Monday, January 21, 2013

The September Issue

My husband recently spent several weeks traveling for work, and I have insomnia when he's gone.  Not sure why.  I'm not scared to be home without him, and while I do miss him terribly, it normally takes more than pining to keep me from a good night's sleep.  But for whatever reason, I'm awake nights when he travels.  What a pain. 

I wish I could say I use all that time not sleeping to get to all the projects I have brewing, or organize the last of the moving boxes we have, or contemplate my relationship with the divine, but I admit I only dabbled in any of those things.  Mostly I shopped online and watched Netflix.  Lots of sales going on right now, in case you live under a rock and don't get email ads.  A new winter coat?  Yep, in red, please.  Pretty table linens on sale? Why, yes, thank you. And it comes in a second cute color? Send that too.  A bocce set?  In January?  Sign me up. 

It's ridiculous. 

The Netflix portion of my insomnia I did use to catch up on some of those documentaries you've never seen that win all the big awards, so that was sort of cultural.  One of these was The September Issue (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1331025/), about editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (the devil in The Devil Wears Prada) and the hoopla surrounding Vogue's huge fall issue--the one that dictates the styles for the coming year.  Fas-cin-ating.  Self-important people, big bucks, relatively unrelatable clothing, and photography.  Oh, some of the photography is spectacular.  One of the major players at Vogue is Grace Coddington, 70+ year old creative director, and the mastermind behind the really beautiful editorial spreads in the magazine, like this:



and this:




Love the rich detail.  Love the the story she tells with each image.  Love that she just rolls her eyes at Anna's demands and keeps doing what she does best and knows is beautiful.  At the end of the film when they're asking Anna questions, her self-proclaimed biggest asset is her decisiveness. Except all of Grace's shoots she dismissively lopped out over the course of assembling the issue ended up back in by the end. I guess you can decisively and repeatedly change your mind.
And as a petty side-note, it was fascinating to see how homely and bad-skinned and disheveled some of these fashion experts are in person. Besides the ones that are just plain old, which you have to forgive because good on ya for making it in that industry so long.

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