NEW YORK (AP) — Anna Wintour ended weeks of fashion-world speculation Tuesday when she named Chloe Malle her successor as head of editorial content at Vogue — but the most powerful person in the business isn’t going anywhere.
Wintour, 75, remains chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director of American Vogue and the magazine’s 27 other editions. Malle, editor of Vogue.com, may be stepping into Wintour’s low-heeled slingbacks but she’ll report to the original wearer while taking over day-to-day editorial and creative operations at the U.S. edition. And gone is the storied “editor-in-chief” title that Wintour held for nearly 40 years.
Malle, 39, is the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and the late French director Louis Malle. She joined Vogue as social editor in 2011, moved on to contributing editor in 2016 and has held her current position since 2023. She steered all digital content for Vogue. In June, Malle interviewed the then-Lauren Sánchez ahead of her wedding to Jeff Bezos.
“Vogue has already shaped who I am, now I’m excited at the prospect of shaping Vogue,” Malle said in the announcement.
Malle had emerged as a front-runner
Since late June, when Wintour told staff that she was giving up her title, a handful of names to succeed her were tossed around. Among them were Eva Chen, vice president of fashion partnerships at Meta; Nicole Phelps, global director of Vogue Runway and Vogue Business; and Sara Moonves, editor-in-chief of W magazine.
Other names that floated about soon after the job went up for grabs are Vogue’s fashion news director Mark Holgate, British Vogue’s head of editorial content Chioma Nnadi and Vogue.com’s digital style director Leah Faye Cooper. Malle and Nnadi co-host the Vogue podcast, “The Run-Through with Vogue.”
The news that Malle got the job comes ahead of the latest round of shows at New York Fashion Week, starting next week, and amid the Venice Film Festival, which includes a new documentary about her father. Her appointment is effective immediately. Malle’s mother, funnily enough, once played Vogue editor-in-chief Enid Frick on “Sex and the City” with some very Wintour-like characteristics.
Malle, a Brown graduate and mother of two young kids, has been outspoken about her liberal-leaning politics, just as Wintour has.
“I actually love working with Anna, because I love someone telling me exactly what needs to be done and exactly what she thinks about something,” Malle said in a recent profile by the Independent. “There’s no indecision. There’s no ambiguity.”
Vogue’s past, and future
Vogue was founded as a society journal 134 years ago. After Condé Nast acquired it in 1909, it became a traditional industry mainstay with models on the cover, static close-up photography done in studios and a focus on high fashion and heavy makeup.
Wintour, a risk-taker who took over the title in 1988, saw the mass appeal in a broader approach. She expanded international editions, elevated fashion’s connections to pop culture and began putting celebrities, athletes, music stars and politicians on the covers. Wintour went for a high-low approach to fashion and favored storytelling in photo shoots done outdoors.
She embraced then-emerging designers, including Marc Jacobs, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, through initiatives like the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. And she transformed the Met Gala from a small, private fundraiser to a global event and fashion’s most important night.
Considered the fashion bible, American Vogue has had several notable editors throughout its history. Preceding Wintour were Diana Vreeland (1963 to 1971) and Grace Mirabella (1971 to 1988), among others.
“Chloe has proven often that she can find the balance between American Vogue’s long, singular history and its future on the front lines of the new,” Wintour said in the statement on Malle’s appointment.
Under Malle’s leadership, direct traffic to Vogue.com doubled, with massive growth across all key metrics, according to the statement on her new job. Site traffic now consistently reaches 14.5 million unique visitors monthly.
The retirement of the editor-in-chief title brings Vogue in line with changes throughout the Condé Nast universe. When Radhika Jones stepped down as Vanity Fair’s editor-in-chief earlier this year, her role was replaced by a “global editorial director,” found in Mark Guiducci. (Guiducci himself was tapped from Vogue, where he served most recently as creative editorial director.) American Vogue joins most every market where Condé Nast operates in the change to a head of editorial content, who reports to a global editorial director.
Though Vogue has editions spanning the world, from Britain and France to China and India, Malle’s focus will be on American Vogue.
Anna Wintour’s own future
As Condé Nast’s chief content officer, Wintour will continue to oversee every brand, including Vogue, Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, AD, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour, Bon Appétit, Tatler, World of Interiors, Allure and more, with the exception of The New Yorker, where editor David Remnick retains control.
Wintour herself does have a boss. She reports to Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast.
“In effect, the addition of a new editorial lead for Vogue US will allow Wintour greater time and flexibility to support the other global markets that Condé Nast serves,” said a Vogue statement in June.
“And it goes without saying,” Wintour joked back then, “that I plan to remain Vogue’s tennis and theater editor in perpetuity.” She’s been a regular at this year’s US Open, as in past years.
She’ll remain at the helm of the annual Met Gala, a major fundraiser for the fashion wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And she’ll stay involved in Vogue World, a traveling fashion and cultural event the magazine began in 2022.
Wintour explained the editor-in-chief shift this way:
“Anybody in a creative field knows how essential it is never to stop growing in one’s work. When I became the editor of Vogue, I was eager to prove to all who might listen that there was a new, exciting way to imagine an American fashion magazine,” she told staff.
“Now, I find that my greatest pleasure is helping the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas, supported by a new, exciting view of what a major media company can be,” she said.
