Anna Wintour has dined with a lot of fashion plates in her day, but tonight's guest of honor, Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama, is enough to make even the perenially icy-cool editor a little giddy with excitement.
Following the taping for his upcoming appearance on "The View," the president will join Wintour and other rumored fashion notables like Calvin Klein and Donna Karan for a fund-raiser to benefit the Democratic National Committee. The dinner, hosted by Wintour in her Sullivan Street home, is a follow-up of sorts to the party she threw in June 2008, in which the soon-to-be First Lady Michelle Obama was the guest of honor. And it's a steep one at that—tickets to tonight's event are fetching a whopping $30,000 (whereas the previous event commanded a "mere" $10,000).
Wintour has always been a powerful figure in her industry, but, perhaps largely due to her portrayal in last year's documentary, "The September Issue," her influence seems to have increased exponentially. The inception of Fashion's Night Out and this summer's resurgence of resort collections are just two examples. In fact, dinner with the president seems like an almost unsurprising extension of Wintour's "power grid," especially as whispers of a possible ambassadorship are floating around.
One big question remains: Will the woman who famously told Oprah to shed some weight before her 1998 Vogue cover shoot impart similarly stern advice to the prez about his mom jeans?
