Fashion Giants Dish All Before Disney+ Doc ‘In Vogue: The 90s’: “Anna Wintour Does Not Hold a Grudge”
If there were two people who could ever bring together Kate Moss, Hillary Clinton, Nicole Kidman and Naomi Campbell, it’s Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful.
The Vogue giants star in and serve as executive producers on a new Disney+/Hulu docuseries, In Vogue: The 90s, streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in the U.K., Ireland and other countries.
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The legendary editors, alongside industry heavyweights Tonne Goodman and Hamish Bowles, tell the story of the fashion industry through their eyes. Featuring some of the most influential names in fashion, the docuseries follows the industry’s relationship with film, music and politics across a decade of vast change, featuring everything from the Met Gala to some of the magazine’s most iconic covers.
Amber Valletta, Andrew Bolton, Baz Luhrmann, Camilla Nickerson, Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, Catherine Martin, Claire Danes, Claudia Schiffer, Donna Karan, Elizabeth Hurley, Grace Coddington, Jean Paul Gaultier and John Galliano also appear across the six episodes. Other big names involved include Gwyneth Paltrow, June Ambrose, Kim Kardashian, Linda Evangelista, Marc Jacobs, Mary J. Blige, Michael Kors, Missy Elliott, Miuccia Prada, Stella McCartney, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, Vera Wang and Victoria Beckham.
Wintour, reliably sporting her signature sunglasses and bluntly-chopped bob, evidently saw a host of potential in the series — the elusive figure is not one to willingly put herself on display often. “Anna doesn’t do a lot, but there was such a seismic shift in the ’90s that you couldn’t really ignore it,” Enninful, the former editor-in-chief of British Vogue and the first Black person to step into the role, tells The Hollywood Reporter about her involvement in the doc. “Yes, she’s very focused. I executive produced it along with her, Tonne and Hamish, and everybody was very granular. We examined each issue.”
“Anna’s the one that decided: ‘Let’s put celebrities on the cover’ [of Vogue] which really changed the whole industry. So she’s a very important figure in ’90s fashion. And to talk about the ’90s without talking about what Vogue did, it really wouldn’t be a complete story. So that’s why we all agreed to be a part of it.”
Wintour tells THR: “Like the 60s, it’s a decade with an outsize reputation in the culture, and for good reason: it was the decade where everything changed. Fashion as we know it today — globally attuned, red carpet dressing, brand reinventions, logos, a new idea of luxury — all really started then… It was a time when everything felt possible — even the impossible.”
Enninful says he, Wintour, Goodman and Bowles sent comments “back and forth” about each episode. “Everything was really done in the Vogue way,” he explained. “Nothing was just said like, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ Everything from the cover art to the episodes were discussed over and over. And that’s really what’s great about Anna, she’s just very granular.”
Goodman tells THR: “I’ll tell you a little story about Anna. There have been circumstances that I personally have had with Anna where I have had a shoot that was not successful, and it’s been killed essentially, and then you are mortified.”
“You think the world is going to stop, because all of us within the magazine, within Vogue, take our jobs very, very seriously and really love them. It’s an expression. We’re all creators of imagery so when it doesn’t work out, it’s kind of devastating,” Goodman adds. “But Anna does not hold a grudge at all. She moves on to the next one. It’s like, ‘Don’t even think about it twice. Let’s keep going forward.’ And that is something that Anna promotes amongst her editors that you probably don’t know.”
In Vogue: The 90s takes viewers through some of the most defining fashion moments of the 20th century: Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg’s Calvin Klein ad, John Galliano’s rise at Givenchy and Dior, and even the HIV/Aids crisis that shook the creative community around the world.
“Social media is so prevalent and it and it really dictates so much of our behavior, even if we don’t want to, we have to admit that it does,” Goodman says of the timing of the documentary. “What’s happened with social media is that the process of seeing an evolution gets compacted. It’s too fast. Everything is too fast. To have a documentary that rolls out what happened within a decade is wonderful for people to be able to see, appreciate, understand and actually learn.”
Enninful echoes this sentiment for the doc’s schooling potential. “I hope it educates people,” he says. “I hope it makes people laugh. It’ll take people back to a time when we didn’t have social media, but still, somehow, had to exist and still, somehow, had to keep the media moving.”
One part of the documentary that holds a lot of weight is the rise of supermodels such as Linda Evangelista, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and more. These women were models first and fame followed. Nowadays, reality stars and media personalities such as Kim Kardashian or Kendall Jenner have taken to the runway long after their appearances on television — are fashion and celebrity closer than they’ve ever been?
“Of course. We don’t exist in silos anymore,” says Enninful. “I remember when we used to go to fashion shows and it was just editors sitting there, watching the shows, then reporting on it. But now, when I go to shows, I see Kim [Kardashian] there next to Anna. All industries are cross pollinating.”
“I think it’s great,” he continues. “If one industry helps the other. I believe that Kim and Kendall, Gigi [Hadid], Bella [Hadid], they’re all a sign of their generation, just as Linda, Naomi, Christy [Turlington] were of their generation. You need those figures that represent a specific period in time.”
Wintour added: “Today’s generation has so much more to play with. The advent of social media and AI, and the rightful emphasis of greater diversity and thinking sustainably and wanting to engage with those issues has given today’s young designers and brands a much bigger canvas to work with.”
“If the creatives of the ’90s started to engage with the world, those of today, wherever they’re working in the world, or whatever the size of their businesses, have found ways to be noticed and heard like never before.”
In Vogue: The 90s will air exclusively on Disney+ in the U.K. and Ireland, on Hulu in the U.S. and select other countries on Disney+. The show is set to premiere on Friday, and the latter half will arrive on the platform a week later on Sept. 20.
Sean Doyle, director of unscripted, Disney+ said: “In Vogue: The 90s is our next venture in the continuation of our strategy to commission female-skewed premium factual on Disney+, in a bid to offer audiences an alternative to true crime and reality. We’ve launched Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story to great success, and now are incredibly excited to bring In Vogue: The 90s to our customers.”
The series is co-produced by Raw, backed by All3Media, and Vogue Studios. Executive producers include Liesel Evans, Jonathan Smith, Helen Estabrook, Sarah Amos, Mark Guiducci and Agnes Chu.
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