Anna Wintour, Inspirer of Loyalty, Not-So-Secret Genius

It's the 25th anniversary of Anna Wintour's first arrival at Vogue, and the 20th of her ascension to the editorship. Nowadays many of us use and regard her as a representative symbol of the old guard, and certainly as a tyrannical employer. As an editor, she's treated as something of a one-trick pony, relying so strongly as she does on endless cover-testing for the magazine and use of the expected celebrity face plopped above a so-so gown, shot by an expected photographer. But two things go largely unmentioned: The often long tenures of the higher-level staff and their strength as makers of an editorial product.