Among the world’s preeminent fashion magazines, W began humbly — if you can believe it, given its enormous size, weight, and scope today. At first an unassuming society page, it evolved and grew over the next 40 years to occupy a unique, enviable place in fashion and lifestyle publishing. Fully formed, W is now an opulent mix of the high brow and the avant-garde.

W is where photographers take the biggest risks of their careers and where writers pen their most erudite stories on celebrity, art, design — and of course fashion. It’s a constantly reconstituted swirl of glamour, where editors look like cover stars and cover stars hang out with photogs. Take, for instance, the magazine’s anniversary party at Gramercy Park Hotel last week, where the likes of Iman, Miranda Kerr, Patrick Demarchelier, Vanessa Traina, and Alan Cumming milled and swilled.

Solidifying, literally, W’s place in the pantheon of fashion glossies, “W: The First 40 Years” (Abrams) is an ambitious new anthology of its spectacular four-decade run. Which, in many ways, is only just beginning, as Stefano Tonchi, the magazine and book’s made-in-Italy editor, explains…

Lee Carter: Congratulations on the book. It’s phenomenal.

Stefano Tonchi: I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s not easy to condense 40 years into one book.

What’s the first thing you think about when you embark on a book like this?

Well, I think photography. I think about our heritage in fashion photography, making news and being there first. That means selecting photographers before anybody else, giving them a big chance, a place to express themselves and put out some of their most memorable work. That’s the tradition of this magazine. It was interesting because if you go to the archives and look at 40 years, you kind of measure yourself against it.

I’m sure. Forty years is a long time and you’ve been there for two of those, right?

Yes, I’ve been here for two years exactly. Actually I was kind of surprised myself to see how much of what we had done in the last two years is in the book. I didn’t plan it.

How do you see yourself fitting into the magazine’s arc, long and illustrious as it is?

I think we’ve been trying these last two years to fit in with the history of the magazine, to express a modern, updated version of its mission. In the book’s introduction and foreword that [the magazine’s publisher] Mr. Fairchild did for us, he really talks about the mission, this kind of look into the life of the rich and famous, and the nightlife of people that we admire. That is what we are still doing. And trying to get there first. That was one of his obsessions. If we look at just the people we put on our covers, for example Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain — two people who are now in use everywhere, but we were the first to put them on our covers. It is the same with Rooney Mara, who we put in our anniversary issue. Again, we were probably the first American publication to put her on the cover. That was in February two years ago. I think being first is an important part of this magazine, trying to discover and enter in the house and the mind of people that are very significant today. People who are significant today are not the same people who were significant 40 years ago!