Backstage at Vogue mag
“Ivery often had a bird on my head.” No, those aren’t the words of Tippi Hedren, ruing her work with Alfred Hitchcock. It’s a fashion editor for Vogue magazine, describing her preferred work uniform for an HBO documentary airing Thursday. Following 2009’s The September Issue, which chronicled editor Anna Wintour as she prepared the all-important fall tome, and 2011’s Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, about the titular former editrix, comes In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye.
Basically, it’s a celebration of the women who created the iconic images of the glossy magazine, ever packed with pretty photos of pretty people wearing pretty things. Creative director Grace Coddington — she of fantastically frizzy red hair — weighs in, as do Babs Simpson, Polly Mellen, Carlyne Cerf De Dudzeele and the rest.
For those who are more celebrity-minded, Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Lady Gaga make appearances. It’s Kidman who tidily sums up the allure of Vogue’s fashion spreads. “They give us access to another world,” she says. “They give us access to dreams.”
And so those dreams are deconstructed as we learn about the Doberman in one photo who, unsatisfied with slabs of meat, gnawed on one model’s ankle. Or Elizabeth Taylor who, for her shoot, brought in limos full of couture, only to have her head scarf yanked off last-minute for a surprise photograph that she grudgingly admitted was her favourite.
While the anecdotes are amusing and the life of the 120-yearold mag is a carefully illustrated social history, those in the age of The Devil Wears Prada might crave the horror stories of working with those editors. Oh, there are winks — designer Vera Wang describes her job as Mellen’s assistant in 1971 as “absolutely brutal” — but it’s all framed in a very ‘close your eyes and think of England’ sort of way. In the final moments, photographer Annie Leibovitz assembles the eight fashion editors in front of the camera for a shot bathed in black. It’s austere, mysterious, stark and slimming. Though you can’t help but wish a little more light were shed on their personal lives. (HBO Canada — 9 p.m.)
The first in the two-part finale of the Canadian police drama success story, Flashpoint, airs tonight. Team One will tackle a brilliant serial bomber who takes an entire city hostage. Says CTV, the episode is “one that changes Team One forever and will go down as the most action-packed Canadian television episode in memory.” (CTV — 8 p.m.)