Chloe Malle has taken over as Vogue‘s head of editorial content after Anna Wintour stepped down from her position as editor in chief earlier this year.
“Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled — and awed — to be part of that,” Malle, 39, said in a statement on Tuesday, September 2. “I also feel incredibly fortunate to still have Anna just down the hall as my mentor.”
She continued: “I’ve spent my career at Vogue working in roles across every platform — from print to digital, audio to video, events and social media. I love the title, I love the content we create and I love the editors who create it. Vogue has already shaped who I am, now I’m excited at the prospect of shaping Vogue.”
Wintour, 75, addressed her decision to elevate Malle in her own statement.
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“When it came to hiring someone to edit American Vogue, letting me turn my attention more intensely to Vogue’s multifaceted growth across its global audiences and publications and events like the Met Gala and Vogue World, I knew I had one chance to get it right,” Wintour told team members on Tuesday. “At a moment of change both within fashion and outside it, Vogue must continue to be both the standard-bearer and the boundary-pushing leader.”
Wintour praised Malle’s past work at Vogue, adding, “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. I am so excited to continue working with her, as her mentor but also as her student, while she leads us and our audiences where we’ve never been before.”
She concluded: “Chloe has long been one of Vogue’s secret weapons when it comes to tracking fashion. But she is not so buried in the industry that she misses the world: Like the best designers, she understands fashion’s big picture, its role shaping not just what’s on the runway but the changing fabric of modern life. Although she is no stranger to the glamour of red carpets, her talent has been for original thinking and hard work.”
Malle began working at Vogue in 2011 as the social editor before becoming the editor of several books for the magazine. She was a contributing editor from 2016 to 2023, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, WWD and more.
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The announcement about Malle’s promotion came two months after news of Wintour’s departure broke in June. At the time, WWD reported that Wintour told her staff that she’s stepping down. According to Daily Mail, she’s still planning to serve as Vogue’s global editor and Condé Nast’s global chief content officer.
Throughout her nearly four decades at Vogue, Wintour evolved the magazine to not only include fashion but also pop culture, art, technology and more. Her first celebrity cover featured Madonna in 1989 — only one year after she took on the position — and she later showcased Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and more.
In 2012, Wintour reflected on her first-ever cover, which featured Israeli model Michaela Bercu. In the photo shoot, Bercu, now 55, modeled a haute couture Christian Lacroix sweater featuring a bedazzled cross on her chest while posing in a street. Wintour ended up loving the photo so much that she made it the cover, not knowing that the photo would go viral. Observers and critics shared varying interpretations of the photo, with some thinking it was a religious statement or an intentional mix of “high and low” fashion.
“But none of these things was true,” Wintour wrote on the magazine’s site. “I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that.”
Wintour also plays a huge role in the annual Met Gala, from helping choose the theme to executing the guest list. Each year, she serves as a cochair alongside more A-listers and oversees the evening.
