The Vogue editor-in-chief is rumoured to be on the US president's shortlist for ambassador to France or the UK, and there's every reason to believe she would be up to the job
In the winter of 2008-09, with America reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Giorgio Armani contacted Anna Wintour for advice. With a huge new flagship store on Fifth Avenue due to open during the approaching New York fashion week, he was deliberating over how best to PR the launch. (One does not attempt any major event at NYFW without getting Wintour onside. Basically, if Anna's not coming, your party is a massive fail, however many skinny actors you can herd down the red carpet and however fancy the goody bag.) Would a lavish party look insensitive given the economic climate, Armani wondered? Would a luxurious but more intimate soiree be more appropriate?
I was there on the night Armani opened his Fifth Avenue store with a low-key cocktail event and gave a speech to an audience that included Leonardo DiCaprio and Alicia Keys, announcing that, in lieu of a grand party, he was donating $1m (£0.6m) to New York City public schools, to celebrate the new store in a way that benefited the city. Standing at the podium, he was flanked by mayor Michael Bloomberg and Wintour. The night was a huge success, with praise and goodwill lavished on the Italian designer. Caroline Kennedy, a fundraiser for the charity Fund for Public Schools, called Armani "an example to all of us that even in difficult times we must continue to look at the future for hope and inspiration and let our children know that we are determined to help them build a better world". A well-placed source told me that night, off the record, that Wintour had been key in steering the plan.
So you see, Wintour does have some experience of diplomacy.
Wintour as an American ambassador would undoubtedly raise eyebrows. Leaving aside sniffiness about the inherent unseriousness of a woman who works in the fashion industry (which I find rather irritating, funnily enough), her decision last year to run a glowing 3,000-word profile of Syria's Asma al-Assad in US Vogue puts a serious question mark against her political judgment. But Wintour is generally acknowledged as whipsmart and extremely hard-working. She is enormously charismatic, a born networker, and a formidable fundraiser, as shown by the impressive $500,000 she raised for Barack Obama's reelection campaign.
Recent occupants of the US ambassdor's residence in London have included a retired investment banker and a retired car dealership owner. Is a career as one of the biggest global players in an industry estimated to be worth $900bn to the world economy really so inferior and shallow by comparison?