Anna Wintour 2.0: Meet the new editor of Vogue

At the first show of New York Fashion Week on September 11, all eyes will be on the front row rather than the clothes by Michael Kors. There’s a new sheriff in town, wearing Chanel instead of a gold star (they are so last season), with the appointment of Chloe Malle as the new head of editorial content for American Vogue.

After nearly four decades of focusing on the inscrutable gaze of outgoing editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, with her signature sharp bob and sunglasses, designers will look to the amiable expression of Malle resting beneath corkscrew curls, for hints on whether their collection will make the pages of the enduring fashion magazine.

Having worked at Vogue since 2011, currently as editor of Vogue.com, the 39-year-old Malle has the necessary experience to sit in Wintour’s chair, but it’s her Hollywood pedigree that has prepared her for this close-up.

“The child of Candice Bergen and the late auteur director Louis Malle, she arrives with pop culture bona fides,” Puck journalist Lauren Sherman wrote in her announcement of the appointment. Bergen, the star of nineties sitcom Murphy Brown not only played a Vogue editor in the Sex and the City series, she appeared on the magazine cover twice as a model in 1967 and 1969.

Her father French director Malle, who died in 1995, is most well-known for the movies The Lovers and Pretty Baby, starring Brooke Shields as a 12-year-old prostitute.

Malle acknowledges her privileged background but has worked in the perfume-scented trenches at the magazine for 14 years, helping shape her vision for the future of Vogue.

“Placing my own stamp on this is going to be the most important part of this being a success,” Malle told the New York Times. “There has to be a noticeable shift that makes this mine.”

“Whoever took on this job would not succeed if what they produced was ‘Anna lite’.”

Part of Malle’s vision is moving away from a monthly schedule and timing print issues with major cultural events, such as The Met Gala.

These changes will still need to be rubber-stamped by Wintour, who will remain in her current office.

Other contenders for the coveted role included editor-in-chief of fellow Condé Nast fashion title W, Sara Moonves, daughter of Len Moonves, the disgraced former head of the CBS television network in the US, and the head of the Vogue Runway website Nicole Phelps.

The search for a new head of editorial content follows Wintour’s announcement in June that she would step back from day-to day operations of the magazine after 37 years in the top job.

“Her job really isn’t changing,” says Megha Kapoor, former head of editorial content for Vogue India, who reported to Wintour from 2021 to 2023. “She’s getting rid of one title which just sees the flattening of the editorships to the head of editorial content. It’s consolidating her power as the head of the pack across everything, particularly at a time when the Vogue brand is recalibrating what it is.”

That recent recalibration has not always been as smooth as a Valentino ballgown. In June, the magazine received criticism for publishing an online cover of Lauren Sánchez Bezos, the bride of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

The profile of Sánchez Bezos was written by Malle.

Wintour’s new Vogue title is global editorial director, along with chief content officer of Condé Nast.

“Anna’s an incredibly smart woman,” says Kapoor. “She’s setting her legacy up as someone who brought the international mastheads together. It’s a clever move and her control won’t diminish at all. More power to Anna really.”

Malle is well aware of the power structure.

“The truth is that no one’s going to replace Anna,” Malle says.

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