R. J. Cutler Quotes

I was ten years old when my first 'Vogue' cover sang me its siren call and dashed me against the treacherous rocks of fashion obsession.

Anna Wintour has guided me.

When you have a magazine like 'Vogue,' you know a lot of kids are going to follow your pictures.

I first thought about doing a project about Anna Wintour and 'Vogue' when I read an article in 'New York Magazine' about the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball, the annual fundraising gala that Anna oversees. It created such a fascinating portrait that I couldn't help but be compelled.

Anna Wintour doesn't deal with pictures; she is just doing PR and business, and she scares everybody.

By the time I came to the States, I really understood how a magazine works. I came to 'Vogue' as creative director, and three years later I went back to London to be editor in chief of British 'Vogue.'

'Vogue' has a history of picking up on various TV shows that reflect a moment in popular culture, whether it's putting Lena Dunham on the cover or Sarah Jessica Parker.

For eight months, from January to August of 2007, I filmed with Anna Wintour and her team at 'Vogue' as they created the September 2007 issue of the magazine.

The entertainment industry has an effect on social consciousness.

I'd like to say I'd like to be as big as a Gwen or a Madonna, but I think those days of achieving that level are over. The media is bringing everybody down.

Vogue Magazine does something really interesting here: They make it look like I know exactly what I'm doing. Because Vogue made it look like I knew exactly what I'm doing, stores from all over started calling.

I see The Gap ads as being a great example of how branding has changed. Those Gap campaigns are pop culture. They've been incredibly powerful. They have had the kind of effect on culture that a hit band has. Just look at The Gap's Khaki swing ads, which were music videos. They had this tremendous impact on the industry - suddenly everything started looking like Gap ads and it became difficult to know who was co-opting whom and who was creating culture.

Tamil people are generally considered very intelligent. But there, politics runs in a different way. Movie stars have a larger-than-life image in Tamil Nadu, and people vote for that image.

Anna Wintour is a very smart woman. She's a Scorpio, like me.

Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.

Movies don't necessarily change culture. I don't know if we know for sure if movies change culture but we know for sure that they reflect culture.

I never did that badly with women when I wasn't on telly, but it's a bit out of control now. Women try it on with me more than I'm comfortable with. It's strange, because I think I look like a troll wearing a woman's wig backwards.

Of course fashion is definitely playing a part.

It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies... I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

Why isn't Tilda Swinton on the covers of tons of magazines? Well, she's not that. It isn't her thing. But I don't know. I think that suddenly a time came when models, after the Linda Evangelista crowd, and Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington, when the models for me became a bit bland. But I think more than that, the culture changed. The movies, television, music, and all of those things - those people were more visual and therefore more interesting.

All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.

The stars I have worked with not only look good in my clothes, but they also embody a spirit of dedication and hard work that I relate to and admire.

People got extremely comfortable with being able to turn on their television and see MTV say, "This guy's hot you should buy this record."

Our experience is coloured through and through by books and plays and the cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves.

When Gwyneth Paltrow wore a dress of ours, that was probably our number one best seller besides when the lovely Mrs. [Michelle] Obama wore our dress.