“If Botticelli were alive today, he’d be working for Vogue,” Peter Ustinov.

In my endless quest for the meaning of life, I went to see The September Issue, a 2009 documentary about that pointless yet fascinating doorstop of a publication, Vogue. In flights of fantasy I like to think of myself as the Stouffville version of Anna (Nuclear) Wintour, the famously frosty editor who, despite her advanced age, still wields awesome power over the flaky yet riveting fashion industry.

Every year, against my better judgment, I beg, borrow or steal the August edition of that publication, a.k.a. the Age Issue, in a vain attempt to unearth painless and cheap tips on how to look more like Kate Moss and less like Cruella de Vil. This always turns out to be a depressing exercise in which stick-thin celebrities of roughly 35 (people who are palpably past it in the eyes of Vogue), with brows smoother than the rivers of bourbon imbibed by the cast of Mad Men, earnestly explain how they cope with the effects of the ravages of time on their dewy perfect skin and their tiny perfect bodies.

Artfully airbrushed and richer than pre-recession Warren Buffet, upholstered by Botox and other aids to plastic perfection, these people are by no stretch of the imagination ‘one of us’. They pontificate on what makes life worth living (yachts, Lear jets, a house in the Hamptons and a small island in the Caribbean) and demonstrate how shallow concerns such as meeting the mortgage, the daycare crisis and keeping their jobs simply don’t appear on their radar.

What really grabbed me about the movie, however, was the fact that its two stars, Nuclear and her right-hand woman and creative director, Grace Coddington, are in their late  fifties and mid-sixties respectively. And if Anna is the ice queen, Grace is an unmitigated delight, with her halo of unapologetically faux red curls and her caustic wit, nicely leavened by warmth and intelligence.

This is a woman who could serve as a role model for anyone who is older than springtime and several hundred sit-ups short of a washboard stomach. She is a rare original in a sea of  beautiful, interchangeable models festooned with bizarre catwalk creations that will not be coming to a main street near you anytime soon.

Growing up, I was always a magazine junkie, a habit which started with cheesy British comic books aimed at preteens, with gringe-making titles like School Friend and Bunty. My foray into popular culture began with Photoplay, which featured equally gringe-worthy pop stars of the time such as Cliff Richard, along with a lot of squared-jawed, all-American movie stars and curvaceous actresses who would, nowadays, find themselves relegated to careers as plus-size models. 

At the dentist’s office I perused Woman’s Own, which in those days was aimed at housewives (you could call them that then) and featured wholesome family recipes and a selection of readers’ letters documenting the cute things kids say. Woman’s Own still exists, but is now yet another celebrity and gossip vehicle documenting cute things starlets say, carefully edited by their ever-vigilant publicists.

Nowadays most magazines offer a choice between excruciating details of celebrities’ lives and relentless advice on how to live a healthy life. I’ve mostly given up reading them, at least until the release of next August’s Vogue.

Categories: Columns, Vintage Whine
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