Three former aides to Anna Wintour have lifted the veil on life in the Vogue The editor’s office was really nice, and some elements are straight out of the movie, while other details are pretty boring.
Sache Taylor, Sammi Tapper and Marley Marius, who each worked in Wintour’s office for one to four years, from 2017 to October 2025, spoke with Voguethe new head of editorial content Chloé Malle for the brand The stint with Vogue podcast.
The timing is no coincidence, The devil wears Prada 2 is on the way, and Wintour has already posed for the cover of her own magazine alongside Meryl Streep.
The interview process alone sets the tone.
Candidates are advised not to wear black. Wintour loves the color and said it’s the one thing she would never wear head to toe.
And don’t expect to be asked about your strengths and weaknesses. “She doesn’t want a robot,” Marius said, remembering the advice he had been given before. “She wants someone with a personality.”
Once hired, the learning curve is steep.
Marius described inheriting a 21-page manual passed down from assistant to assistant, a sacred text covering everything about the running of the office.
The day starts early. Wintour herself wakes up between 4 and 5:30 a.m. on workdays, plays tennis, reads the news and arrives at the office around 8 a.m., where an assistant has already sorted out her coffee, breakfast and schedule.
All of her emails and documents, including every response, are printed for her to review. Her daily to-do list is on an iPad.
When it comes to shoes, a very present theme in the film, the reality is more practical than glamorous.
Marius only lasted two weeks in heels before switching to flats.
“Things move at a certain pace and sometimes that means running around a bit,” she explains. “When she asks for someone, she wants that person real quick.”
Tapper spent weeks in pumps that gave her blisters before quietly removing them, although she still wore heels most of the time. The unwritten rule, she said, was simple: no jeans, no sneakers.
Taylor, who spent four years as an assistant and now plans the Met Gala Vogue‘s special events director, recalls having to corral slow-moving editors into meetings with Wintour, using a two-assistant system, one on the landline, the other physically hovering at the editor’s desk.
“I would hover until they were ready, if I hovered they were usually faster,” she said.
She also discovered an unexpected fitness benefit. “I loved running because I was so busy I could never exercise. So I would just run to the office.”
Then there’s the to-go bag, a boat and extra-large LLBean tote filled each night with items awaiting Wintour’s edits, notes and comments.
“She never wants anyone waiting for her to get feedback,” Tapper said. The infamous “book,” the printed mannequin of the magazine that features heavily in the film, goes in this bag every night and returns the next morning covered in Post-It notes written in what Taylor described as “doctor’s handwriting” that “takes a village” to decode.
“I would allow myself to ask him once a week [what one of her notes said]”, she remembers.
