Things I Believe With Perfect Faith About Anna Wintour’s Weeklong Affair With Bob Marley

by Mallory Ortberg · March 17, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-03-17 at 9.48.28 AMFrom the Old Loves tumblr:

“In 1975 while working as a junior fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar, Anna Wintour was introduced to a visiting Bob Marley by one of her boyfriend’s friends.

It’s a longstanding rumor that Wintour disappeared with Marley for a week, spending nearly all her time backstage at his shows or at his hotel.”

Things I Believe About Their Weeklong Affair

1. That Anna called him “Robert,” and continues to do so whenever she makes reference to him.

2. That when Anna does refer to him, it is rare, and never comes with an explanation. She’ll be having dinner with three or four good friends and mention casually that “Robert loved squid-ink pasta,” then refuse to elaborate or acknowledge that she’s said anything significant.

3. That Anna was not invited to Bob Marley’s funeral and spent the day inventing that thing where models layer designer vests over T-shirts.

4. That Anna pinned back her bangs at least once during their week together.

5. That Anna responded to one of several anxious telegrams from her editors at Harper’s Bazaar wondering where she was with “FINDING MYSELF.”

6. That Bob Marley was absolutely the love of Anna’s life, but that she was not the love of his; that she accepted and understood this from the first minute to the last of the brief time they had together.

7. That during a late-night drive to the beach, one of Bob’s songs came on the radio, and Anna said “This is nice, who is this ah-tist?” and Bob just smiled and didn’t say anything.

8. That once a year Anna sends everyone in the Vogue offices early, pulls down her blinds, and plays one of his albums while slowly eating a piece of carrot cake. I believe that she prefers Exodus to Uprising.

9. That Bob Marley steadfastly refused to play tennis or come to a fashion show with Anna; that he was perfectly calm but perfectly firm about it, and that he was the first and last man to stand up to her without an ounce of malice or resentment in his heart.

10. That there exists a single photograph of the two of them together, and that no one has seen it but Anna and the employee at the Canadian one-hour photo-mat who developed it.

11. That Anna asked once, during their week of eternity, if she could come back to Jamaica with him, and that Bob Marley told her gently that it wouldn’t be the same, and that this was the last and only thing she ever asked of him, and that after that she never asked a question she didn’t already know the answer to.

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36 Comments

  1. Danielle B. +32

    NopeNopeNopeNope. Also I wish everyone commemorated past relationships this way.

    (I also believe if she’d gone with him perhaps we wouldn’t have Devil Wears Prada which is both sad for the public but maybe would have been good for her.)

    1. leahrobinn +12

      Or more to the point, we wouldn’t have ‘Ayn Rand’s The Devil Wears Prada’.

  2. BobOfSeals +82

    “…he was the first and last man to stand up to her without an ounce of malice or resentment in his heart.”

    I am dead. Here lies BobofSeals.

  5. britomartian +137

    I really hope Anna has a friend who’s hip enough to read the Toast and brave enough to email this to her.

  7. cosetthetable +56

    “2. That when Anna does refer to him, it is rare, and never comes with an explanation.”

    Absolutely what my mother does re: her first marriage. Usually happened while I was in the shower and she invited herself into the bathroom. See: “I looked at the cast list of the play you’re in, and my first husband’s son is in your play!” (Which was the moment at which I found out that my mother’s first husband had children, and that I went to school with them.)

    I mean, I say “usually”, but it happened twice. But given that I think she brought him up unprompted all of about 4 times in my presence, I stick with my word choice.

  8. ppyajunebug +118

    I want this to become a sort-of sequel film to The Devil Wears Prada, so we can have Meryl Streep playing the fictionalized Anna Wintour recalling a week spent with a fictionalized Bob played by Michael B. Jordan and her younger self played by Emma Stone. Casting choices are not set in stone, please feel free to submit your own suggestions.

    3. AfterPlumcake +60

      Grace Gummer –Streep’s daughter– would be the obvious choice for what is, with only a little bit of hyperbole, the greatest film idea of all time. Putting a traditionally beautiful and soft-looking girl in the role would take away some of the pathos that comes from the subtext of how demoralizing being a plain-faced woman in the beauty industry would have been for her.

    4. espritdelescalier +12

      I was going to cast Rosamund Pike but she’s about a decade older than Anna would have been then. Maybe she can play her in the scene where they meet again by chance at a party and exchange meaningful glances across the room?

  9. Linette +60

    Sometimes you find out that famous people you have only known when they were either old or dead have had affairs with one another, and though you have never given significant thought to either party before, that affair suddenly seems the most right and just event that has ever occurred in the universe.

    This is one of those times.

    All other times occurred reading Anne Helen Peterson’s Scandals of Classic Hollywood.

    1. Unreadaethel +56

      With an exciting bonus when you found out that Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde totally did it.

    1. deleted182847 +11

      (Yes, that means Stanley Tucci would bust in during “Exodus” to borrow wine)

  13. Social +50

    If this was true I would never criticize Anna Wintour again. I would understand the depths of her suffering, and how it made her this way.

  14. tubatoothpaste +16

    Welp, add me to the list of Toasties who’ve fallen down the Old Loves rabbit hole and can’t get out.

  16. johnwthompson +14

    Oh oh, do the fabled meeting of Marley and Prince next! The latter was apparently wearing a diaper / loincloth and Bob was said to be freaked out

  17. twasbrillo +10

    I love this utterly.

    But do want to note that Bob’s gallantry left something to be desired, though he may not have reached Gene Simmons/Wilt Chamberlain levels of hound-doggery.

    His wife, interviewed for that documentary a few years ago, was pressed to comment on his appetites. She sorta indicated that expecting fidelity out of a man like Bob was ridiculous, and possibly a little bit racist: Monogamy is a concept for wimpy Western beta males. A Nubian god like Bob could handle a harem (and, presumably, should).

  22. Unreadaethel

    I think it may also have been my first one. However, I found out about Walt/Oscar in a college literature class, so I get to be a smug history!shipper hipster.

  23. jennascherer +7

    Oh my gosh.

    My friend and I were standing by the fountain in Madison Square Park once and Anna Wintour walked serenely by, in this fabulous paisley coat. She proceeded to walk straight through the mob of people in line at Shake Shack, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

  24. OrpheustheMute +7

    HOW AM I SO EMOTIONAL OVER THIS PIECE EVEN THOUGH I DO NOT PARTICULARLY CARE FOR EITHER BOB MARLEY OR ANNA WINTOUR

  25. jamaicanmecrazy +1

    Sorry to say that Bob, as a Rastafarian, would not have had squid ink pasta at any point.

    1. Baz

      There are of assumptions about bob.. This is one of them..
      Bob occasionally ate animal products. He also had a passion for Guiness….

      Judge not…