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bench,” Lasky recalls.
    But more, Anna feared that the barefooted gymnastics might disfigure her slender feet.
    Anna liked to show off her good legs and was at the forefront of the miniskirt revolution, the decade’s defining fashion statement then hitting London like a German V2 rocket during the Blitz.
    While the school skirt’s length was set by the headmistress and was meant to cover the crease behind the knee, Anna rebelled by wearing a belt to hitch up the waist or by rolling up the hem, which got her into hot water. A number of times Miss Dobson, the scary math teacher, caught her shortening her skirt.
    If “old Dobbie” caught Anna leaning out the window with her skirt rolled up and saw the back of her legs, she’d jab her hard with the chewed metal end of a pencil that once held the eraser and severely reprimand her. Other times, as Anna marched in line to morning prayers—the Church of England and Catholic girls prayed in the east gym, the Jewish girls in the west—she’d be spotted for shortening her skirt. The eagle-eyed teacher sneaked up behind Anna and pulled her sweater up over her head. Disoriented and frightened, Anna was yelled at and berated for breaking the rule. Anna was “scared shitless,” Lasky remembers, but believes she continually broke the rule in order to “get a rise out of them. The short skirt thing happened time and time again.”
    Anna’s stubborn decision to wear minis, to defy the rules, would eventually lead to serious problems at school.
    Most of the North London Collegiate teachers—all women—were unmarried, and some had lost husbands or fiancés in the First World War. Anna scoffed at them, whispered about them, joked that they were so doddering she was absolutely certain their men had been killed in the Boer War. Anna had already developed a thing about age and would later use it as both a creative tool and a weapon when she became a fashion editor.
    North London’s uniform changed slightly in the spring, when students were required to wear long gingham dresses in various shades of the ubiquitous brown. “It was like a Donna Reed dress hanging on Anna Wintour,” recalls Lasky, giggling at the vision of her defiant, fashion-forward friend looking like the wholesome character on the golden-age TV sitcom
The Donna Reed Show
.
    Outside of school, Anna was required to wear a brown beret and a knitted scarf that displayed the school colors. The beret was mandatory through all seasons, and North London girls wore it to and from school. However, at four o’clock, when classes ended, Anna and Lasky, on the way to the underground station, doffed their school covers and stuffed them into their book bags. Enough with uniforms! Enough with regimentation! All of which got Anna into more trouble on a number of occasions.
    Riding home on the subway one late afternoon, Anna and Lasky were spotted sans berets by a proud alumna and reported. “Some woman called the school,” Lasky recalls, “and said, ‘I’ve just seen two North Londoners
not
wearing their berets!’ We were the only two girls who lived downtown, so they knew it was us. We got caught a few times. We got called in to the headmistress’s office and Anna would just sort of bullshit them. ‘You mean I can’t take my hat off?’ she asked innocently.”
    A stern lecture, one of many she received during her school days, ensued. “Your uniform stands for something. It shows where you’re from,” the headmistress intoned. “You must
always
wear your beret
proudly
. You, Anna Win-tour, have to live up to your uniform!”
    With wrist slapped, Anna left, stifling a giggle. She didn’t care about the school’s dress rules. “It’s a stupid hat. I hate it!” And she continued not to wear it if she thought she could get away with it.
    Years later, after she became head of American
Vogue
, the beret was still on her “out” list. She called it that “awful brown beret” and suggested that the required school