By Rachel Mercer, News Correspondent

Over the last forty years, the fashion industry has emerged as a major business enterprise in America. Fashion houses and celebrity designers have become household names, and television shows like ‘America’s Next Top Model’ and ‘Project Runway’ have become increasingly popular.

At the helm of this mega-ship, controlling the course and future of the entire industry sits Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. The notoriously private woman (and the inspiration for Meryl Streep’s icy character in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’) is known across the fashion world for her shrewd business sense and undeniable sense of purpose.

‘The September Issue’, directed and produced by RJ Cutler, covers the interior workings at the Vogue offices in the months leading up to the famed September 2007 issue, which was the largest in the magazine’s history, measured a whopping 840 pages and featured Sienna Miller on the cover.

As the film begins, viewers feel as though they are in privileged seats. Catching a glimpse into the practically inaccessible and glamorous world of the high-fashion industry is a treat. Anna Wintour is clearly a queen controlling her court ‘- at the flick of her wrist, a $50,000 photo shoot is cut; pursed lips signal the death of a design.’

When one of her subjects is asked: ‘Would you say that she is the high priestess of this religion that is fashion?’ the response is immediate: ‘I’d say she’s the Pope.”

Grace Coddington, alternatively, is the creative director of Vogue whose talent always seems to be pushed to the back burner when it comes to final production with the issue. Tension between the two bubbles to the surface practically every other scene. Coddington, whose work is nothing short of beautiful with its opulent, imaginative, fantastical, and choicely considered compositions, color and style, always seems to be under-appreciated by the editor ‘- whose criticisms seem harsh and never-ending.’

This movie is about more than a catty rivalry between the Wintour and Coddington. It is more than simply the story of the September issue of Vogue. Rather, it is a story about two women who have been wasted by a business that is now being flogged by the present economic conditions.

During a one-on-one interview, Wintour reveals the constant internal struggle she has to deal with: ‘ never being taken seriously by her own siblings or her own daughter, who declares that she will ‘never understand it.’ Wintour resigns to always be fighting for an industry that people tend to ridicule or find irrelevant, which presumably causes a sense of hopelessness within her.’

Coddington also suffers as a former model whose dreams were dashed after a car accident. She’s now 40 years into a career in the fashion industry where she is under-appreciated.’

While she stands alone at the gardens of Versailles and says to herself ‘I think I got left behind somewhere,’ one cannot help but sympathize with a woman whose youth, looks, and talent, have all been sapped away by the whirlpool of the fashion industry.