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Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, Andre Leon Talley, Thakoon Panichgul, Hamish Bowles ... see more see more... , Sarah Brown , Charlie Churchward , Oscar De La Renta , Patrick Demarchelier , Jill Demling , Edward Enninful , Brian Fee , Filipa Fino , Tom Florio , Jean-Paul Gaultier , Nicolas Ghesquiere , Tonne Goodman , Laurie Jones , Karen Katz , Alexandra Kotur , Karl Lagerfeld , Philip Lim , Luiza Madejak , Jim Mate , Craig McDean , Sienna Miller , Sonya Mooney , Jessica Nagin , Si Newhouse IV , Alberto Orta , Sophie Pera , Stefano Pilati , Phyllis Posnick , Candy Pratts Price , Alex Rankovic , Coco Rocha , Jessica Sailer , Elissa Santisi , Bee Shaffer , Ivan Shaw , David Wm. Sims , Sally Singer , Virginia Smith , Danko Steiner , Burton Tansky , Mario Testino , E. Jane Thompson , Isabel Toledo , Charles Townsend , Caroline Trentini , Vera Wang , Daria Werbowy , Stephanie Winston Wolkoff , Raquel Zimmerman , Robert Richman

Vogue has been the most powerful and best-respected fashion magazine in the world for decades, and each year the journal devotes a fall issue to the designs and designers that the editors feel will be... read more read more... influential in the coming year. The September 2007 issue of Vogue, that year's annual Fall Fashion issue, became the biggest single issue in the magazine's long history, and filmmaker R.J. Cutler was given unprecedented access to Vogue's creative team as the issue was being prepared. The September Issue is a documentary which focuses on Vogue editor Anna Wintour as she visits the annual Fashion Week shows, accepts or dismisses the latest creations of the biggest names in fashion, works with the models, photographers, and writers who help bring her vision to the page, and labors with her staff to determine what the world's fashionistas will be wearing for the next 12 months. The September Issue received its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where it received an award for excellence in documentary cinematography. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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67% liked it

48,705 ratings

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83% liked it

108 critics

PG-13, 1 hr. 30 min.

Directed by: R.J. Cutler

Release Date: September 11, 2009

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DVD Release Date: February 23, 2010

Stats: 973 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (973)

  • kenstachnik
    March 17, 2011
    kenstachnik
    Kind of interesting, and kind of everything you'd expect it to be. Wanted less of Wintour being bitchy and more of why she was being bitchy.
  • jjnxn
    August 24, 2010
    jjnxn
    You're screen will practically frost over from Anna Wintour's icy personality but this is an interesting inside look at the organization of Vogue's big issue.
  • rubystevens
    April 26, 2010
    rubystevens
    this is probably a special interest documentary. i know alot of people feel fashion is frivolous and it is of course. it's a kind of fantasy world that's fairly divorced from reality but for a small and elite crowd, it is a religion. the film shows us the people behind the fas... read morehion bible, vogue's september issue, including the ice queen, anna wintour, played by meryl streep in the devil wears prada, her senior editor and former 60's model grace coddington, a true genius of fashion who steals the film from anna, the fabulous andre leon talley, photographers like mario testino and patrick demarchelier at work, various designers, etc. if none of this means anything to u, then u won't care about this film, but as someone who grew up with vogue, inspired by the fashion and especially the wonderful photography, all this was pretty fascinating. i don't read fashion magazines now but this one really opened my eyes as a kid until the edgier elle took over in the 90's
  • MissMorganLeee
    March 19, 2010
    MissMorganLeee
    If you LOVE fashion as I do, you will really appricaite this movie. It goes behind the sense of our favorite fashion magazine. You see all the work that really goes into making the september issue. It really is unbelieveable. I completely loved the shoots done by Grace...She is A... read moreMAZING! I loved all of them. She's genious. I didnt really see this movie as documentary, it was very amusing and jsut the right length. It could have gotten long and drawn out but it didnt. Very well made. See it.
  • LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    January 20, 2010
    LorenzoVonMatterhorn
    "Fashion is a religion. This is the bible."

    A documentary chronicling Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue.

    REVIEW

    How can one woman hold so much po... read morewer in a multi-billion dollar industry? The September Issue shows all the mind-blowing meticulous and uncompromising work that went behind the biggest issue of American Vogue, the September 2007 840-page phone book-thick fall fashion bible. If you thought Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada was, well, a devil, then the real-life pope of international fashion whose word on all things sartorial is doctrine and canon will leave you speechless as she makes the most famous and esteemed designers nervous like little girls who doubt that they know even a single thing about clothes, puts into trash $ 50,000 worth of fashion editorial work, and dictates to major retailers what the rest of us are going to wear.

    However, the more profound aspects of this documentary are the less notorious driving or hindering forces of multi-million-copy-selling Vogue. Anna Wintour, aka "nuclear Wintour," has chinks in her armor. After all, every deity is a human first, and Anna is a mother to a daughter who thinks that the fashion industry is "amusing," a sentiment shared by Anna's three other siblings. To the commander-in-chief of couture and prêt-a-porter, this seems to send an unwelcoming weakness. Juxtaposed with Anna is creative director Grace Coddington, the apparent warmness to Anna's iciness. Pushing each other has been the norm for their 20 years of working close together. The dynamic between the two is exciting, frustrating, and a necessary endeavor to produce the pages of fashion's most revered reference.

    Fashion people will eat up this film. However, normal people/fashion outsiders will not regret seeing this insightful piece about how it is to be supremely powerful, what it takes to be at the pinnacle, and the costs of this might and glory.
  • jennifxu
    November 17, 2009
    jennifxu
    While certainly an entertaining and fascinating movie, I don't really leave The September Issue feeling any more enlightened about Vogue than I already was. This just confirms the shroud of mystery that encircles Wintour and her legion of skinny, perfectly coiffed robots. The fas... read morehion is beautiful yet inaccessible. Even the presence of Grace Coddington doesn't temper Wintour's trademark ice face.
  • dunmyer
    September 2, 2009
    dunmyer
    "The September Issue" is a surprisingly good, crisp documentary about the senior team at American Vogue, chiefly Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler followed Wintour and Coddington (both British women of a certain age) around in the early part of 2007 as prep... read morearations were made for the September issue of the magazine, which is always the most-read issue of the year and is considered a bellwether for the fashion world at the start of its all-important fall season. Coddington is so interesting and unique that she almost steals the movie from Wintour.

    I suppose that Vogue felt it needed to make its own film after the huge success of "The Devil Wears Prada," a brilliant parody written by one of Wintour's former assistants. In "The September Issue," Wintour emerges as imperious but hardly a terror. She is extremely decisive and has a very assured eye. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't. Her creative staff get upset when she rejects something they find beautiful, but that of course occurs everywhere in the fashion world. Beauty (like all art) is highly subjective. What makes one person swoon makes another person wince.

    The film is not interested in the personal lives of its subjects. Wintour's daughter is interviewed briefly, but the overwhelming focus is on what goes on within the Vogue office. It's all about the work they do in the day, not their fuller lives as people.

    One intriguing absence in the film is any discussion of where magazine-publishing is going. Everyone else in the magazine world in 2007 was talking about the decline of print media and its replacement by the Web. But at Vogue no one seemed to know these discussions were going on. Or was Cutler simply not interested in this topic? Cutler and Wintour seem oddly oblivious to the real story of the day, which is, How will Vogue transition to the 21st century? Is it a woolly mammoth headed for extinction? A woolly mammoth with Prada sunglasses on is still a woolly mammoth. The fashion industry will survive of course, but will fashion magazines? Some discussion of this would have strengthened "The September Issue" and made it seem less clueless about which century we're in.

    Also odd is the question of why the film took two years to be released. Filming completed in the summer of 2007, and the film opened in New York in August of 2009. Presumably there were financial difficulties. I'm pleased that a distributor finally was found. It's surprising to me that it had to be micro-mini Roadside Attractions. But at least the film is being shown.

    This makes two quite good documentaries this summer about the fashion world. In addition to "The September Issue," there was "Valentino: The Last Emperor," a witty portrait of the personal life as well as the career of legendary Italian designer Valentino Garavani, who generally is known only by his first name.
  • fb796967648
    August 30, 2009
    fb796967648
    After several years of watching Project Runway I can now say it out loud: I don't get high fashion. I don't get it at all. But that doesn't keep me from being entertained by those larger-than-life people hard at work at it. And if VALENTINO was the deep exploration of it, thi... read mores breezy and completely delightful portrait of one mad issue of Vogue being put together is the candy colored companion piece I didn't know I was waiting for. Anna Wintour is as fascinating as you might imagine, but the real star of the film is her fashion director Gale Coddington and the incredibly complex relationship between the two of them as they gracefully spat their way towards getting the issue out. If that doesn't sound entertaining, it's because it's impossible to describe the dishy, catty joy of this film. I may not get it, but I sure enjoy trying!
  • u2acro
    October 14, 2009
    u2acro
    Ah, it's great to see the claws of Anna Wintour. She can't reign in the drama and haughtiness, even when she's not expressly directing it at anyone. A cold smirk, a blank stare, a slight eyeroll... these are the things that apparently make fashionistas both swoon over her and fea... read morer her.

    "The September Issue" is great viewing -- it's like Bravo on the big screen. You get the viewpoints of Wintour and her underlings as they put together the famed and collossal September issue of "Vogue" magazine and do other fashiony things. As an editor (uh, NOT at "Vogue"), I loved watching their process and comparing it to my own work.

    The best thing about the whole damn movie, though, is creative director Grace Coddington. She whips her long red hair around like nobody's business AND she stands up to and sasses Wintour when she needs it. No one else quite gives Wintour the smackdown when it's warranted, and believe me, it was warranted in many of the situations.
  • SunilJawahir
    March 23, 2010
    SunilJawahir
    Pretty interesting. Anna Wintour is kinda fabulous.

View All The September Issue Reviews

Critic Reviews

Liam Lacey
October 23, 2009
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

Grace, the movie implies, is the genius behind what Vogue really sells, which is romantic aspirational fantasies for women. Full Review

Tom Long
September 25, 2009
Tom Long, Detroit News

A mesmerizing study of the tension between commerce and creativity. Full Review

Roger Moore
September 23, 2009
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

Coddington, at least, gives us an appreciation of the talent seeing to it that the grandest fashion magazine of them all still sells the dream of glamour with style. Full Review

Justin Lowe
September 18, 2009
Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter

An insider's view of high fashion's ultimate tastemakers proves it's not just for aficionados.

Amy Biancolli
September 18, 2009
Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle

[Cutler] worms his way into subcultures without judgment or probing, preferring to let group dynamics speak for themselves. Full Review

Michael Phillips
September 15, 2009
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

It's kind of irresistible. Full Review

A.O. Scott
September 15, 2009
A.O. Scott, At the Movies

RJ Cutler had plenty of access, but it's pretty clear that from start to finish it was Anna Wintour who was in control of this movie. Full Review

Sheri Linden
September 11, 2009
Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

A slight, if often riveting, behind-the-scenes documentary. Full Review

Lisa Kennedy
September 11, 2009
Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

[A] wise, engaging frock-umentary. Full Review

Joy Tipping
September 11, 2009
Joy Tipping, Dallas Morning News

It's got everything one could hope for in a movie experience: drama, wit, stifled rage, unbridled glee, pouty adolescents wearing far too much makeup, massive egos and a heroine who is absolutely irre...

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