Rain or shine, day or night, Anna Wintour loves a pair of big dark glasses. The Vogue editor-in-chief, 69, wears them on the front row at fashion week - even while chatting with the Queen - at the Oscars, and at most public events, other than last year’s Met Gala, which she attended sans sunnies.
Speaking to CNN, Wintour explained why she likes to hide her eyes. “[Sunglasses are] incredibly useful because you avoid people knowing what you’re thinking about,” she said.
Wintour has been the editor-in-chief at Vogue since 1988, and her eyewear and smooth bob cut have barely altered in that time.
“They help me when I’m feeling a bit tired or sleepy,” she said, “and maybe they’ve just become a crutch and part of who I am.”
Wintour also discussed her success as editor of Vogue in a digital age. "If you go back to when I was a young girl growing up in Britain, and I went for my first job, it was considered a great thing if we reached an audience of 90,000 people with a monthly magazine,” Wintour said, “Now we have, I believe, 22 million followers on Instagram alone at Vogue U.S. So we are talking to men and women all over the world in so many different ways, in a way that we couldn’t possibly have imagined even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.”
And given the round-the-clock work that goes into running the world's most high profile fashion magazine, the shades also come in handy for hiding when she's under the weather. “I’ll be brutally frank" she said, "I have been unbelievably ill all week. And, plus, I just had eye surgery, so those are the real reasons I’m wearing them today."
