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uniform might have been one of the reasons why she became interested in fashion in the first place.
    Not until she was swathed in Chanel and standing on stilettos at the helm of the world’s fashion bible would Anna fully live up to her uniform.
    Eating in public was another issue that school authorities seriously frowned upon. Unfortunately, Anna once again was a violator, caught gulping down anoccasional biscuit, hungry for a quick sugar rush because she rarely ate at all. Each time she got caught, her parents were called. “What do you mean she was eating biscuits?” demanded a furious Charles Wintour of the headmistress. “I would think my daughter was hungry!” Arguing in Anna’s defense, he swiftly and pointedly ended the discussion. “What,” he asked, “is this idiocy?”
    At fourteen, stick-thin Anna watched her diet obsessively, mostly by not eating. Her school lunch usually consisted of a Granny Smith apple. Lasky’s mother, a former model, was worried about Anna’s health and thought she was too bony, though Anna felt she was fashionably emaciated like the premier model of the swinging sixties, Twiggy, whom Anna thought looked fab.
    “Anna only ate if it was something special,” says Lasky. “She always has had
terrific
self-control.”
    Anna was sickened even contemplating the school menu, which consisted of dishes such as “bubble and squeak,” so named because of the sounds that were emitted during cooking. It consisted of bland boiled potatoes and soggy green cabbage mashed together. Or a pudding with the saucy name “spotted dick,” which a British grocery chain wanted to change to “spotted richard,” because customers were too embarrassed to ask for it. At home, Nonie Wintour served a mousse called “housemaid’s knee,” which also disgusted Anna, who would bring leftovers to her friend, who ate it on the subway after school. Moreover, Anna didn’t feel that the atmosphere at school was conducive to a relaxed meal, what with one of the teachers seated primly at the end of the long table, carefully watching her deportment and manners.
    “The place was so stiff-necked,” Lasky asserts. “There was no warmth.”
    Only on special occasions did Anna gorge herself, such as when she and her friend cut into their formidable allowances and splurged on lunch at the posh four-star Caprice in Mayfair, which later became one of Princess Diana’s favorite Italian restaurants, or at the delectable Fortnum & Mason, just west of Piccadilly, for tea and a quick bite. Anna kept on top of restaurant, pub, and club ratings in trendy magazines and guides. “She always liked the best of everything,” Lasky says.
    Bored with school, Anna and Lasky played hooky, forging their parents’ signatures on official-sounding notes they typed, asking to be excused from classes because of an urgent doctor’s appointment or a great-aunt’s funeral.
    “We went to the ladies’ room in Trafalgar Square and changed into regular clothes. We’d go to museums. We’d go shopping. We’d go out to tea. We’d go to the movies. Anna loved the old romances, the black-and-white classics—
Rebecca
. We would walk miles to see them over and over again.”
    Ferris Bueller had nothing on Anna Wintour.

  three  

Swinging London
    N ineteen sixty-three, the year Anna matriculated at North London Colle-, giate, an explosion of enormous proportions rocked Britain. It was dubbed a youth quake, a psychedelic nuclear blast of fashion, style, and music that quickly resounded around the world. And Anna came of age in that momentous time, infusing her with an extreme interest in fashion.
    “That moment in time that Anna and I were growing up in London,” Vivienne Lasky reminisces, “was just not to be replicated.”
    The hair—the sexy, sometimes fetishy but always timeless bob—became an integral part of
the
look in the swinging London scene. Always on top of trends, Anna rushed to get her lush, thick, straight brown