What Anna Wintour Did Before Vogue
365 days of fashion: the e-ncyclopedia of fashion
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Anna Wintour is so iconic in her role as American Vogue’s editor-in-chief since 1988 that it’s hard to imagine she was ever doing something else. But just like anyone, she started her career from the bottom, working at other publications. Today, as she celebrates her birthday, we invite you to learn more about the fashion debuts that prepared her for her dream job at Vogue.
The first jobs
Anna Wintour got her first job when she was 15 at a shop called “Biba” through connections of her father, Charles Wintour, a famous editor of The Evening Standard.
She also did some tasks for Petticoat, a British weekly magazine for young women founded by her stepmother Audrey Slaughter and published from 1966 until 1975. The young Anna also took some fashion classes but quickly abandoned them, famously saying her catchphrase, “You either know fashion or you don’t.”
Later, Wintour’s then-boyfriend, Richard Neville, gave her her first magazine production experience at his popular yet controversial Oz magazine.
The magazine where she learned everything
In 1970, Anna Wintour embarked on a five-year career as a fashion assistant and later deputy fashion editor at Harper’s & Queen (a merge of Harper’s Bazaar and Queen),