Last night, we read the WSJ. profile on Anna Wintour with great interest. While there isn’t anything officially startling in the article, there are some nuggets that deserve a bit of chatter:

Harvey Weinstein + Bernard Arnault=Halston?
“When I wasn’t doing so well, Anna would throw a party and put me next to Bernard Arnault,” Weinstein told WSJ. He also said that several business deals came out of the introduction. Could Arnault have provided capital for Halston? In Cathy Horyn’s 2007 piece for T the movie mogul says as much, revealing that Arnault is an investor in the Weinstein Company.

Baz Luhrmann + Carey Mulligan=The Great Gatsby
Wintour’s adoration for Carey Mulligan is well-documented, so it’s not surprising the editor’s friend Baz Luhrmann chose the ingenue to star in his next big flick, The Great Gatsby. From WSJ.: “‘I always talk to Anna about what I’m up to,’ he says, referring to plans for his next film, an adaptation of The Great Gatsby, ‘and I always listen to what she has to say.’”

Fashion’s Night Out=Not Going Anywhere
It arguably doesn’t generate much money, but the industry, and the city, is still backing Wintour’s Fashion’s Night Out initiative. If anything, it’s a great way to get people talking about fashion. “Maybe you can’t really put a figure on Wintour’s economic impact, but it’s a very big number,” says Terry Lundgren, CEO of Macy’s.

Kim Basinger on May 1991 Vogue=Seminal Moment in Fashion Magazines
We knew Wintour was the first to regularly put celebrities on the covers of magazines, but we didn’t know her choice of Basinger was such a seminal moment. (To be fair, Basinger covered British Vogue in 1989 under editor extraordinaire Liz Tilberis, and Vogue Paris in 1987 under editor Colombe Pringle.)

The story also notes Wintour’s influence over Bernard Arnault’s decision to bring Marc Jacobs and John Galliano into the LVMH fold, as well as her role in Gucci’s acquisition of Bottega Veneta and Michael Kors’s partnership with Sportswear International (and probably LVMH-owned Celine). But Wintour’s real genius isn’t in her individual choices, it’s in her overall outlook: “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.”

You can read the full piece here.