist.

But of course he is also a journalist, one of the most famous journalistic faces on the planet – and one with no clear successor.

I ask her, at 75, how long she plans to stay in her role.

“I have no intention of quitting my job,” she says: “for now.”

VOGUE: Inventing the Runway is at Lightroom, London until April 2025.