Inside the Unauthorised Biography of Anna Wintour

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**Imran Amed** (1:47)
Hi, this is Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to The BoF Podcast. It's Friday, May 13th.
Around the time of the Met Gala, fashion writer Amy Odell released her long anticipated biography of the editor-in-chief of American Vogue and artistic director of Condé Nast, Anna Wintour. This week on The BoF Podcast, I sit down with Amy to learn what it's like to put together a book like this when the subject of your book and her coterie of friends and contacts are not willing to talk to you, at least at first.

**Amy Odell** (2:21)
I started approaching people for interviews and I got so many no's.
Weeks would go by, I would just be, no, no, no, or, well, I don't know, maybe if she says it's okay. And I didn't go to her and her team first because a lot of the people I approached said, oh, well, she's going to shut this down. She's going to use Condé Nast to shut this down. You're not going to get anywhere.

**Imran Amed** (2:40)
Here's Amy Odell on The BoF Podcast.
Amy, it's great to be in touch with you and to have a chance to talk to you. It's been a long time since you and I saw each other in person. Way, way, way pre-pandemic, I suppose. But you've been very busy with this new book on Anna Wintour, which I understand is now a New York Times bestseller. So congratulations.

**Amy Odell** (3:08)
Thank you so much.

**Imran Amed** (3:10)
So I wanted to start by asking the question, why write this book and why write this book now? Of all the people in the fashion industry, why was it that you chose to focus your journalistic skills on Anna Wintour? I've read another biography about her. There's countless articles and interviews with her on the internet. What was it that you were aiming to achieve with this book?

**Amy Odell** (3:34)
Yeah. So Anna has been running Vogue for 34 years since 1988, and that tenure is extraordinary, not just in fashion or in magazines, but broadly in the business world. There are not many people who stay at the top for that long. Getting to the top is one thing, staying there is another. Jeff Bezos, for instance, left Amazon after 27 years.
And despite having this public position for so long, Anna Wintour is someone who has remained an enigma.
And in Anna the Biography, I hope to peel back the curtain on who she really is. And the book really is about her troubles and her triumphs. And I learned so many surprising things about her along the way. For instance, I was surprised to learn that she wants to be remembered for her philanthropic work, not for her magazine editing work. I was surprised to hear about her life at home with her family. One of her friends described her as a matriarch. I was surprised to hear her described as a dog person who absolutely loves her dogs and will take them out at two in the morning if she needs to. So it was a fascinating, fascinating project for me to do over the course of around three years.