Vogue Magazine September Issue 2007

"There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous" said Anna Wintour.

And was my favourite line in the first scene of the documentary The September Issue. After watching The Devil Wears Prada, I watched The September Issue and thought about the similarity between Anna's office and Miranda Priestly's. The corridor of the Vogue office was lined with dozens of hangers featuring the latest collections from various designers, curated by Grace Coddington as creative director and Edward Enniful as contributing fashion editor in 2009. Vogue magazine is always about Anna Wintour's perspective, but with the help of ingenious fashion journalists like André Leon Talley, every page has a dialogue about fashion and gets Anna's approval. Anna visited the offices of designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, etc. to see the collections to be included in the magazine. Carefully sifting through the collections with direct questions, Anna made Stefano Pilato - head of fashion design at YSL - nervous during his presentation of the winter collection. I suggest you watch the film and take a look at how Anna reacts to the collection, similar to Miranda Priestly, both of them rolling and gesticulating with their eyes or mouth to show their dislike of the collections.

There was the scene at the September kick-off meeting, where there was talk of breaking the record for the biggest monthly magazine ever published, and then there was Vogue's distinguished editors sitting around the table talking about the stories of every page, every trend feature, every cover and every photo shoot location. It made me realise that Vogue is a business not to be underestimated. About thirteen million people in the United States get every copy of Vogue. The film made me think that fashion is kind of complicated. I think it's about taste, and people in the world have different tastes. It is the job of creative editors to take the red line of all tastes and put it into a magazine that sells once a month. I can see that Anna and her team were busier for September because it's January in the fashion world and once you've decided what to put in the magazine, there are only two choices, either it attracts the customer or it doesn't. Never be in between.

US-September Issue 2007-Sienna Miller

I had the feeling that I had to have this copy, which was quite impossible as it had been released more than a decade ago. Nevertheless, I tried to find it. It costs $198.83 on eBay and $199 on Amazon. Not to mention the shipping cost from the United States to Indonesia and the weeks I have to wait for the magazine to arrive at home. Did I mention that I've been a regular customer of a small secondhand store that sells used imported magazines since 2011? Well, in Indonesia, the imported magazine is three times more expensive and makes it impossible for me to get the latest issue every month because back in 2011, I was a student with an allowance from my sister. Opening the plastic wrap, I go straight to the Letter from the Editor page and read and learn how the editor-in-chief condenses a hundred pages of Vogue into one to three beautiful pages. What true editorial skill. After reading it, I tore up the pages so that I could collect them in a scrapbook.

Letter from The Editor by Anna Wintour, 1/3

Letter from The Editor by Anna Wintour, 2/3

Letter from The Editor by Anna Wintour, 3/3

So, shortly after seeing the film, I texted the thrift shop to help me find the September 2007 issue. After 3 weeks of waiting, he found the magazine. He managed to find the copy from his other customers who wanted to sell it to him and then he sold it to me. Let me tell you how much it cost. It cost $3.5! Now I know the perk of being a Vogue collector, which is a minority and beneficial to me. No one realised how valuable and memorable the issue was, which should have cost more than $100. It was a dense and heavy issue with 840 pages. I was more than happy and lucky to have it, I didn't expect to have this copy, I mean this copy was filmed by Vogue. It was supposed to be special and the most impressive in the history of Anna Wintour and Vogue.