Lundy's Restaurant

Lundy's Restaurant, also known as Lundy Brothers Restaurant, was an American seafood restaurant in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, along the bay of the same name. Lundy's was founded in 1926 by Irving Lundy as a restaurant on the waterfront of Sheepshead Bay; five years later, the original building was condemned to make way for a redevelopment of the bay. The present building opened in 1934 or 1935, and closed in 1979. Another restaurant operated in the Lundy's building from 1996 to early 2007, after which the building was converted into a shopping center.

Lundy's, the last of the many seafood restaurants that once lined Sheepshead Bay, was well known for its cuisine and was among the largest restaurants in the United States upon its completion, with between 2,400 and 2,800 seats. At its peak, Lundy's served a million patrons annually.

The building, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an official city landmark, was designed by architects Bloch & Hesse in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. The building's distinguishing features include its multiple tiers of red-tile roofs, its leadlight windows, and decorative ironwork, a style of architecture that is used on few other buildings in the New York metropolitan area.

## History

### Founding

Lundy's was founded by Sheepshead Bay native Frederick William Irving Lundy (c. 1895 – 1977; popularly known as "Irving"). Irving Lundy was the oldest of seven; his father Fred was a prominent figure in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. Several of Irving's male relatives, including his father, operated the successful Lundy Brothers fish market, which by the early 1880s sold fish, clams, and oysters wholesale at their shops in Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay. According to a 1902 biography of the Lundys, they were also selling seafood in Manhattan Beach by then.

At the turn of the 20th century, Irving Lundy started a business selling clams out of a pushcart. By 1907, he had opened a clam bar built on stilts over Sheepshead Bay. By the time he was 16, Lundy claimed to be employing several workers. Then, during World War I, he joined the United States Navy. Irving Lundy's brothers Clayton and Stanley died in January 1920 in a boating accident while tending the family's clam beds in Jamaica Bay.

In 1923 Irving would buy the pier for the original restaurant, located between East 21st Street and Ocean Avenue. The site had been previously operated by Henrietta Sheirr, who had operated the pier as a restaurant since 1906, initially operating with two tables; at the time, only one other seafood restaurant existed in the area. Sheirr's eatery had expanded to accommodate 235 patrons by the time Lundy purchased the pier. In 1926, Lundy closed the pier in lieu of operating the restaurant. The restaurant was decorated with the letters "F.W.I.L.," standing for "Frederick William Irving Lundy". Irving's surviving brother Allen and their three sisters would manage the restaurant. The same year, Irving Lundy was kidnapped and the restaurant was burglarized in an armed robbery, though Irving escaped relatively unharmed.

### Relocation

#### Construction

With the development of the Sheepshead Bay community into a residential neighborhood, there were efforts to improve the facilities on the waterfront. The channel of the Sheepshead Bay waterway was dredged by 1916 to allow fishing boats to dock there, and in 1922 the New York City Dock Commission planned to dredge the bays further, build bulkheads on the shore, and widen Emmons Avenue on the waterfront from 80 to 120 feet (24 to 37 m). As part of the project, 25 piers would be built on the south side of Emmons Avenue, while 26 buildings would be built on the north side. This would make Sheepshead Bay into what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as a "modern Venice". Since the Sheepshead Bay development would entail the destruction of the original Lundy's location, Irving Lundy decided to rebuild his restaurant at 1901 Emmons Avenue, on the road's northern sidewalk, at the site of the Bayside Hotel and Casino. Lundy commissioned architects Ben Bloch and Walter Hesse to design the new building. By March 1932, his attorney said that "Lundy's would establish a \$600,000 restaurant on the north side of Emmons Avenue as soon as the razing of the waterfront structures gets underway."

In 1931, the city condemned several buildings on the bay shore, including the original Lundy's, to widen Emmons Avenue. The Great Depression delayed further progress, as these buildings would not be destroyed until mid-1934, and construction started on new buildings on Emmons Avenue's northern sidewalk. To avoid excessive disruption to normal business, Lundy waited until the last minute to close his original restaurant. A contemporary account stated that the relocation was timed such that when the new building was opened just in time for "the shucking of the last clam in the old place." Demolition was underway by April 1934. Herb Shalat, who became a partner at Bloch & Hesse several decades later, said that "Bloch and Hesse and staff would work at all hours and bring complete or even incomplete design drawings and details to the site each morning during the building process supervised by Walter Hesse, Piero Ghiani [an architect with Bloch & Hesse] and Irving Lundy." Lundy retained Bloch & Hesse for his other Sheepshead Bay projects through the 1970s.

#### 1930s to 1960s

The new building opened in 1934 or 1935. In 1935, shortly after Lundy's opened, the federal government threatened to seize the restaurant because Irving Lundy had not paid taxes on liquor that he stored in the restaurant. After a federal raid and a brief closure in June 1935, a judge sympathetic to Lundy ordered an injunction against the federal government's proposal to dismantle the bar at Lundy's. That October, Lundy agreed to pay back taxes. In 1937, part of the ceiling collapsed, injuring five diners. Simultaneously, Frederick Lundy was seeking \$853,000 in compensation from the New York City government for the acquisition of the original building. A state court ruled in 1939 that Lundy was only entitled to \$253,000 in damages.

With the success of Lundy's Restaurant, Irving Lundy was able to buy waterfront real estate along Sheepshead Bay. In some cases, he bought the enterprises of rival restaurateurs. At one point, his holdings included all of the 70 waterfront properties on Emmons Avenue from East 19th to East 29th Streets. Lundy never resold his properties, but he did lease them to businesspeople that he liked. As a result, much of the north side of Emmons Avenue remained undeveloped through the early 1960s, even as apartment houses were developed in the rest of Sheepshead Bay. Lundy never married and became a recluse in his later life. Because of his reclusive behavior and his wealth, Lundy became known as the "Howard Hughes of Brooklyn". Despite his infrequent public appearances, Irving Lundy managed the restaurant with what one author called "an iron hand", which may have contributed to the waiters' dour expressions.

Lundy constructed the one-story Teresa Brewer Room along Ocean Avenue was constructed in 1945, naming it after the pop singer whom his nephew had married. Lundy added air conditioning to the restaurant around this time. The first labor strike in Lundy's history occurred in July 1946 when waiters walked out due to union disagreements; the strike lasted for most of that month. In 1947, Walter Hesse enclosed the patios on the second floor.

A larger strike started in July 1957, when 75 employees walked out during a dispute over wages; another 200 employees walked out soon afterward. Irving Lundy said that he would permanently shutter the restaurant if the waiters did not stop striking, claiming that he had lost control over his waiters. At the time, the restaurant served 2,000 patrons on an average weekday, which increased to 10,000 on Sundays and 15,000 during holidays. A few days after the strike started, he officially announced that Lundy's would "never reopen" due to the strike. Despite a report in September 1957 that Lundy's would reopen imminently after personnel changes, much of the restaurant except for the clam bar remained closed until a labor agreement was reached that December. The restaurant was briefly closed again in 1968 due to a seafood shortage.

#### Decline and first closure

By the 1970s, Lundy's was facing numerous problems, including two armed robberies in 1972 and November 1974; after a third attempted robbery in December 1974, one of the restaurant's managers got into a shoot-out with policemen after assuming that they were robbers. The restaurant was temporarily closed following an unfavorable health-inspection report in 1973, and it suffered after two of the Lundy siblings were murdered in 1975. In the years before Irving Lundy's death in September 1977, he had become increasingly reclusive, refusing even to talk to the police about the killings of his siblings. A fire damaged Lundy's that same November.

After Irving Lundy's death, his \$25 million estate was distributed among a niece and three nephews. Under subsequent management, Lundy's Restaurant started to lose money, making it financially unsustainable. Changes were also occurring in the surrounding community; while Sheepshead Bay did not undergo the white flight and high crime that afflicted other New York City neighborhoods, the waterfront economy was dependent on the success of Lundy's. The last surviving Lundy siblings were unable to resolve their disputes, and officials discovered in 1979 that numerous people, including Irving Lundy's longtime chauffeur, had embezzled \$11 million from the restaurant. Lundy's closed in October 1979, with a sign stating that Lundy's was "Closed for Renovations".

### Abandonment

The Lundy's Restaurant building was sold to investment company Litas Group in 1981 for about \$11 million. The new owners wished to build a high-rise residential development with condominiums, a nightclub, a hotel, and specialty shops on the nearly 14-acre (5.7 ha) site. The building soon became dilapidated and filled with graffiti, and other stores in Sheepshead Bay had closed in turn due to a general decline in visitors. The New York Times wrote that, even though local officials did not consider the neighborhood to be blighted, "the deteriorating wooden docks and the vacancy of Lundy's Restaurant on Emmons Avenue, a local landmark, have kept the area from attracting the number of visitors it once did". The city government had proposed converting the site to a museum, stores, and 63 condominiums in 1987 but was unsuccessful.

As early as 1986, there had been proposals to preserve the building's exterior as a city landmark, protecting it from demolition. The Sheepshead Bay Beautification Group's co-director Peter Romeo, who thought that Lundy' s abandonment affected economic development along Sheepshead Bay, started lobbying for Lundy's to be restored. Romeo began looking for developers to purchase, maintain, and restore the building. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building an official city landmark on March 3, 1992. The Seaside Restaurant Development Corporation, which owned the building, supported landmark designation. Immediately after the landmark designation, the owner started looking for \$10 million to restore the building. At that point, the restaurant's reopening had been proposed unsuccessfully at least 12 times. With permission from the restaurant's owner, Romeo covered the graffiti on the facade with more than three dozen murals in 1993. The New York City Council approved the landmark designation that June.

### Use as shopping plaza

#### Initial stores and second restaurant

Donald Lentnek and Steve Pappas of Lundy's Management Corporation leased the restaurant building for 49 years from the owner, Sheepshead Bay Restaurant Associates, in 1994 and began renovating it that June. Lundy's Management Corporation offered to renovate a nearby vacant lot into a public park in exchange for permission to operate a 100-space parking lot next to Lundy's. The firm began converting the Lundy's building into a small shopping center, with two restaurants on Emmons Avenue, including a scaled-down revival of Lundy's, and up to 50 stores inside. Tam Restaurant Group (headed by restaurateurs Frank and Jeanne Cretella, who also managed the Boathouse Cafe at Loeb Boathouse in Central Park) agreed to operate the scaled-down Lundy's in January 1995. Frank Cretella said he had leased the restaurant because, "whenever I talked about restaurants in Brooklyn, someone said, 'Lundy's.'" Niemitz Design Group was hired to renovate the restaurant.

Tam reopened the second Lundy's on December 6, 1995. The second iteration of Lundy's only occupied about half of the space taken up by the original eatery. The opening of the new Lundy's location spurred a wave of development on Emmons Avenue. By March 1996, property owners reported that real estate prices had doubled and that vacant apartments were being occupied. Formerly vacant lots were being developed and new restaurants and other businesses were being opened along Emmons Avenue, including two shopping plazas and a sports bar. Lundy's itself saw waiting lists of up to one month for weekend reservations, and many people called to ask if the restaurant had reopened. Despite its relative remoteness (it was nearly 10 miles from Manhattan and not easily accessible by subway or taxi), Lundy's was popular, with patrons coming from as far as eastern Long Island. The Times later wrote that the Cretellas had "helped revive Lundy's". By 1998 there was also a Japanese restaurant at the site of the original Lundy's, while the retail space was being converted into office space. The unused space later became Lundy's Landing Shopping Plaza, though the shopping space was initially unsuccessful.

Tam had planned to expand Lundy's into a brand with dozens of locations across the U.S., but this was canceled after the company began to experience financial issues in late 2000. Tam opened a branch location in 2001, at 205 West 50th Street near Manhattan's Times Square, which lasted only a short time. Lundy's temporarily closed in May 2003 after Tam failed to pay taxes, but it reopened soon afterward when Tam filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. By the next year, Tam's president Tony Golio said that "business is good". A family-owned business named The Players Club, headed by restaurateur Afrodite Dimitroulakos, acquired Lundy's from Tam in December 2004. The Dimitroulakos family expanded the restaurant's menu and added a sushi bar. Lundy's again closed in January 2007; a state judge had ordered the closure of the restaurant because the Demetroulakos family had filed for bankruptcy and had not paid rent in several months.

#### Late 2000s to present

After the second Lundy's closed, Lentnek sought to lease out its space. The former space of the second Lundy's was renovated and incorporated into Lundy's Landing Shopping Plaza, hosting several restaurants and businesses. Neighborhood residents felt that the new occupants of the Lundy's location, the Russian-themed Cherry Hill Gourmet Market, were radically altering the space. In particular, residents objected when David Isaev, who operated the market, removed lettering from the "Lundy's" sign above the entrance. The city government ordered Isaev to stop renovating the space in late 2008 after finding that the market violated local zoning ordinances, since Lundy's fell within a zoning district that prohibited non-maritime uses. Work resumed after Isaev submitted revised plans for the market, but city inspectors again issued a stop-work order in April 2009, since the market still violated the local zoning ordinance. In total, the city issued 46 stop-work orders for the project; Isaev said of the controversy: "I was in war in Israel and saw nothing like this." The renovation of the market ultimately cost \$7 million.

When Cherry Hill Gourmet Market opened in May 2009, city inspectors promptly fined Isaev for violating zoning ordinances. At the time, the remaining space was occupied by Turkish and Japanese restaurants. Despite the controversies over the renovations, the market was popular, and Crain's New York Business said "the market has helped revive a local landmark". After Isaev agreed to restore the sign above the building's entrance, the LPC waived the zoning-code violations in August 2011. Isaev asked the city to rezone the Lundy's site later the same year. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, the waters of Sheepshead Bay overflowed, flooding the building. The front of Masal's Cafe looking out on Sheepshead Bay at Lundy's Landing Shopping Plaza shows the high height of the water level entering the Lundy's structure at the peak of Hurricane Sandy. In 2015, a seafood restaurant named Cipura moved into the western side of the former Lundy's building.

After one of the building's co-owners, Dimitrios Kaloidis, died in 2019, his estate retained 25 percent of the shares in the building, which was valued at \$11 million. His brother George Kaloidis, another co-owner, sued Dimitrios's estate in 2021 in an attempt to force the estate to sell the shares.

## Architecture

The Lundy's restaurant building was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by Bloch & Hesse. The architects had to make the building large enough to be appealing to patrons while also blending in with the seaside-resort and "modern Venice" designs of Sheepshead Bay. The entire city block occupied by Lundy's measured 250 feet (76 m) on its southern side (along Emmons Avenue) and 200 feet (61 m) along its western and eastern sides (along East 19th Street and Ocean Avenue, respectively). The structure has a mostly rectangular footprint, except at its northwestern corner, where it incorporates part of the 2+1⁄2-story Bayside Hotel on East 19th Street.

Lundy's contained numerous spaces including indoor and outdoor dining, clam and liquor bars, kitchens, storage, a salesmen's waiting room, restrooms, offices, and a staff lounge. The former Bayside Hotel contained the offices, lounge, waiting rooms, and storage, while the one-story wing on Ocean Avenue contained the bars.

### Main building

The primary structure comprising Lundy's is a two-story Spanish Colonial Revival structure, newly built by Bloch & Hesse. Its facade contained large windows that could be opened to let in air; there was no air conditioning at the time of the restaurant's construction, and the windows also provided views of the bay. Specific elements in the Spanish Colonial Revival style included its stucco walls, sloping mission-tiled roofs, an arcade on the second story, a large chimney, tiled gateways, ornate entrance pavilions, and detailing such as wooden lintels and grills at each of the entrances along Emmons Avenue. At the time of the building's construction, the Mediterranean style was commonly used at seaside resorts, so the use of the Spanish Colonial Revival style at Lundy's would have made it seem like a seaside resort.

The southern facade along Emmons Avenue serves as the main facade for the building. Along that side, there is an enclosed second story that is slightly set back from the first story below. The windows on both floors are composed of large casement windows, designed at a time where air-conditioning was nonexistent. The Emmons Avenue facade contains twenty-one bays and two pavilions with hip roofs; the ground-floor bays are separated by pilasters. The entrance bays originally contained wood-and-glass doors with seafood-themed carvings, as well as glass fanlights that contained depictions of seahorses and crabs. Raised lettering with the words f.w.i.l. lundy bros is located above the entrance bays. The other bays contain projecting stone window sills.

The second story has rectangular window openings that are wider and shorter than the corresponding windows on the ground floor, as well as groups of three ocular window openings above each of the entrance pavilions. The rectangular windows are composed of three vertical sections: a decorated center section and transparent top and bottom sections. The second floor's enclosed porches are covered by a red corrugated sheet metal roof. The portion of the second story above the entrance pavilions is also enclosed.

The northern or rear facade contains two sections: a kitchen wing on the western side (adjacent to the Bayside Hotel annex on the northwestern corner of the building), and a dining room wing on the eastern side. The ground floor of the kitchen wing contained the kitchens and included four long, horizontal bays for window openings, while the second floor was an extension of the dining area there, with stucco walls and casement windows. On the dining room wing, there are two pavilions with ocular windows extending from the second floor, between which is an enclosed porch with casement windows.

### Ancillary structures

The Bayside Hotel was incorporated onto the western portion of the building. In 1934 it was redesigned with a stucco facade and Spanish Colonial Revival elements to maintain a continuous design with the new structure. The former hotel is physically separated from the main building by a private alley. At ground level, the western facade of the structure (facing East 19th Street) is composed of four bays with a doorway at the southernmost bay. The second and third levels contain six windows each: two windows that correspond to the southernmost ground-level bay, and four corresponding to the remaining three bays. In the renovation, the hotel structure's original windows were expanded, and on the back facade, an exterior stairway was built to provide access to the second floor. When the original restaurant was in operation, Lundy lived in the old hotel with his significant other, Henry Linker.

The Ocean Avenue side of the restaurant was a separate one-story wing that housed the liquor and clam bars, and was expanded to two stories in 1947. The Ocean Avenue facade has eight bays. Both of the end bays contain entrance pavilions with gable roofs and arched entrances. The six center bays are simpler in design, similar to those on the Emmons Avenue side, though the southernmost of these intermediate bays also contains a doorway. The second story design is similar to that of the second-story porches along Emmons Avenue.

In 1945, the one-story Teresa Brewer Room was erected on the Ocean Avenue side of the building. The room is a one-story log-and-stucco-faced frame structure, with a mosaic war memorial facing Ocean Avenue.

## Cuisine

Lundy's menu included several food choices. According to The Village Voice, "Favorite dishes included raw clams on the half shell, small buttered biscuits, tomato salads, corn on the cob, shore dinner, Manhattan clam chowder, and huckleberry pie served with Breyers ice cream." Other popular menu items included lobster, oyster, shrimp, fresh fish, chicken, steak, and ice cream. Many diners reportedly came solely for the small buttered biscuits, which became a staple of Lundy's. Another popular dish was the "shore dinner", a dish that offered shrimp, steamed clams, potatoes, vegetables, a crab or oyster cocktail, halves of a lobster and a chicken, coffee, and dessert, which cost US\$5 immediately after World War II ().

The revived version of Lundy's had a contemporary menu, which included both traditional seafood and newer Italian food, meat, and poultry. The new restaurant included a dozen different varieties of lobsters, which were stored in a 1,500-U.S.-gallon (5,700 L) holding tank until just before the guest was about to eat it. Guests were allowed to take the identification tag on the lobster as a souvenir. The Brooklyn-born chef Neil Kleinberg curated the rest of the menu, which included clam chowder, fried shrimp, and three tiers of shore dinners. Under Kleinberg's management, all of the food was baked on the premises, and even included a wood-fired oven for baking pizza.

## Service

Lundy's in its heyday was reported to be one of the largest restaurants in the United States. According to various reports, it seated 2,400, 2,800, or 3,000 patrons. Half of the seats were on the ground floor and the other half were on the second floor. The 1996 version seated 700–800. According to a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission report, on a regular weekday Lundy's could seat 2,000 patrons, and on a typical Saturday, it could accommodate 10,000 customers. On particularly busy days such as Mother's Day, over 15,000 people could be served at Lundy's. However, the fifth edition of the AIA Guide to New York City states that on busy days, Lundy's only served up to 5,000 meals a day.

Most of the waiters were African-American, due to Irving Lundy's insistence on hiring African Americans to induce a "southern" feeling. This contrasted with the surrounding neighborhoods, which were largely European-American. In the mid-1950s Lundy's employed up to 385 staff, including cooks, bar staff, and waitstaff. Accounts provided by waiters demonstrated a hectic workplace; waitstaff often worked 12-to-14-hour shifts, and Irving Lundy was known to fire staff for the smallest infractions.

Heyday dining at Lundy's was different than from most other restaurants. The restaurant did not provide hosts for seating and reservations were not taken. Arriving diners would spread out throughout the expanse to search for empty or about-to-be-vacated tables, which sometimes resulted in arguments between patrons. Other unusual rituals of Lundy's included the "lobster bibs" which Lundy had invented for diners to wear, and at the end of each meal, diners were given a bowl of water with which to rinse their fingers.

## Reception

Food critic Mimi Sheraton wrote that her favorite dishes included the "Huckleberry pie (not blueberry), biscuits and Manhattan clam chowder". Columnist James Brady stated that he remembered "being taken by my father to Lundy's on a Sunday morning after church when he would stand at the clam bar and eat a dozen clams or oysters and I nibbled those little crackers they called Oysterettes." Playwright Wendy Wasserstein said of Mother's Day peak periods in the mid-1950s: "Waiters shoved by with plates piled high with steamers and lobster tails and my brother and I tossed hot biscuits."

Raymond Sokolov of The New York Times wrote in 1971 that the restaurant building was "a stucco colossus". Speaking of the food itself, Sokolov wrote that "the shore dinner only costs \$8 and in crudes soup, plus choice of clam, oyster, shrimp or crabmeat cocktails, steamers, a half broiled lobster and a half broiled chicken, potatoes, vegetables, ice cream or pie and coffee, tea or milk. Every item on that list, except the pies, was a simple but honest success." Author Elliot Willensky described Lundy's in the first edition of the AIA Guide to New York City as being "big, brash, noisy, crowded .... [and] a special treat for anyone in New York." After Irving Lundy died, in 1978 Stan Ginsberg of New York magazine wrote that Lundy's was "the most famous and most popular restaurant on the bay", praising its ambiance with "movie-set Moorish with tables and chairs".

## See also

- List of restaurants in New York City
- List of seafood restaurants
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Brooklyn

Former seafood restaurant in Brooklyn, New York

2007 disestablishments in New York (state)

Defunct seafood restaurants in New York (state)

Seafood restaurants in the United States


Anna Wintour

Dame Anna Wintour (/ˈwɪntər/ ; born 3 November 1949) is a British and American media executive based in New York City who has served as Editor-in-Chief of Vogue since 1988. Wintour has also served as Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020, overseeing all Condé Nast magazines worldwide, and concurrently serves as the Artistic Director of Condé Nast and the Global Editorial Director of Vogue. With her trademark pageboy bob haircut and dark sunglasses, Wintour is regarded as the most powerful woman in publishing and has become an important figure in much of the fashion world. Wintour is praised for her skill in identifying emerging fashion trends, but her reportedly aloof and demanding personality has earned her the nickname "Nuclear Wintour".

Her father, Charles Wintour, Editor of the London Evening Standard (1959–1976), consulted with her on how to make the newspaper relevant to the youth of the era. She became interested in fashion as a teenager and her career in fashion journalism began at two British magazines. Later, she moved to the United States, with stints at New York and House & Garden. She returned to London and was the Editor of British Vogue between 1985 and 1987. A year later, she assumed control of the franchise's magazine in New York, reviving what many saw as a stagnating publication. Her use of the magazine to shape the fashion industry has been the subject of debate within it. Animal rights activists have attacked her for promoting fur, while other critics have charged her with using the magazine to promote elitist and unattainable views of femininity and beauty.

A former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, wrote the 2003 bestselling roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada, later made into a successful 2006 film starring Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a fashion editor, believed to be based on Wintour. In 2009, Wintour was the focus of a documentary film, R. J. Cutler's The September Issue.

## Early life and family

Anna Wintour was born in Hampstead, London, to Charles Wintour (1917–1999), editor of the Evening Standard, and Eleanor "Nonie" Trego Baker (1917–1995), an American, the daughter of a Harvard Law School professor. Her parents were married in 1940 and divorced in 1979. Wintour was named after her maternal grandmother, Anna Baker (née Gilkyson), a merchant's daughter from Pennsylvania. Audrey Slaughter, a magazine editor who founded publications such as Honey and Petticoat, is her stepmother.

Wintour's grandfather was Major-General Fitzgerald Wintour, a British military officer and descendant of Prime Minister George Grenville. Through her paternal grandmother, Alice Jane Blanche Foster, Wintour is a great-great-great-granddaughter of the late-18th-century novelist Lady Elizabeth Foster (later the Duchess of Devonshire) and her first husband, the Irish politician John Thomas Foster. Her great-great-great-great-grandfather was Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, who served as the Anglican Bishop of Derry. Sir Augustus Vere Foster, 4th Baronet, the last Baronet of that name, was a granduncle of Wintour's. She is a niece of Cordelia James, Baroness James of Rusholme (daughter of Fitzgerald Wintour).

She had four siblings. Her older brother, Gerald, died in a traffic accident as a child. One of her younger brothers, Patrick, is also a journalist, currently diplomatic editor of The Guardian. James and Nora Wintour have worked in London local government and for international non-governmental organisations, respectively.

In her youth, Wintour was educated at the independent North London Collegiate School, where she frequently rebelled against the dress code by taking up the hemlines of her skirts. At the age of 14, she began wearing her hair in a bob. She developed an interest in fashion as a regular viewer of Cathy McGowan on Ready Steady Go!, and from the issues of Seventeen which her grandmother sent from the United States. "Growing up in London in the '60s, you'd have to have had Irving Penn's sack over your head not to know something extraordinary was happening in fashion", she recalled. Her father regularly consulted her when he was considering ideas for increasing readership in the youth market.

## Career

### From fashion to journalism

"I think my father really decided for me that I should work in fashion", she recalled in The September Issue. He arranged for his daughter's first job, at the influential Biba boutique, when she was 15. The next year, she left North London Collegiate and began a training program at Harrods. At her parents' behest, she also took fashion classes at a nearby school. Soon she gave them up, saying, "You either know fashion or you don't." Another older boyfriend, Richard Neville, gave her her first experience of magazine production at his popular and controversial Oz.

In 1970, when Harper's Bazaar UK merged with Queen to become Harper's & Queen, Wintour was hired as one of its first editorial assistants, beginning her career in fashion journalism. She told her co-workers that she wanted to edit Vogue. While there, she discovered model Annabel Hodin, a former North London classmate. Her connections helped her secure locations for innovative shoots by Helmut Newton, Jim Lee and other trend-setting photographers. One recreated the works of Renoir and Manet using models in go-go boots. After chronic disagreements with her rival, Min Hogg, she quit and moved to New York with her boyfriend, freelance journalist Jon Bradshaw.

### New York City

In her new home, she became a junior fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar in New York City in 1975. Wintour's innovative shoots led editor Tony Mazzola to fire her after nine months. She was reportedly introduced to Bob Marley by one of Bradshaw's friends, and disappeared with him for a week; in a 2017 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, she said she had never actually met the reggae legend, but certainly would have "hooked up" with him if she had. A few months later, Bradshaw helped her get her first position as a fashion editor, at Viva, a women's adult magazine started by Kathy Keeton, then wife of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. She has rarely discussed working there, due to that connection. This was the first job at which she was able to hire a personal assistant, which began her reputation as a demanding and difficult boss.

In late 1978, Guccione shut down the unprofitable magazine. Wintour decided to take some time off from work. She broke up with Bradshaw and began a relationship with French record producer Michel Esteban, for two years dividing her time with him between Paris and New York. She returned to work in 1980, succeeding Elsa Klensch as fashion editor for a new women's magazine named Savvy. It sought to appeal to career-conscious professional women who spent their own money, the readers Wintour would later target at Vogue.

The following year, she became fashion editor of New York. There, the fashion spreads and photo shoots she had been putting together for years finally began attracting attention. Editor Edward Kosner sometimes bent very strict rules for her and let her work on other sections of the magazine. She learned through her work on a cover involving Rachel Ward how effectively celebrity covers sold copies. "Anna saw the celebrity thing coming before everyone else did", Grace Coddington said three decades later. A former colleague arranged for an interview with Vogue editor Grace Mirabella that ended when Wintour told Mirabella she wanted her job.

### Condé Nast

She went to work at Vogue when Alex Liberman, who was then the editorial director for Condé Nast and publisher of Vogue, talked to Wintour about a position there in 1983. She eventually accepted after a bidding war that doubled her salary, becoming the magazine's first creative director, a position with vaguely defined responsibilities. Her changes to the magazine were often made without Mirabella's knowledge, causing friction among the staff. She began dating child psychiatrist David Shaffer, an older acquaintance from London. They married in 1984.

In 1985, Wintour attained her first editorship, taking over the UK edition of Vogue after Beatrix Miller retired. Once in charge, she replaced many of the staff and exerted far more control over the magazine than any previous editor had, earning the nickname "Nuclear Wintour" in the process. Those editors who were retained began to refer to the period as "The Wintour of Our Discontent". Her changes moved the magazine from its traditional eccentricity to a direction more in line with the American magazine. Wintour's ideal reader was the same woman Savvy had tried to reach. "There's a new kind of woman out there", she told the Evening Standard. "She's interested in business and money. She doesn't have time to shop anymore. She wants to know what and why and where and how."

In 1987, Wintour returned to New York to take over House & Garden. Its circulation had long lagged behind rival Architectural Digest, and Condé Nast hoped she could improve it. Again, she made radical changes to staff and look, canceling \$2 million worth of photo spreads and articles in her first week. She put so much fashion in photo spreads that it became known as House & Garment, and enough celebrities that it was referred to as Vanity Chair, within the industry. These changes worsened the magazine's problems. When the title was shortened to just HG, many longtime subscribers thought they were getting a new magazine and put it aside for the real thing to arrive. Most of those subscriptions were eventually canceled and, while some fashion advertisers came over, most of the magazine's traditional advertisers pulled out.

Ten months later, she became editor of US Vogue. Industry insiders worried that under Mirabella, the magazine was losing ground to the recently introduced American edition of Elle. After making sweeping changes in staff, she changed the style of the cover pictures. Mirabella had preferred tight head shots of well-known models in studios; Wintour's covers showed more of the body and were taken outside, like those Diana Vreeland had done years earlier. She used less well-known models, and mixed inexpensive clothes with high fashion: the first issue she was in charge of, November 1988, featured a Peter Lindbergh photograph of 19-year-old Michaela Bercu in a \$50 pair of faded jeans and a bejeweled jacket by Christian Lacroix worth \$10,000. It was the first time a Vogue cover model had worn jeans; when the printer saw it they called the magazine's offices, thinking it was the wrong image.

In 2012, Wintour reflected on the cover:

> It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue's covers back then, with tons of makeup and major jewelry. This one broke all the rules. Michaela wasn't looking at you, and worse, she had her eyes almost closed. Her hair was blowing across her face. It looked easy, casual, a moment that had been snapped on the street, which it had been, and which was the whole point. Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true. I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can't ask for more from a cover image than that.

Years later, Wintour admitted the photo had never been planned as the cover shot. In 2011, when Vogue put its entire archive online, Wintour was quoted as saying, "I just said, 'Well, let's just try this.' And off we went. It was just very natural. To me it just said, 'This is something new. This is something different.' The printers called to make sure that was supposed to be the cover, as they thought a mistake might have been made." In 2015, she said if she had to pick a favorite of her covers, it would be that one. "[I]t was a leap of faith and it was certainly a big change for Vogue."

"Wintour's approach hit a nerve—this was the way real women put clothes together (with the likely exception of wearing multi-thousand-dollar T-shirts)", one reviewer says. On the June 1989 cover, model Estelle Lefebure was shown in wet hair, with just a bathrobe and no apparent makeup. Photographers, makeup artists, and hairstylists got credited along with the models. In August 2014, Gigi Hadid paid tribute to Wintour's first cover.

She exerts a great deal of control over the magazine's visual content. Since her first days as editor, she has required that photographers not begin until she has approved Polaroids of the setup and clothing. Afterwards, they must submit all their work to the magazine, not just their personal choices.

Her control over the text is less certain. Her staff claim she reads everything written for publication, but former editor Richard Story has claimed she rarely, if ever, reads any of Vogue's arts coverage or book reviews. Earlier in her career, she often left writing of the text that accompanied her layouts to others; former coworkers claim she has minimal skills in that area. Today, she writes little for the magazine save the monthly editor's letter. She reportedly has three full-time assistants but sometimes surprises callers by answering the phone herself.

### 1990s

Under her editorship, the magazine renewed its focus on fashion and returned to the prominence it had held under Vreeland. Vogue held its position as market leader against three contenders: Elle; Harper's Bazaar, which had lured away Liz Tilberis, Wintour's most prominent deputy, and Mirabella, a magazine Rupert Murdoch created for Wintour's fired predecessor. Her most serious competitor was within the company: Tina Brown, editor of Vanity Fair and later The New Yorker.

At the end of the decade, another of Wintour's inner circle left to run Harper's Bazaar. Kate Betts, seen as Wintour's likely successor, had broadened the magazine's reach by commissioning stories with a more hard-news edge, about women in politics, street culture, and the financial difficulties of some major designers. She had also added the "Index" section, a few pages of tips meant to be torn out of the magazine. At staff meetings, she earned Wintour's respect as the only person who publicly challenged her.

The two began to disagree about the magazine's direction. Betts felt Vogue's fashion coverage was getting too limited. Wintour in turn thought that the stories with popular culture angles Betts was assigning were beneath readers, and began pairing Betts with Plum Sykes, whom Betts reportedly detested as a "pretentious airhead". Eventually, she left, complaining to The New York Times that Wintour had not even sent her a baby gift. Wintour wrote an editor's letter that complimented Betts and wished her well.

### 2000s

Betts was one of several longtime editors to leave Vogue around the new millennium. A year later, Sykes, another putative successor, left to concentrate on her best-selling novels set in the city's upper classes and a screenplay. A number of other editors also left to assume the top jobs at other publications. While some of their replacements did not last, a new group of core editors formed.

The September 2004 issue was 832 pages, the largest issue of a monthly magazine ever published at that time, since exceeded by the September 2007 issue Cutler's documentary covered. Wintour oversaw the introduction of three spinoffs: Teen Vogue, Vogue Living and Men's Vogue. Teen Vogue has published more ad pages and earned more advertiser revenue than either Elle Girl and Cosmo Girl, and the 164 ad pages in the début issue of Men's Vogue were the most for a first issue in Condé Nast history. AdAge named her "Editor of the Year" for this brand expansion.

Wintour was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. However, 2008 was generally difficult year for Vogue, as the economy worsened. After ruffling feathers at the Milan shows in February, the April issue's cover image of LeBron James and Gisele Bündchen brought criticism for its evocation of racial stereotypes. The next month a lavish Karl Lagerfeld gown she wore to the Met's Costume Institute Gala was called "the worst fashion faux pas of 2008". In the fall, Vogue Living was suspended indefinitely, and Men's Vogue cut back to two issues a year as an outsert or supplement to the women's magazine. At the end of the year, December's cover highlighted a disparaging comment Jennifer Aniston made about Angelina Jolie, to the former's displeasure; media observers began speculating that Wintour had lost her touch.

In 2008, rumours arose that she would retire, and be replaced by French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. An editor at Russian GQ reportedly introduced Russian Vogue editor Aliona Doletskaya as the next editor of American Vogue. Condé Nast responded by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times defending her record. In that same publication, Cathy Horyn later wrote that while Wintour had not lost her touch, the magazine had become "stale and predictable", as a reader had recently complained. "To read Vogue in recent years is to wonder about the peculiar fascination for the 'villa in Tuscany' story", Horyn added. The magazine also dealt awkwardly with the recession, she commented.

In 2009, Wintour began making more media appearances. On a 60 Minutes profile, she said she would not retire. "To me this is a really interesting time to be in this position and I think it would be in a way irresponsible not to put my best foot forward and lead us into a different time." A documentary film, The September Issue, by The War Room producer R.J. Cutler, about the production of the September 2007 issue, was released in September. It focused on the sometimes-difficult relationship between Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington. Wintour appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman to promote it, defending the relevance of fashion in a tough economy. The American Society of Magazine Editors elected her to its Hall of Fame in 2010.

### 2010s

In 2013, Condé Nast announced she would be taking on the position of artistic director for the company's magazines while remaining at Vogue. She assumed some of the responsibilities of Si Newhouse, the company's longtime chairman, who, in his mid-80s at the time, was retreating from his role at Condé Nast to oversee managing Advance Publications, its parent company. A company spokesman told The New York Times the position was created to keep Wintour. She described it as "an extension of what I am doing, but on a broader scale."

In January 2014, the Metropolitan Museum of Art named its Costume Institute complex after Wintour; First Lady Michelle Obama opened it in May of that year. Wintour starred in The Fashion Fund, which aired on Ovation TV that year as well; she was named the 39th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of The Devil Wears Prada's release, in 2016, The Ringer noted how Wintour's personal image had evolved since that film's depiction of Miranda Priestley. "A decade ago this summer, Wintour became a living, breathing avatar for a certain kind of boss—the terrible kind, with 'great' a halfhearted asterisk", wrote Alison Herman. "The Devil Wears Prada transformed Wintour's image from that of a mere public figure into that of a cultural icon."

But since then, "Wintour isn't just redeemed. She's openly admired, Arctic chill and all." The grievances reflected in the novel and film "[seem] like an increasingly petty complaint when held up against a readership that remains well into the seven figures and the undisputed edge in ad sales that comes with it. Wintour is seemingly the only person on earth who knows how to run a steady print operation in 2016 ... At 10 years old, Miranda Priestley is iconic but ever-so-slightly out of date. Anna Wintour is still the boss..."

Wintour was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to fashion and journalism and invested by Queen Elizabeth II in May 2017 at Buckingham Palace. According to a January 2017 report in The Nation, an American news magazine, it was rumored that Wintour would have become the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom had Hillary Clinton been elected President of the United States the previous November.

### 2020s

In May 2020, former editor-at-large, André Leon Talley, released his second memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, which exposed Talley and Wintour's personal fall out in 2018 after he was discontinued as Vogue's Met Gala red carpet reporter.

Following the murder of George Floyd, Wintour was reported to have issued an apology to staff for Vogue's complicity in racism, stating the magazine had "not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators".

In 2020, Condé Nast promoted Wintour to the role of chief content officer, worldwide, as part of a restructuring the company unveiled. In addition, she will be working as global editorial director of Vogue.

In 2023, Wintour suggested the creation of an event similar to the Met Gala in London to raise funds for the local arts scene, which has struggled to recover in the aftermath of COVID.

Wintour was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to fashion.

### Influence in fashion industry

Through the years, she has come to be regarded as one of the most powerful people in fashion, setting trends, and anointing new designers. Industry publicists often hear "Do you want me to go to Anna with this?" when they have differences with her subordinates. The Guardian has called her the "unofficial mayoress" of New York City. She has encouraged fashion houses such as Christian Dior to hire younger, fresher designers such as John Galliano. Her influence extends outside fashion. She persuaded Donald Trump to let Marc Jacobs use a ballroom at the Plaza Hotel for a show when Jacobs and his partner were short of cash. In 2006, she persuaded Brooks Brothers to hire the relatively unknown Thom Browne. A protégée at Vogue, Plum Sykes, became a successful novelist, drawing her settings from New York's fashionable élite.

Her salary was reported to be \$2 million a year in 2005. In addition, she receives several perks, such as a chauffeured Mercedes S-Class (both in New York and abroad), a \$200,000 shopping allowance, and the Coco Chanel Suite at the Hotel Ritz Paris while attending European fashion shows. Condé Nast president S.I. Newhouse had the company make her an interest-free \$1.6 million loan to purchase her townhouse in Greenwich Village.

## Charity work

Wintour serves as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she has organised benefits that have raised \$50 million for the museum's Costume Institute. She began the CFDA/Vogue Fund in order to encourage, support and mentor unknown fashion designers. She has also raised over \$10 million for AIDS charities since 1990, by organising various high-profile benefits.

## Personal life

### Relationships

Wintour began dating well-connected older men during her teens. She was briefly involved with novelist Piers Paul Read when she was 15 and he was 24. In her later teens, she dated gossip columnist Nigel Dempster and the two became a fixture on the London club circuit.

Wintour married child psychiatrist David Shaffer in 1984, and they had a son named Charles (born 1985) and a daughter named Katherine (born 1987) before divorcing in 1999. Charles is a graduate of the University of Oxford and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Katherine wrote occasional columns for The Daily Telegraph in 2006 and graduated from Columbia University in 2009, but says she will not follow her mother into fashion. Katherine married Italian filmmaker Francesco Carrozzini, son of Vogue Italia editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani, in 2018.

Newspapers and gossip columnists claimed that Wintour's affair with investor Shelby Bryan ended her marriage to Shaffer. She declined to comment. A former colleague quoted in the Observer said that Bryan "mellowed her" and that she "smiles now and has been seen to laugh".

### Residence

Wintour resides in New York City's Greenwich Village.

### Habits

Wintour says she wakes up at 5:30 a.m., plays tennis, gets her hair and makeup done, and then arrives at the Vogue offices at 7:30 a.m. She always turns up at fashion shows well before their scheduled start, stating, "I use the waiting time to make phone calls and notes; I get some of my best ideas at the shows." According to the BBC documentary series Boss Woman, she rarely stays at parties for more than 20 minutes at a time and usually goes to bed by 10:15 p.m. at the latest. She turns off her mobile phone so as not to be disturbed while eating her lunch, which is most often a steak or a hamburger without the bun. High-protein meals have been a habit of hers for a long time. A co-worker at Harpers & Queen said that she would eat "smoked salmon and scrambled eggs" every single day and that "she would eat nothing else".

### Personal fashion

Because of her position, Wintour's wardrobe is often closely scrutinised and imitated. Earlier in her career, she mixed fashionable t-shirts and vests with designer jeans. When she started at Vogue as creative director, she switched to Chanel suits with miniskirts. She continued to wear them during both pregnancies, opening the skirts slightly in back and keeping her jacket on to cover up. Wintour was listed as "one of the 50 best-dressed over 50s" by The Guardian in March 2013. Aside from sporting Chanel suits with midiskirts, she has also been seen wearing kitten heels & printed midi-dresses.

According to biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, her ubiquitous sunglasses are actually corrective lenses, since she has deteriorating vision as her father did. A former colleague he interviewed recalls trying on her Wayfarers in her absence and getting dizzy. "I think at this point they've become, you know, really armour", Wintour herself told 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer, explaining that they allow her to keep her reactions to a show private. As she rebounded from the end of her marriage and the turnover in the magazine's editorial staff, a fellow editor and friend noted that "she's not hiding behind her glasses anymore. Now she's having fun again."

### Politics

Wintour has supported the Democratic Party since Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate run and John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. She also served as a "bundler" of contributions during Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. She co-hosted fundraisers for Obama's campaigns with Sarah Jessica Parker, with one being a 50-person, \$40,000-per-person dinner at Parker's West Village town house with Meryl Streep, Michael Kors, and advertising executive Trey Laird among the attendees. She also teamed with Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein on fundraisers during Obama's first term, with Donna Karan among the attendees.

In 2013, when Vogue's former director of communications stepped down, Wintour was rumoured to be looking to hire someone with a political background. Soon after, she hired Hildy Kuryk, who worked as a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee and Obama's 2008 campaign. She supported Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, forming part of Clinton's long list of wealthy donors and served as Clinton's consultant on wardrobe choices for key moments of the campaign. Wintour endorsed Joe Biden for the 2020 United States presidential election.

## The Devil Wears Prada

Lauren Weisberger, a former Wintour assistant who left Vogue for Departures along with Richard Story, wrote The Devil Wears Prada after a writing workshop he suggested she take. It was eagerly anticipated for its supposed insider portrait of Wintour prior to its publication. Wintour told The New York Times, "I always enjoy a great piece of fiction. I haven't decided whether I am going to read it or not." While it has been suggested that the fashion magazine setting and Miranda Priestly character were based on Vogue and Wintour, Weisberger claims she drew not only from her own experiences but those of her friends as well. Wintour herself makes a cameo appearance near the end of the book, where it is said she and Miranda dislike each other.

In the novel, Priestly has many similarities to Wintour—among them, she is British, has two children, and is described as a major contributor to the Met. Priestly is a tyrant who makes impossible demands of her subordinates, gives them almost none of the information or time necessary to comply and then berates them for their failures to do so.

Kate Betts, who had been fired by Harper's after two years during which staffers said she tried too hard to emulate Wintour, reviewed it harshly in The New York Times Book Review:

> Having worked at Vogue myself for eight years and having been mentored by Anna Wintour, I have to say Weisberger could have learned a few things in the year she sold her soul to the devil of fashion for \$32,500. She had a ringside seat at one of the great editorial franchises in a business that exerts an enormous influence over women, but she seems to have understood almost nothing about the isolation and pressure of the job her boss was doing, or what it might cost a person like Miranda Priestly to become a character like Miranda Priestly.

Priestly has some positive qualities. Andrea Sachs, the novel's main character, notes that she makes all the magazine's key editorial decisions by herself and that she has genuine class and style.

### Film adaptation

During the production of The Devil Wears Prada in 2005, Wintour was reportedly threatening prominent fashion personalities, particularly designers, that Vogue would not cover them if they made cameo appearances in the movie as themselves. She denied it through a spokesperson who said she was interested in anything that "supports fashion". Many designers are mentioned in the film. Only one, Valentino Garavani, appeared as himself.

The film was released, in mid-2006, to great commercial success. Wintour attended the première wearing Prada. In the film, actress Meryl Streep plays a Priestly different enough from the book's to receive critical praise as an entirely original (and more sympathetic) character. (Streep's office in the film was similar enough to Wintour's that Wintour reportedly had hers redecorated.)

Wintour reportedly said the film would probably go straight to DVD. It made over \$300 million in worldwide box office receipts. Later in 2006, in an interview with Barbara Walters that aired the day of the DVD's release, Wintour said she found the film "really entertaining" and praised it for making fashion "entertaining and glamorous and interesting ... I was 100 percent behind it."

That opinion of the movie has not yet led her to forgive Weisberger. When it was reported that the novelist's editor told her to start her third novel over, Wintour's spokesman suggested she "should get a job as someone else's assistant."

Oppenheimer suggests The Devil Wears Prada may have done Wintour a favour by increasing her name recognition. "Besides giving Weisberger her fifteen minutes", he says, "[it] ... place[d] Anna squarely in the mainstream celebrity pantheon. [She] was now known and talked about over Big Macs and french fries under the Golden Arches by young fashionistas in Wal-Mart denim in Davenport and Dubuque."

When The September Issue was released three years later, critics compared it with the earlier, fictional film. "For the past year or so, she's been on the media warpath to win back her image", said Paul Schrodt in Slant Magazine. Many considered the question of how similar she was to Streep's Priestly, and praised the film for showing the real person. Manohla Dargis at The New York Times said that Priestly had helped humanise Wintour, and "the documentary continues this". "The movie offers insights that lift it beyond a realist version of The Devil Wears Prada", agreed Mary Pols in Time.

The film version of the Weisberger novel (screenplay penned by Aline Brosh McKenna) has not been the only movie to have a character borrowing some aspects of Wintour. Edna Mode's similar hairstyle in The Incredibles has been noted, Johnny Depp said he partially based the demeanour of Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Wintour. Fey Sommers in the Ugly Betty television series was also likened to Wintour, from the trademark bob and sunglasses, to Wintour's last name homophonous with 'Winter', while Sommers' is homophonous with 'Summer'.

## Criticism

In 2005, two years after The Devil Wears Prada, Oppenheimer's Front Row: The Cool Life and Hot Times of Vogue's Editor in Chief was published. It painted a similar portrait of the real woman. According to Oppenheimer, Wintour not only declined his requests for an interview but discouraged others from talking to him.

### Personality

Wintour is often described as emotionally distant by those who have come to know her well, even her close friends. "At some stage in her career, Anna Wintour stopped being Anna Wintour and became 'Anna Wintour,' at which point, like wings of a stately home, she closed off large sections of her personality to the public", wrote The Guardian. "I think she enjoys not being completely approachable. Just her office is very intimidating. You have to walk about a mile into the office before you get to her desk and I'm sure it's intentional", Coddington says. "I don't find her to be accessible to people she doesn't need to be accessible to", agrees Vogue publisher Tom Florio.

She has said she admired her father Charles, known as "Chilly Charlie" for being "inscrutable". Former coworkers told Oppenheimer of a similar aloofness on her part. But she is also known for volatile outbursts of displeasure, and the widely used "Nuclear Wintour" sobriquet is a result of both. She dislikes it enough to have asked The New York Times not to use it. "There are times I get quite angry", she admitted in The September Issue.

"I think she has been very rude to a lot of people in the past, on her way up – very terse", a friend told The Observer. "She doesn't do small talk. She is never going to be friends with her assistant." Junior staff at Vogue are said to understand, through unwritten rules, that they should not initiate interactions with her; it has been said that they are discouraged from riding an elevator with her, and if they do, should not speak to her, though Wintour has called this an exaggeration. In a 1999 profile, journalist Kevin Gray observed that one staffer appeared "panic stricken" when she realised she would have to be in the elevator with Wintour. Gray also reports that another employee told him that she once saw Wintour trip in a hallway, walked past her without offering assistance, and was later told she "did absolutely the right thing."

Even friends admit to some trepidation in her presence. "Anna happens to be a friend of mine", says Barbara Amiel, "a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet." "I know when to stop pushing her", says Coddington. "She doesn't know when to stop pushing me."

She has often been described as a perfectionist who routinely makes impossible, arbitrary demands of subordinates: "kitchen scissors at work", in the words of one commentator. She once made a junior staffer look through a photographer's trash to find a picture he had refused to give her. In a deleted scene from The September Issue, she complains about the "horrible white plastic buckets" of ice behind the bars at the CFDA's 7th on Sale AIDS benefit and moves them out of sight. "The notion that Anna would want something done 'now' and not 'shortly' is accurate", Amiel says of The Devil Wears Prada. "Anna wants what she wants right away." A longtime assistant says, "She throws you in the water and you'll either sink or swim."

Peter Braunstein, a former Women's Wear Daily media reporter convicted of sexually assaulting a coworker, allegedly planned to kill Wintour because of perceived slights. After receiving only one ticket to the 2002 Vogue Fashion Awards, which he perceived as a snub, his anger cost him his job.

On one occasion she had to pay for her treatment of employees. In 2004, a court ruled that she and Shaffer were to pay \$104,403, and Wintour herself an additional \$32,639, to settle a lawsuit brought against them by the New York State Workers' Compensation Board. They had failed to pay the \$140,000 judgement against them by a former employee of theirs (not the magazine) injured on the job, who did not have the necessary insurance coverage.

In the 2000s, her relationship with Bryan was credited with softening her personality at work. "Even when she's in a bad mood, she has a different posture [...] is that she's so much more mellow and easier to work for", someone described as a "Wintour watcher" told The New York Observer in 2000.

### Pro-fur stance

She has often been the target of animal rights organisations like PETA, who are angered by her use of fur in Vogue, her pro-fur editorials and her refusal to run paid advertisements from animal rights organisations. Undeterred, she continues to use fur in photo spreads, saying there is always a way to wear it. "Nobody was wearing fur until she put it on the cover in the early 1990s", says Vogue co-worker Tom Florio. "She ignited the entire industry."

She has "lost count" of the times she has been physically attacked by activists. In Paris in October 2005, she was hit with a tofu pie while waiting to get into the Chloé show. On another occasion, an activist dumped a dead raccoon on her plate at a restaurant; she told the waiter to remove it. She and Vogue publisher Ron Galotti once retaliated for a protest outside the Condé Nast offices during the company's annual Christmas party by sending down a plate of roast beef.

Others outside of the animal rights community have raised the fur issue. Fashion journalist Peter Braunstein wrote in his manifesto that she would go to a hell guarded by large rats, where it would be so warm she would not need to wear fur. Pamela Anderson, in an early 2008 interview, said Wintour was the living person she most despised "because she bullies young designers and models to use and wear fur."

### Elitism

Another common criticism of Wintour's editorship focuses on Vogue's increasing use of celebrities on the cover, and her insistence on making them meet her standards. She reportedly told Oprah Winfrey to lose weight before her cover photograph. Likewise, Hillary Clinton was told not to wear a blue suit. At the 2005 Anglomania celebration, a Vogue-sponsored salute to British fashion at the Met, Wintour is said to have personally chosen the clothes for prominent attendees such as Jennifer Lopez, Kate Moss, Donald Trump, and Diane von Fürstenberg. "I don't think Vreeland had that kind of concentration", says Women's Wear Daily publisher Patrick McCarthy. "She wouldn't have dressed Babe Paley. Nor would Babe Paley have let her." By persuading designers to lend clothes to prominent socialites and celebrities, who are then photographed wearing the clothes not only in Vogue but more general-interest magazines like People and Us, which in turn influence what buyers want, some in the industry believe Wintour is exerting too much control over it, especially since she is not involved in making or producing clothes herself. "The end result is that Anna can control it all the way to the selling floor", says Candy Pratts Price, executive fashion director at style.com. She has been credited with killing grunge fashion in the early 1990s, when it was not selling well, by telling designers if they continued to avoid glamour their looks would not be photographed for Vogue. All complied.

Another Vogue writer has complained Wintour excluded ordinary working women, many of whom are regular subscribers, from the pages. "She's obsessed only about reflecting the aspirations of a certain class of reader", she says. "We once had a piece about breast cancer which started with an airline stewardess, but she wouldn't have a stewardess in the magazine so we had to go and look for a high-flying businesswoman who'd had cancer."

Wintour has been accused of setting herself apart even from peers. "I do not think fiction could surpass the reality", a British fashion magazine editor says of The Devil Wears Prada. "[A]rt in this instance is only a poor imitation of life." Wintour, the editor says, routinely requests to be seated out of sight of competing editors at shows. "We spend our working lives telling people which it-bag to carry but Anna is so above the rest of us she does not even have a handbag."

At Milan Fashion Week in 2008, she requested that some key shows be rescheduled for earlier in the week so she and other U.S.-based editors could have time to return home before the Paris shows. This led to complaints. Other editors said they had to rush through the earlier shows, and lesser-known designers who had to show later were denied an important audience. Dolce & Gabbana said Italian fashion was getting short shrift and Milan was becoming a "circus without sense".

Giorgio Armani, who at the time was co-chairing a Met exhibition on superheroes' costumes with Wintour, drew some attention for his personal remarks. "Maybe what she thinks is a beautiful dress, I wouldn't think was a beautiful dress", he said. While he claimed he could not understand why people disliked her, saying he himself was indifferent, he expressed hope she had not made a comment once attributed to her that "the Armani era is over". He accused her of preferring French and American fashion over Italian. Geoffrey Beene, who stopped inviting Wintour to shows after she stopped writing about him, called her "a boss lady in four-wheel drive who ignores or abandons those who do not fuel her tank. As an editor, she has turned class into mass, taste into waste."

Her remarks about obesity have caused controversy on more than one occasion. In 2005, Wintour was heavily criticised by the New York chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance after Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley said on The Oprah Winfrey Show, at one point, Wintour demanded he lose weight. "Most of the Vogue girls are so thin, tremendously thin", he said, "because Miss Anna don't like fat people." In 2009, residents of Minneapolis took umbrage after she told 60 Minutes she could "only kindly describe most of the people I saw as little houses." They noted their city had been named the third fittest in the nation that year by Men's Fitness while New York had been named the fifth fattest.

Wintour surprised observers when developing an association with the Kardashian family and Kanye West, which culminated in having the Kardashian-Wests on a Vogue cover; Wintour reportedly commented that having only "deeply tasteful" people in the magazine was "boring", and her decision to resort to such personalities has led some to accuse the magazine of being "desperate for buzz". Wintour has nevertheless continued the association with the pair.

### Responses

Defences of Wintour have often come from others. Amanda Fortini at Slate said she was comfortable with Wintour's elitism since that was intrinsic to fashion:

> Most of us read Vogue not with the intention of buying the wildly expensive clothes, but because doing so educates our eye and hones our taste, similar to the way eating gourmet food refines the palate. This is a pleasure enabled by Wintour's ruthless aesthetic, her refusal to participate in the democratizing tendency of most of her competitors. To deny her that privilege is to deny her readers the privilege of fantasy in the form of beautifully photographed Paris couture.

Emma Brockes sees this in Wintour herself: "[Her] unwavering ability to look as if she lives within the pages of her magazine has a sort of honesty to it, proof that, whatever one thinks about it, the lifestyle peddled by Vogue is at least physically possible."

"Print publications have to be as luxurious an experience as possible", Wintour explained in 2015. "You have to feel it coming off the page. You have to see photographs and pieces that you couldn't possibly see anywhere else."

Some friends see her purported coldness as just traditional British reserve, or shyness. Brockes says it may be mutual, "partly a reflection of how awkward people are with her, particularly women, who get preemptively chippy when faced with the prospect of meeting Fashion Incarnate." When Morley Safer asked her about complaints about her personality, she said,

> I have so many people here, Morley, that have worked with me for 15, 20 years, and, you know, if I'm such a bitch, they must really be a glutton for punishment because they're still here. If one comes across sometimes as being cold or brusque, it's simply because I'm striving for the best.

She has made similar statements in defence of her reported refusal to hire fat people. "It's important to me that the people that are working here, particularly in the fashion department", she says, "will present themselves in a way that makes sense to the outside world that they work at Vogue."

Her defenders have called criticism sexist. "Powerful women in the media always get inspected more thoroughly than their male counterparts", said The New York Times in a piece about Wintour shortly after The Devil Wears Prada's release. When Wintour took over at Vogue, gossip columnist Liz Smith reported rumours she had gotten the job through an affair with Si Newhouse. A reportedly furious Wintour made her anger the subject of one of her first staff meetings; she still complained about the allegation when accepting a media award in 2002.

She has been called a feminist whose changes to Vogue have reflected, acknowledged, and reinforced advances in the status of women. Reviewing Oppenheimer's book in the Washington Monthly, managing editor Christina Larson notes that Vogue, unlike many other women's magazines,

> ...doesn't play to its readership's sense of inadequacy ... Instead, it reminds women to take satisfaction, parading all manner of fineries (clothes, furniture, travel destinations) that a successful woman might buy, or at least admire. While it surely exists to sell ads ... it does so primarily by exploiting ambition, not insecurity.

Wintour, unlike Vreeland, "...shifted Vogue's focus from the cult of beauty to the cult of the creation of beauty." To Wintour, the focus on celebrities is a welcome development as it means women are making the cover of Vogue at least in part for what they have accomplished, not just how they look.

Complaints about her role as fashion éminence grise are dismissed by those familiar with how she actually exercises it. "She's honest. She tells you what she thinks. Yes is yes and no is no", according to designer Karl Lagerfeld. "She's not too pushy", agrees François-Henri Pinault, chief executive officer of Kering, Gucci's parent company. "She lets you know it's not a problem if you can't do something she wants." Defenders also point out she continued supporting Gucci despite her strong belief Kering should not have let Tom Ford go. Designers such as Alice Roi and Isabel Toledo have flourished without indulging Wintour or Vogue. Her willingness to throw her weight around has helped keep Vogue independent despite its heavy reliance on advertising dollars. Wintour was the only fashion editor who refused to follow an Armani ultimatum to feature more of its clothes in the magazine's editorial pages, although she has also admitted if she has to choose between two dresses, one by an advertiser and the other not, she will choose the former every time. "Commercial is not a dirty word to me."

Wintour herself, when asked about it, dismisses the notion that she has all the power attributed to her. "I don't think of myself as a powerful person", she told Forbes in 2011, when it named her 69th on its list of the world's hundred most powerful women. "You know, what does it mean? It means you get a better seat in a restaurant or tickets to a screening or whatever it may be. But it is a wonderful opportunity to be able to help others, and for that I'm extremely grateful."

In response to criticisms like Beene's, she has defended the democratisation of what were once exclusive luxury brands. "It means more people are going to get better fashion", she told Dana Thomas. "And the more people who can have fashion, the better."

## See also

- New Yorkers in journalism

British media executive

Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour

People educated at North London Collegiate School

People with acquired American citizenship


Abzû

Abzû is an adventure video game developed by Giant Squid and published by 505 Games for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Amazon Luna. Initially released as a digital title in August 2016, a retail version for consoles was released in January 2017. Following the journey of a diver exploring the ocean and restoring life using sonar calls, the gameplay allows the player to freely navigate underwater environments ranging from open water and natural caverns to ancient ruins.

Development lasted three years, involving a team of thirteen people. Several members, including director Matt Nava and composer Austin Wintory, had previously worked on the 2012 video game Journey—the ocean setting of Abzû was both a reaction to the desert setting of Journey and inspired by Nava's love of scuba diving. The setting and story drew from Sumerian mythology and the cosmic ocean myth. Reaching high positions in sales charts, Abzû was praised by journalists: the majority of praise went to its art style, with some critics comparing it to Journey.

## Gameplay

In Abzû, the player takes on the role of a diver in a vast ocean—after waking up floating on the ocean's surface, the diver begins exploring the surrounding underwater environments filled with plant and animal life, in addition to uncovering ancient technology and submerged ruins. In a few areas, the diver is also able to explore land-based environments above the water. As the game progresses, the diver unlocks new areas and pursues the secrets behind the forces harming the local environment. The diver's course through the game follows a linear path through interconnected areas filled with marine life. The player directs the diver through the environments using full analogue control, able to interact with the environment to solve switch or item-based puzzles, and the ability to meditate which grants the character the ability to sit on the shark-shaped pedestals within each area to observe the surrounding sea life. The diver can accelerate, and interact with marine life using sonar chimes. The diver can grab onto the bodies of larger marine animals and ride on them. Each area sports hidden collectables for the diver to find.

## Synopsis

The narrative of Abzû is told wordlessly through gameplay and using cutscenes, taking place in a vast ocean. The player character, referred to as a female diver, awakens floating in the ocean and begins exploring the surrounding sea: ruins and ancient murals show that an ancient civilization which shared a symbiotic connection with the ocean. As she explores, she is led by a great white shark to wells that—when activated using an energy from within her—restore life to the local seas. That energy is being forcefully harvested by pyramid-like devices, the development of which disrupted the ocean's balance and brought about the civilization's downfall. Upon reaching the original pyramid, the diver sees the great white shark attacking it, and the pyramid's counterattack damages the diver—revealing her to be a mechanical robot, confirming her existence as a being connected to the pyramid and capable of restoring life to the ocean—and mortally wounds the great white shark, which dies as the diver comforts it. After activating the final well, the great white shark manifests and guides the repaired diver back to the original pyramid which the diver destroys, returning life to the ocean. During the credits, the diver and great white shark swim together through the revitalized ocean. Though it is unclear whether the diver survived, or if the cutscene shows the diver in the afterlife with the spirit of the great white shark, thus referring to the circle of death and life renewal that the ocean reflects.

## Development

The origins of Abzû lay in the development of Journey, an independent video game developed by Thatgamecompany and released in 2012. Abzû's creator, director and art director Matt Nava had previously worked as art director for Journey during its three-year development. Having worked in a game featuring a desert setting, Nava wanted to change to a more vibrant and populated setting for his next title. Nava began creating the pitch for Abzû before leaving Thatgamecompany and founding the game's developer Giant Squid Studios. One of the main elements Nava incorporated was his love for ancient cultures and their artwork, particularly relating to the myths surrounding the concept of Abzu. Nava's love of the ocean, which he explored through his hobby of scuba diving, also figured heavily in the design of Abzû. The team at Giant Squid Studios grew to ten developers from across the industry, mainly programmers who specialized in multiple aspects of game design from gameplay to graphics, in addition to a graphical and technical artist who helped create and animate the character models.

The game was first announced at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). It was later previewed at E3 2016. The game's initial digital release was on PlayStation 4 via PlayStation Network and Windows through Steam on August 2, 2016. Later it was also released digitally on Xbox One through Xbox Live on December 6, 2016. The game also received a physical release for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 31, 2017. A Nintendo Switch was released through the Nintendo eShop on November 29, 2018. It was released in Japan on February 27, 2020. It was also included in the early access release of the cloud gaming platform Amazon Luna on October 20, 2020. All versions were published by 505 Games.

### Design

The game's title stems from Sumerian mythology, particularly the myth of the ocean goddess Tiamat and the fresh water god Abzu uniting to form all life: a reason this was chosen was that myths surrounding land-based life and their supposed origins in a cosmic ocean were a recurring theme in multiple world mythologies. The title is made up of the Sumerian words "ab" (water) and "zu" (to know), translated by the developers as "Ocean of Wisdom". The word provided difficulties early on, as the Sumerian spelling "Abzu" differed from the Akkadian spelling "Apsû". As a compromise, the team merged the two spellings into the game's title. The circumflex over the letter "u" caused problems for the team as hardly anyone knew how to type it and the computer programs had trouble handling it as part of the coding. The use of the word played into the game's focus on the ocean due to its mythic connections. The Middle Eastern influences extended to the game's architecture, and incorporated Nava's wish for structures to have meaning beyond being simple scenery or tools for player progression.

The aim from an early stage was not to simulate diving, but instead to capture the dream-like feeling of ocean exploration. As part of his research, Nava experimented with other ocean simulation games and found they were not "fun". By removing any time limit or air gauge, the team sought to promote a relaxing sense of exploration. The meditation mechanic was added during later development from 2015 to 2016 as a means of allowing players a view of the surrounding marine life and environment. When choosing their game engine, Matt Nava was still the only staff member and so they needed an easy-to-use platform with tools and technology to create the game. Unreal Engine 4 was still quite new at this time, but it was chosen after the team had vetted other developer software available at the time. The team were able to use both Unreal Engine 4's advanced developer tools and expand the engine's functionality to incorporate unique elements such as fish shoal behavior, vegetation animation, and underwater lighting. Using Unreal Engine 4 allowed engineer Derek Cornish to construct unique systems for underwater lighting effects.

The artistic style was meant to portray a vibrant underwater world, but the team also needed to prevent activity on-screen from overwhelming the player, so a stylized look was chosen to both maintain the game's artistic style and reduce the amount of "visual noise". Environmental editing was a big issue for the team, with much of their early development dedicated to creating editing tools that could do small-scale edits to environments after they had been locked down. When creating the environments, Nava drew on his experience developing Flower for Thatgamecompany, creating sporadically scattered interaction points that triggered with player exploration and triggered new life or new elements within each environment. Since there was no dedicated animator, the team needed to use multiple techniques for animating the diver, fish and flexible vegetation: the diver used a skeletal animation run through a complex state machine, vegetation such as seaweed used rope physics, while fish mainly used mathematical motion in combination with morph target posing to remove the need of individual skeletal structures.

The types of fish seen in Abzû were based on real-life creatures from the oceans of Earth, and to fit them into the game each species was distilled down to its most distinctive traits. The team had "tens of thousands" of fish within the game. Their swimming styles were directly modeled on the behavior and physics of real fish movements. The number of fish presented problems with running the game, but the programming staff developed a method of simplifying each fish's animation without compromising the game's visuals, which "multiplied the number of fish possible on screens by 10". Each fish species had its own unique artificial intelligence that had cascading levels of awareness and interaction with other species and objects in the environment. The team started with getting the fish to swim without clipping through walls, then built upon that with further expansion on fish behavior and interaction. Their most challenging task was creating realistic bait balling effects for shoals of small fish, which was only achieved and finalized near the end of development. The developers did take liberties by grouping together types of fish from different parts of the globe which would normally not be able to interact, though this fell in line with the game's overall theme and the myths it referenced. Despite this, the developers emulated the zones that each fish would be found in, whether it be a coral reef or the deep ocean where sunlight does not reach. The amount of work and the team's dedication to creating a realistic and vibrant experience meant they were creating fish until development finished.

### Music

The soundtrack for Abzû was composed, conducted, and produced by Austin Wintory, who had previously worked on Journey and The Banner Saga. Wintory was first shown concept art for the project by Nava before Giant Squid Studios was founded and development began. When the studio was founded, Wintory was invited on board the project. The music was written from the start to be interactive and dynamic rather than based on specific cues. To achieve this, Wintory had to play the game extensively and repeatedly to get a sense for what players would experience and what would best match the mood. Similar to Wintory's work on Journey, the first track written was the main theme "To Know, Water" and further tracks were created over the game's three year development based on that theme. The track titles from the second piece onwards were taken either from an English translation of the Enūma Eliš, or were named after marine creatures featured in levels where the tracks featured. The credits theme was purely choral, with the lyrics sung at normal speed.

The score's instrumental element began with using a harp as its base, with a choir being used later. The choir sections, performed by the London Voices Choir were used to represent the spiritual elements of the story. The lyrics were the first ten lines of the Enūma Eliš used for each track with drawn-out syllables to sound alien. More instrumentation was needed, with a full orchestra eventually being incorporated. As with his work on Journey and Assassin's Creed Syndicate, he used a soloist alongside an ensemble orchestra: in this case, the solo instrument was an oboe. The oboe solos were performed by Kristin Naigus, whom Wintory had heard performing a cover of a track from Journey on YouTube. The music for early levels went through extensive redrafts with an estimated fifty minutes of music being discarded for five minutes left in-game, though pieces of later sections came together quickly and remained generally unchanged. The Diver's theme formed a recurring leitmotif throughout the score. Wintory worked closely with Abzû's sound designer Steve Green and created a music-based story that flowed alongside and worked with the visual narrative of Abzû.

The official soundtrack was released as a digital album through Bandcamp and iTunes on August 2, 2016. A physical edition was released on October 22 through Varèse Sarabande. The album included a long piece of music in the track "Balaenoptera Musculus" that was not used in-game, but was included by Wintory as he liked the piece. Music reviewers were generally positive about the soundtrack album. The soundtrack later won the 2017 Game Audio Network Guild's "Best Original Soundtrack Album" award. The soundtrack was also nominated at the 2017 BAFTA Games Awards in the "Music" category, but lost to Virginia. For his work on Abzû, Wintory won the 2016 International Film Music Critics Association award for "Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media", making his second win in a row. The score was also nominated at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards in the "Original Score – Video Game" category. Reviewers of the game also gave unanimous praise to the soundtrack, positively comparing it to that of Journey.

Track list

## Reception

In its debut week on Steam, the game reached \#9 in platform sales charts. Abzû was at \#18 among the best-selling titles on PlayStation Store's PS4 charts for August, being the third best-selling new title that month behind Batman: The Telltale Series (#7) and No Man's Sky (#1). The PS4 and PC versions received scores of 78 and 83 on aggregate site Metacritic based on 19 and 72 reviews respectively, each denoting "generally favorable" reception. Abzû was nominated at The Game Awards 2016 in the "Best Art Direction" category; at the Golden Joystick Awards in the "Best Original Game", "Best Visual Design" and "PlayStation Game of the Year" categories; and at the 2017 BAFTA Games Awards in the "Artistic Achievement" category.

Martin Gaston of Eurogamer called it "a mechanically simple game, but a pleasurable one"—while finding early sections barren and the camera awkward at times, he enjoyed the gameplay's simplicity. Scott Butterworth of GameSpot found the gameplay lacking in variety, but otherwise praised the game's immersive qualities. Justin McElroy of Polygon felt that the gameplay, while generally enjoyable, was undermined by a lack of player interaction. Zack Furniss of Destructoid found swimming easy and enjoyable despite simplistic controls, and found that the experience benefited from its short length. Matthew Kato of Game Informer found the lack of interaction was balanced out by the sheer spectacle of environments and swimming with marine life. Jose Otero of IGN enjoyed the continued rewards of exploration despite its minimal amount of gameplay mechanics, while James Davenport of PC Gamer enjoyed both the exploration and the ability to meditate and observe the environment. Tom Orry of VideoGamer.com enjoyed the gameplay but disliked its lack of seamless environments, and David Roberts of GamesRadar+ felt that the game's biggest strength was its simplicity when compared to other titles on the market at the time.

The visuals and environments were generally praised for their artistic style and beauty, with many citing the graphics as one of the game's main strengths; Butterworth positively compared the graphics to the cel-shaded style of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Otero called the game's art direction "fantastic" and praised the consistent framerate, while Orry praised the art style and graphics despite the simplistic models making Abzû appear "basic looking". Reactions to the story were generally positive, with many critics calling it an emotive experience, with many noting its narrative as being mostly open to interpretation: Kato compared the game's themes to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some reviewers were less positive: Furniss felt that Abzû's story was not as grand as its developers touted, while Davenport found it overly familiar to the point of being cliche. Multiple reviewers favorably compared the artistic style and gameplay experience to Journey and the previous work of Thatgamecompany. Roberts in particular noted that some players might find it too similar to the likes of Journey.

2016 video game

Video games developed in the United States