‘The glasses are a prop’: Anna Wintour on her style and being told ‘no’

Anna Wintour walks into our interview with her trademark dark glasses firmly on.
I’m meeting the woman who has been editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine since 1988 at VOGUE: Inventing the Runway, the show dreamt up by Wintour about the history of the catwalk.
Our rendezvous is in a large underground space and we’re surrounded by three vast screens. It’s fairly dark inside but the sunglasses remain in place during our conversation.
I tentatively ask what they’re for. Are they a shield or for something more prosaic, short-sightedness perhaps?
“They help me see and they help me not see,” Wintour tells me, somewhat enigmatically. “They help me be seen and not be seen. They are a prop, I would say”.
The Lightroom in London uses digital projection and audio technology in a high-walled space to generate an immersive experience for visitors.
It has previously hosted a blockbuster David Hockney show and Tom Hanks’s exhibition on the history of space travel.
Now the exhibition space gives audiences a front-row seat at some of the most spectacular fashion shows in history, tapping into Vogue’s archive and contributor network.
Wintour admits that “for someone who goes to so many shows, you get a little, not jaded, but you get used to the experience”.
Since most visitors to the exhibition will not have had the chance to attend such events, she says they were keen to make sure it felt as though they were actually there.
As the reigning queen of the fashion world, Wintour has had a real front-row seat for decades – often on a delicate gold chair, the kind of furniture that is ubiquitous at the high end catwalk viewings where her invitation is always a dead cert.