14 DAY TRIAL // Shortly after this year’s MET Gala, Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker stopped by Seth Meyers to discuss the annual event, how much money it had raised for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and dissect men’s choices for a white-tie outfit. Wintour came across as very nice (adorable actually), if a bit shy.
The real Anna Wintour is anything but that. The Vogue Editor-in-Chief, of whom people once said would wear dark sunglasses indoors because she didn’t want people to see she had soulless eyes, is a vapid, pretentious, and very mean person, Tim Gunn of Project Runaway says to this day.
The feud between Gunn and Wintour is not new. It goes back to 2010, when he came out with the book “Gunn’s Golden Rules,” in which he recalled a particular anecdote with Wintour that put her in a very negative light.
He still stands by what he wrote in the book on the topic, just like he did at the time, when Wintour had her people try to bully him into printing a retraction. He still refuses to kiss and make up, telling Page Six that, whenever they meet, “I don’t look her in the eyes, because I will be turned into stone.”
So clearly, the rift between these two is as deep as ever. It’s not hard to imagine the resentment on Wintour’s part, considering what Gunn wrote about her, namely that she’s so uptight and self-centered that she refused to ride a public elevator at a Metropolitan Pavilion fashion show, having her bodyguards carry her down the stairs instead.
“I will never forget this,” Gunn says, recalling how he witnessed the bodyguards take Wintour down the stairs on their arms. “All hell broke loose… Her office was insisting I print a retraction,” Gunn continues.
“Also, I wasn’t maligning her character. I was simply making a statement of facts. It didn’t say anything about her as a person… the cause célèbre here was speed,” he explains.
Wintour’s reputation always precedes her: the leading character in “The Devil Wears Prada” is believed to have been based on her and, if you’ve seen that movie, you know she’s not the kind of woman you want to take home to the parents – or anywhere in public, for that matter.
She no longer wears the sunglasses indoors, which means people can’t say she’s hiding her empty, soulless eyes; but Anna Wintour the terrible legend is still very much present. Gunn’s story seems to confirm that at least some aspects of what has been reported are accurate.