I worked for Harper’s Bazaar. They fired me. I recommend that you all get fired; it’s a great learning experience.
Interpretation
Getting fired can be a valuable opportunity for personal and professional growth.
In this quote, Anna Wintour emphasizes that being fired, although often seen as a negative experience, can actually lead to significant personal and career development. She suggests that setbacks can pave the way for new insights, resilience, and opportunities, encouraging others to embrace such challenges positively.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience in the workplace.
It would be ridiculous to ignore the speed and possibilities of the digital landscape - you absolutely need to have fast-moving news online, but if you want to build a large audience over time, you absolutely have to take a risk on the big challenging stuff.
With all the new media outlets out there, with all the noise, a voice of authority and calm like Vogue becomes more important than ever. The more eyes on fashion, the more opinions about fashion, the more exploration of fashion around the world, the better it is for Vogue. Vogue is like Nike or Coca-Cola—this huge global brand. I want to enhance it, I want to protect it, and I want it to be part of the conversation.
'Vogue' and 'Vice' may appear to some to see the world through different lenses. But in my view, both are fearless and breathtaking, with unquenchable curiosity and vigor.
Fashion is not beautiful, neither is it ugly. Why should it be either? Fashion is fashion.
I think what I often see is that people are frightened about fashion. Because it scares them or makes them feel insecure, so they just put it down. On the whole people that may say the mean things about our world I think that’s usually because they feel, in some ways, excluded or, you know, not a part of ‘the cool group’ so as a result they just mock it.
I think we're living, in terms of media, in a very democratic age, but I think that we still look at everything through the lens of 'Vogue' and through our own point of view.
Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds.
There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.
To forget the wrongs you receive, is to remedy them.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
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