Vogue's legendary editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, appraises a fashion show in preparation for the magazine's 2007 fall-fashion edition in R.J. Cutler's documentary The September Issue. (Roadside Attractions)

Followers of Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour — she of the trademark bob and enormous black sunglasses — have had a heady few years, a veritable deluge of dish. First, there was the novel The Devil Wears Prada, then the movie version of the same and now, The September Issue, R.J. Cutler’s documentary on the inner workings of Vogue magazine. Taken together, they offer a fascinating portrait of the woman who is the core of the global fashion industry.

If Anna Wintour doesn’t like something, it doesn’t get printed in the pages of Vogue, and thus no one sees it, no one knows about it, and most importantly, no one buys it.

I’ve long been intrigued by Wintour. Watching her in The September Issue, as she visits designers and tells them what does and doesn’t work in their upcoming collections — and watching them quake accordingly — I realized that Wintour is the ultimate critic. Not since mid-20th century American art critic Clement Greenberg, who made and unmade reputations with his writing, has one person’s opinion held so much sway. Greenberg’s opinion swayed the art world, however, which, while big, cannot approach the influence of the fashion world. If Wintour doesn’t like something, it doesn’t get printed in the pages of Vogue, and thus no one sees it, no one knows about it, and most importantly, no one buys it.

Grace Coddington, Vogue’s creative director and the runaway star of The September Issue, opined in a recent interview that she wished everyone would forget about The Devil Wears Prada. But the truth is, The September Issue lives in its shadow.

(Roadside Attractions)

As documentaries go, this one is very light — there are no behind-the-scenes revelations, no uncovered dirt. Of course, I didn’t expect there to be. Wintour is far too powerful and image-conscious to let herself be unmasked. The film feels heavily managed by her, and as such, comes across as a riposte to Meryl Streep’s brilliant caricature of her in The Devil Wears Prada.

Of course, that movie was a kind of riposte to the original book. Author Lauren Weisberger worked as Wintour’s personal assistant for just under a year, racking up a whine list a mile long. Widely panned as bitter and transparently vengeful, Weisberger’s novel could never be considered trustworthy, either as reportage or as a character sketch — although its six months on the New York Times bestseller list testifies to its capacity for gossip-fuelled entertainment.

By all accounts, the movie version was a major clean-up of the original material. In the film, Miranda Priestly (the Wintour stand-in) is a delicious villain: icy, demanding, but ultimately intelligent, pragmatic and always right. Streep is given several key monologues that demonstrate fashion’s value and relevance and pithily deconstruct the inner workings of the industry and the economics of desire. These, apparently, were entirely the invention of the screenwriters.

So, too, was Stanley Tucci’s character, Nigel, the fictional art director and fairy godmother to the movie’s naïve heroine, played by the willowy, doe-eyed Anne Hathaway. Nigel was a compassionate amalgam of several different people in the book, chiefly the homophobic caricature of Vogue’s editor-at-large, André Leon Talley. Ultimately, the success of the movie lay with Streep. She clearly relished playing the haughty Priestly, but in her acting brilliance, she knew to avoid pure villainy. Priestly became a demanding perfectionist, a woman who realizes that, to excel in a place like the fashion industry — whose surface frivolity hides massive cultural and economic import — insisting on impossible levels of excellence is just part of the game.

Streep’s portrayal also included some actual villainy, which must have rankled Wintour. She was an object of fascination for her regal inaccessibility and froideur, and The Devil Wears Prada gave that public a delicious image to latch on to. As a result, it becomes hard to see The September Issue as anything other than Wintour’s attempt to set the record straight — or at the very least, invent another record, one that doesn’t rely on actors and screenwriters.

If The September Issue delved into something meaty and critical, it could have avoided feeling like a PR exercise. This is meaty territory, after all. The vast machinery of the fashion industry aside, Vogue’s September “book” is always the most important issue of the year, rammed with fall advertising. (The September 2007 edition is famously the largest, and most expensive, issue ever produced.) Yet all Cutler shows us is a very polite day-in-the-life account of the making of this pivotal edition.

Instead of courting controversy, the film flatters everyone involved, especially Wintour. She mingles, she jet-sets, she consults on locations and story ideas, she makes editorial decisions — but not once does anyone lose their composure. Talking head interviews are very carefully managed to give a very vague idea of Wintour’s background. She mentions her newspaper editor father, and wanting to be a fashion editor, but there is not a word of how she climbed to the top of one the world’s most prestigious magazines.

Anna Wintour's opinion can make or break a fashion career. (Roadside Attractions)

You can sense Cutler’s herculean effort to humanize Wintour. Scenes of her at the office are juxtaposed with her hanging out with her daughter. At one point, Wintour opines that her siblings regard what she does as silly and unimportant. O, the injustice! You can practically hear the violins — Wintour has the respect and awe of the fashion world, but not, alas, of her family.

Without any semblance of objectivity, The September Issue is a total failure as a documentary film. It is a document, but not of impartial or critical witness; rather, it is a document of propaganda. But for that reason, it is completely fascinating. The September Issue documents the “real” Anna Wintour in a way she could never have anticipated: it is a record of her control, of her desire to maintain command and supremacy.

It’s the most basic rule of the media, and queen Wintour knows it all too well: once you let people have unfettered access to you and your image, your prestige, mystique and power vanishes. Long may she reign.

The September Issue can be seen at Hot Docs' Doc Soup in Toronto on Oct. 21 and opens wide in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on Oct. 23.

Sholem Krishtalka is a writer based in Toronto.