badly written, repetitive piece. “You’ve used the word ‘empirical’ twenty-five times. You should fix it.” Neville respected her opinions.
He became a frequent dinner guest of Anna’s at Phillimore Gardens,where he saw the family dynamics up close and personal. Her parents were aware of their intimate relationship. Often after dinner the two adjourned to her basement flat for lovemaking. “Anna was given her privacy and her parents were discreet.” Unlike Piers Paul Read, Richard Neville felt that the permissive atmosphere at the Wintours’ was way cool.
But like so many others, Neville noted the chasm that existed between Charles and Nonie Wintour. “Like oil and water,” he recalls. “I never imagined them as a sort of fusion. Nonie was kind of very informed and alert, but I just think Charles was bored by it all. There was a certain deadness between them, emotionally. And that’s just at the table.”
At one dinner party, the talk centered on the legacy of colonialism in Latin America. Anna was bored to death. Among the guests was Charles’s much-admired Maureen Cleave, who had gone off staff at the
Evening Standard
and was just back from Peru with her husband. Also present was Anna’s sister, Nora, whom Neville described as “a dour and fervent Marxist, Marxist and very serious. She wanted to talk about Gronsky and Marx, and the labor movement in Chile, and Anna just wasn’t interested. Anna was pop oriented. Intellectually and physically, Anna and Nora were opposites.”
Involved with Neville and the psychedelic counterculture scene, Anna decided at her hairdresser friend Leslie Russell’s suggestion to experiment with her classic bob. “Around that time, we started to do a lot of crazy colors, like Elton John had pink hair and green hair. People were getting extraordinarily bright blue colors and greens and pinks,” says Russell, who also began cutting Neville’s hair. “Anna was always looking for new ideas and new fashions, and she had a really good eye for it. I gave her this sort of two-dimensional haircut, like two bobs in one. It was actually easier to use two different colors to get the same effect, but Anna kept her own color. She loved the cut, was always ready to have something new.”
The intimate part of Anna and Neville’s affair was short-lived, lasting less than a year, says Neville, who later told a confidant, “Anna and I, we were not the hottest thing in London. There was a moment of intensity, like an exploding firecracker, and then we became friends.”
In 1971, after a highly publicized investigation and trial, Neville and a few of his cohorts were convicted of publishing obscenity in
Oz
. He was sentenced to fifteen months in prison, spent some time behind bars, but his convictionwas quickly reversed on appeal. At one point John Lennon came to his aid, telling Anna’s father’s paper, “Yoko and I have proposed marriage to Richard Neville so he can’t be deported.” Throughout the case, the
Evening Standard
stood behind Neville, and Anna was active in rousing support for him. Their friendship continued for years.
nine
Making the Masthead
T he education of Anna Wintour as fashion magazine editor began with the dawn of the glitter, glam, and disco seventies at
Harper’s Bazaar
, once Britain’s premier couture monthly. It was in the process of becoming hipper by merging with a magazine called
Queen
, which had become
the
irreverent, witty, and trendy fashion must-read of swinging London.
With the deal in the works, the word had gone out: The combined magazine was looking for new hires, especially a fashion assistant, the lowest-paid job in the business. But Anna didn’t need or care about the paycheck. She was far more intrigued with being around hot fashion, cool people, and a hip environment.
In early January 1970, she arrived at the magazine’s offices for an interview with the editor, Jennifer Hocking, a former model who was a bit in the
He became a frequent dinner guest of Anna’s at Phillimore Gardens,where he saw the family dynamics up close and personal. Her parents were aware of their intimate relationship. Often after dinner the two adjourned to her basement flat for lovemaking. “Anna was given her privacy and her parents were discreet.” Unlike Piers Paul Read, Richard Neville felt that the permissive atmosphere at the Wintours’ was way cool.
But like so many others, Neville noted the chasm that existed between Charles and Nonie Wintour. “Like oil and water,” he recalls. “I never imagined them as a sort of fusion. Nonie was kind of very informed and alert, but I just think Charles was bored by it all. There was a certain deadness between them, emotionally. And that’s just at the table.”
At one dinner party, the talk centered on the legacy of colonialism in Latin America. Anna was bored to death. Among the guests was Charles’s much-admired Maureen Cleave, who had gone off staff at the
Evening Standard
and was just back from Peru with her husband. Also present was Anna’s sister, Nora, whom Neville described as “a dour and fervent Marxist, Marxist and very serious. She wanted to talk about Gronsky and Marx, and the labor movement in Chile, and Anna just wasn’t interested. Anna was pop oriented. Intellectually and physically, Anna and Nora were opposites.”
Involved with Neville and the psychedelic counterculture scene, Anna decided at her hairdresser friend Leslie Russell’s suggestion to experiment with her classic bob. “Around that time, we started to do a lot of crazy colors, like Elton John had pink hair and green hair. People were getting extraordinarily bright blue colors and greens and pinks,” says Russell, who also began cutting Neville’s hair. “Anna was always looking for new ideas and new fashions, and she had a really good eye for it. I gave her this sort of two-dimensional haircut, like two bobs in one. It was actually easier to use two different colors to get the same effect, but Anna kept her own color. She loved the cut, was always ready to have something new.”
The intimate part of Anna and Neville’s affair was short-lived, lasting less than a year, says Neville, who later told a confidant, “Anna and I, we were not the hottest thing in London. There was a moment of intensity, like an exploding firecracker, and then we became friends.”
In 1971, after a highly publicized investigation and trial, Neville and a few of his cohorts were convicted of publishing obscenity in
Oz
. He was sentenced to fifteen months in prison, spent some time behind bars, but his convictionwas quickly reversed on appeal. At one point John Lennon came to his aid, telling Anna’s father’s paper, “Yoko and I have proposed marriage to Richard Neville so he can’t be deported.” Throughout the case, the
Evening Standard
stood behind Neville, and Anna was active in rousing support for him. Their friendship continued for years.
nine
Making the Masthead
T he education of Anna Wintour as fashion magazine editor began with the dawn of the glitter, glam, and disco seventies at
Harper’s Bazaar
, once Britain’s premier couture monthly. It was in the process of becoming hipper by merging with a magazine called
Queen
, which had become
the
irreverent, witty, and trendy fashion must-read of swinging London.
With the deal in the works, the word had gone out: The combined magazine was looking for new hires, especially a fashion assistant, the lowest-paid job in the business. But Anna didn’t need or care about the paycheck. She was far more intrigued with being around hot fashion, cool people, and a hip environment.
In early January 1970, she arrived at the magazine’s offices for an interview with the editor, Jennifer Hocking, a former model who was a bit in the
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