In the flesh

So... Anna Wintour!! She spoke for about 20 minutes and then fielded questions. We were told at the start that we were not to publish anything she said on any sort of outlet and not to take photos. Not that anyone actually followed that last one, but the pics I did take were flash-free just in case (and are therefore blurry).

What she wore - I was disappointed (almost) to see no singlasses!!!!!! She was wearing what looked like a navy silk dress with fading green squares on it. She told us it was Marni. Her daughter, Bee Schaffer, was there too, she had Louboutins on, clearly had a lot of natural style and was absolutely gorgeous.

I hadn't realised that Anna Wintour is British. She has a strange accent, admittedly. And she also looked great for her age - far skinnier than I had thought but still pretty good considering she's like 58. What she said was all pretty standard ("You're Oxford students, amazing" etc and then a brief history of her career), apart from justifying fashion to us. The audience was naturally majority girls, and she said that career girls shouldn't just have to wear navy pantsuits (heh, like Hilary Clinton) and that an interest in fashion does not make one shallow or stupid. She came across quite well actually, she was quite nervous, always looking to her daughter for support, and she smiled and made jokes. I was surprised!

She naturally mentioned the charity work - I didn't know that Vogue had put money towards Breast Cancer Research, or towards helping the Aids crisis in Africa. Also, one girl asked how it was morally possible that we could spend hundreds of pounds on a bag whilst there are people starving and/or surviving on less than a dollar a day. Anna's response was one I hadn't thought about, which was that the fashion industry does provide a lot of people all over the world with jobs (whilst stating that intelligent people could never be positive about sweatshops) and leads to a massive turnover in the billions of dollars.

I found it all a bit odd - Oxford girls don't tend to dress up much in their day wear, so it was strange to see people making an effort! Very few Uggs, tracksuit bottoms and crap hair (I'm not a fan of the "it's messed up hair so it looks like it took 2 seconds to do but actually I had to spend 3 hours getting it to the right shade of dishevelled"), more heels than usual!! Despite my worrying earlier, my only real concession was to wear my brogues all day! Not that I was ever anywhere near her, I was up in the balcony, about 10m away.

An enjoyable hour spent away from the dissertation. Though I didn't get there early enough to get an issue of Vogue (the one with Drew Barrymore on the front). Hope this is a reasonable account (and that I don't get sued) for those who are interested!

PICTURES!

What I wore. Not that exciting, I'm afraid, but much more interesting than what most people were wearing.

Illicit picture number one. Loved the dress.

Illicit picture number two - tiny tiny Anna Wintour!