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by Nina-Sophia Miralles (Quercus £20, 352pp)
In 2006, I was at a screening of The Devil Wears Prada with a friend who was a senior executive at British Vogue. In the film, based on a roman-a-clef by a former Vogue assistant, Meryl Streep plays terrifying fashion editor Miranda Priestly, all put-downs, scathing one-liners and fierce black-rimmed spectacles.
It was widely accepted as a thinly veiled portrait of the equally terrifying Vogue editor Anna Wintour. I asked my friend what she thought of the film. ‘It was something of an understatement,’ she said.
Wintour, famed for her thinness and implacable silence, is capable of producing fear and fascination, even if you’re not especially fashion-conscious. Highly ambitious, she moved to New York in 1975 and after blistering through various magazines was appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue.