A 'Front Row' view of a fashionable life

Jerry Oppenheimer is no hagiographer. His unauthorized portraits -- of such celebrities as Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and Jerry Seinfeld -- don't exactly cast a flattering light. His biographies are filled with juicy, scandalous tidbits, the stuff of which gossip is made. It's no wonder that many of his sources are the anonymous and the disgruntled. If some of the revelations he uncovers seem a bit familiar, well, that doesn't make them any less titillating.

Schadenfreude enthusiasts will enjoy Oppenheimer's latest, "Front Row," which offers Anna Wintour in extreme close-up. (It isn't a pretty picture.) If you don't know that Wintour is the British editor of Vogue magazine, chances are you won't care about this book. If you do know who Wintour is, you might find her fascinating. After all, she is incredibly glamorous, influential and enigmatic, and a central figure in the fashion world.

You might even have read Lauren Weisberger's dishy roman a clef, "The Devil Wears Prada." The novel followed the travails of Andrea Sachs, an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the powerful, enigmatic, cruel British editor of a fashion magazine. Weisberger -- who once worked as Wintour's assistant at Vogue -- cleverly avoided a potential lawsuit by including a cameo character named Anna Wintour, which meant that Wintour couldn't possibly be the real-life inspiration for Miranda Priestly. (Wink, wink.)

In "Front Row," Oppenheimer recounts Wintour's public response to Weisberger's betrayal ("I am looking forward to reading the book") and her private fury ("She was spitting fire," an unnamed Vogue staffer is quoted as saying). Anyone overheard by Wintour mentioning Weisberger's name around the office was subject to a "career beheading," he writes.

So who is this woman -- hated and feared by some, admired by others, sometimes referred to as "Nuclear Wintour"? In "Front Row," she is fiercely competitive, aloof, exacting -- and, yes, sort of scary.

Yet Oppenheimer does not minimize Wintour's considerable achievements. Vogue is considered the bible of the $100-billion-plus fashion industry, and is by far more influential than any other fashion magazine. She can make or break fashion careers; in her 25 years at Vogue, she has done plenty of anointing and dethroning. Designers such as Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen and Vera Wang were Wintour discoveries, and they might be nowhere without her support.