Vogue USA editor-in-chief Anna Wintour graces the front cover of the April 2011 issue of WSJ Magazine in a photograph shot by Mario Testino.
"She's a really powerful figure in America," editor Deborah Needleman, Wintour's former Conde Nast colleague (Needleman was editor of now-defunct Domino Magazine) tells the AP. Wintour is "someone whose power extends beyond what she does."
"You have to wonder, how does one person have such a broad influence?" says Needleman, adding: "She's basically a global brand."
Wintour's biggest feat yet might be the shopping phenomenon that is Fashion's Night Out, a huge-scale retail event she masterminded in 2009 in New York and made bigger last year to span the globe. She persuaded stores to host lavish parties mixing celebrities and shoppers, offer discounts and pour free champagne, then she nudged consumers to open their wallets despite the recession. "She basically created a holiday from scratch," Needleman says. "Who else has the power to take New York and create a holiday?"
Wintour works intuitively, obliquely and patiently. "Her genius," says fashion designer Marc Jacobs, "is picking people very astutely, whether in politics, movies, sports or fashion."
(Musician, fashion designer and actor) Justin Timberlake states that Wintour "understands fashion is a frame of mind, not just the clothes... She's figured out that all these small moving parts come into play to make a bigger picture."
Wintour has been editor of the American edition of Vogue since 1988, and by now it has become commonplace to call her "the most powerful woman in fashion."



