In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye

 

THE editors of Vogue, once notoriously media shy, sure do seem reluctant to give up the spotlight.

Three years after the release of “The September Issue,” the behind-the-scenes documentary that made Grace Coddington a star, the magazine’s charismatic editors are back in a new documentary that will be broadcast on HBO on Dec. 6. This one, called “In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye” and directed by the team of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, highlights the work of the many strong-willed women who have helped create fashion images for the magazine over several decades. 

It also coincides with the publication of a book of the same title, as well as Ms. Coddington’s memoir, and the magazine’s 120th anniversary issue, so you may be wondering what could possibly be left to tell, unless there’s a documentary somewhere in development on the janitors of Condé Nast. 

“Oh, there’s a million stories,” Mr. Barbato said. “We feel like this is Chapter 1.” 

To differentiate their film from “The September Issue,” Mr. Bailey and Mr. Barbato, whose credits include “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” focused on the stories behind the famous photographs. They are told by Vogue editors, past and present, all of whom share a tendency to decorate their homes with images from the magazine, and most of whom speak in fabulously entertaining ways, like Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, who pronounces the word “real” like a howler monkey clearing its throat. 

While reverential (Mr. Bailey and Mr. Barbato describe themselves as “obsessed” with the Vogue editors), “The Editor’s Eye” still flicks at the intensely competitive environment of Vogue. 

“There’s a certain loneliness to being a fashion editor,” Polly Allen Mellen says in the film, describing her years as a protégé of Diana Vreeland. When other editors became jealous of her fast success, Ms. Mellen said that Ms. Vreeland gave her this advice: “Who needs friends? Get on with it.” 

No one said working at Vogue was going to be a walk in the park, but this show makes the job look as if it should come with hazard pay. 

Phyllis Posnick once asked a fearless model to pose with a bee on her lips. And Susan Train, a Paris bureau chief, described a photo shoot on a remote mountainside in Turkey, where a general mistook her crew for members of the Peace Corps. 

She recalled her response: “I said grandly, ‘Oh, no, not at all. We’re Vogue.’ “

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via NYtimes