dark about the identity of this fabulous-looking fashionista, sporting Missoni, with the fringe over her eyes.
“When I took her on I had no idea who she was,” recalls Hocking, who, because Anna looked so young, thought she was about seventeen. “She said something about her father being a journalist, and as I can never remember anybody’s name, it didn’t connect with me that he was
the
Charles Wintour.” Hocking also wasn’t aware that it was Wintour, working behind the scenes, who got Anna in the door.
But she was satisfied that this new girl could work out. Anna struck her as quite reserved, had an extraordinary look, and, unlike other girls she’d recently interviewed, had neither asked nor cared about company benefits. She didn’t know at the time that Anna—unlike Hocking herself, who made most of her own clothes—had family money.
“We weren’t looking for anyone sensational,” Hocking continues, “just someone who would work well with other people and get on with it.”
Besides, the fashion department was a very small part of the magazine, which was more generalized in those days. The department took up a very small area at the end of the office, with a closet for clothing and other accoutrements. As Laura Pank, one of the editors, notes, “Fashion was kind of a bit that we had to tolerate. The editorial was much more important.”
And so Hocking hired Anna, who had even beaten out an applicant with more experience from British
Vogue
.
Years later, Anna said her start in the fashion world was virtually predestined. “I think being Charles Wintour’s daughter probably got me my first interview and my first job.” She also boasted that she had bluffed her way through the interview—something Hocking hadn’t caught—by claiming she could handle fashion shoots, though she had no prior fashion magazine experience. Well, she did have a little. Having lived with Stephen Bobroff, who had shot for
Queen
, and having modeled twice before, and having posed as a trendy bird in London’s hottest clubs since she was a teen as part of her nightlife world, Anna probably knew a bit more about what was required in a shoot than the next girl in line.
Modestly, she later asserted that she didn’t see a future for herself in the world of
Harpers & Queen
. “I just sort of fell into magazines,” she maintained. “So much of what happened to me has happened by chance. There was no master plan. . . . This was a time when the fashion magazines were widely regarded by one’s mothers as finishing schools for girls of a certain background and a certain name. One had fun there, but one dabbled in the business in anticipation of marriage and, all being well, a large house somewhere in the English countryside.”
But that’s not the way Jennifer Hocking viewed what she quickly saw as her “very clever, incredibly organized, so together, quietly driven, sometimes terrifying” new hire.
Anna’s name first appeared far down on the masthead as one of three fashion assistants in the March 1970 issue, whose cover featured “The Anne Bo-leyn face, a summer tanned image of Elizabethan beauty.”
She had landed on her feet her very first day on the job and never stopped running and never looked back to see whom she left in her dust.
The Wintour girl didn’t strike Hocking as a dilettante, as were some of the others on staff. From the beginning, she saw someone “driven, determined, and ambitious.” Anna’s coworkers endured her—some with awe, others with contempt, and still others with fear and alarm.
“She had this incredible brain, and I used to think it would be amazing to meet her when she was thirty-five, because she was too mature for her age,” observes Hocking. “She was
so
organized. She would make business appointments for lunch when the rest of us were sort of sitting around twiddling our thumbs. She was just
so
together. With most young people, it’s, ‘Oh, I forgot this, I forgot that.’
“When I took her on I had no idea who she was,” recalls Hocking, who, because Anna looked so young, thought she was about seventeen. “She said something about her father being a journalist, and as I can never remember anybody’s name, it didn’t connect with me that he was
the
Charles Wintour.” Hocking also wasn’t aware that it was Wintour, working behind the scenes, who got Anna in the door.
But she was satisfied that this new girl could work out. Anna struck her as quite reserved, had an extraordinary look, and, unlike other girls she’d recently interviewed, had neither asked nor cared about company benefits. She didn’t know at the time that Anna—unlike Hocking herself, who made most of her own clothes—had family money.
“We weren’t looking for anyone sensational,” Hocking continues, “just someone who would work well with other people and get on with it.”
Besides, the fashion department was a very small part of the magazine, which was more generalized in those days. The department took up a very small area at the end of the office, with a closet for clothing and other accoutrements. As Laura Pank, one of the editors, notes, “Fashion was kind of a bit that we had to tolerate. The editorial was much more important.”
And so Hocking hired Anna, who had even beaten out an applicant with more experience from British
Vogue
.
Years later, Anna said her start in the fashion world was virtually predestined. “I think being Charles Wintour’s daughter probably got me my first interview and my first job.” She also boasted that she had bluffed her way through the interview—something Hocking hadn’t caught—by claiming she could handle fashion shoots, though she had no prior fashion magazine experience. Well, she did have a little. Having lived with Stephen Bobroff, who had shot for
Queen
, and having modeled twice before, and having posed as a trendy bird in London’s hottest clubs since she was a teen as part of her nightlife world, Anna probably knew a bit more about what was required in a shoot than the next girl in line.
Modestly, she later asserted that she didn’t see a future for herself in the world of
Harpers & Queen
. “I just sort of fell into magazines,” she maintained. “So much of what happened to me has happened by chance. There was no master plan. . . . This was a time when the fashion magazines were widely regarded by one’s mothers as finishing schools for girls of a certain background and a certain name. One had fun there, but one dabbled in the business in anticipation of marriage and, all being well, a large house somewhere in the English countryside.”
But that’s not the way Jennifer Hocking viewed what she quickly saw as her “very clever, incredibly organized, so together, quietly driven, sometimes terrifying” new hire.
Anna’s name first appeared far down on the masthead as one of three fashion assistants in the March 1970 issue, whose cover featured “The Anne Bo-leyn face, a summer tanned image of Elizabethan beauty.”
She had landed on her feet her very first day on the job and never stopped running and never looked back to see whom she left in her dust.
The Wintour girl didn’t strike Hocking as a dilettante, as were some of the others on staff. From the beginning, she saw someone “driven, determined, and ambitious.” Anna’s coworkers endured her—some with awe, others with contempt, and still others with fear and alarm.
“She had this incredible brain, and I used to think it would be amazing to meet her when she was thirty-five, because she was too mature for her age,” observes Hocking. “She was
so
organized. She would make business appointments for lunch when the rest of us were sort of sitting around twiddling our thumbs. She was just
so
together. With most young people, it’s, ‘Oh, I forgot this, I forgot that.’
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