Vogue names Chloe Malle as new head of US version | Vogue

The largest job in style has lastly been stuffed.

Following information that Anna Wintour was stepping again as editor of American Vogue in July, Condé Nast have appointed 39-year-old journalist and Vogue staffer Chloe Malle as head of editorial content material on the American style journal. Her function is efficient instantly.

“Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled, and awed, to be part of that,” stated Malle in a press release. “I also feel incredibly fortunate to still have Anna just down the hall as my mentor.”

One of essentially the most highly effective roles within the style business, her appointment marks not only a new chapter for the journal however for Wintour herself, who will keep on in her function as chief content material officer for Condé Nast and world editorial director for the journal, permitting her to retain management of the journal, whereas not being concerned within the daily. Wintour was current on the July couture exhibits and it’s seemingly that each she and Malle shall be current for subsequent week’s New York style week, oversee the Met Gala and Vogue World occasions. But in a primary for essentially the most well-known journal on this planet, Vogue not has an editor-in-chief.

“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,” stated Wintour. “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.”

Malle was editor of Vogue.com and co-host of the podcast The Run-Through with Vogue, and is a longtime Wintour insider, having been on the journal since 2011. Responsible for editor-led newsletters, and profitable annual “witty” tentpoles reminiscent of Dogue (a canine style journal), she is extra of a broad stroke journalist than a style insider. In 2014, she advised Into the Gloss that she was “hesitant when I was interviewing, because fashion is not one of my main interests in life, and I wanted to be a writer more than an editor, but I was so seduced by the Vogue machine that I couldn’t resist”.

Still, a frontrunner since Wintour’s announcement, Malle’s appointment will come as no shock to anybody monitoring Condé Nast’s revolving door. The former editor-in-chief is thought for rewarding shut deputies with worldwide roles – Mark Guiducci, Wintour’s Vogue’s inventive editorial director, was just lately helicoptered into the highest job at Vanity Fair.

The gig was arguably up as soon as Malle coated the excessive stakes and much-discussed Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sanchez wedding ceremony in Venice earlier this yr. Given entry to the bride earlier than the ceremony and tasked with gathering further particulars within the run-up to the marriage, the duvet story adopted her 2023 interview with the couple, and each are seen as proof of her mettle when juggling excessive profile celebrities with client curiosity.

A graduate of Brown University, Malle grew up in Los Angeles and started her profession writing about property for the New York Observer. She has since written for the New York Times, Marie Claire, the Wall Street Journal and Architectural Digest. She joined Vogue within the options division 15 years in the past, and has labored throughout numerous sections and platforms on the title.

Malle can be the daughter of American actor Candice Bergen, recognized for her wry humour and icy Nordic characters each on and off the stage, and the late movie director Louis Malle, who lived in France as a result of he “didn’t like living or working in Hollywood”, in line with a 2015 interview with Bergen in Dallas News. In one other curious play between life and artwork, Bergen had a long-running cameo because the lovelorn editor of US Vogue in Sex and the City. Malle can be one of many few names to have had her beginning reported on by People journal.

It’s been nearly two months since Condé Nast first marketed the job on LinkedIn, however that hasn’t stopped the record of attainable successors to leaping from pillar to publish. According to insiders, Wintour advised interview candidates that she was after a journalist who was capable of oversee dwell content material whereas travelling and mentoring regional editors overseas.

Among the names mooted for the plum function by William Hill bookies had been the Duchess of Sussex, Kim Kardashian and Victoria Beckham. More smart names included Malle’s British counterpart, Chioma Nnadi, the Financial Times’s HTSI editor, Jo Ellison, and – in a plot ripped straight from The Devil Wears Prada – even a person. Will Welch, the 45-year-old editor of GQ, who’s credited with turning the boys’s journal from a normal curiosity man’s publication into one targeted on style and magnificence, was within the high 10 favourites.

While Wintour’s group have been in pains to substantiate that’s she not stepping again, somewhat up, hypothesis surrounding her retirement have been a scorching subject at a time of intense upheaval for the business, which is grappling with declining gross sales. Wintour has stored a gradual month-to-month circulation of over 1m over the past decade, whereas overseeing a world “digital-first” technique that has seen content material shared between world editions. It’s thought the mass restructuring sparked inner upset over the lack of editorial autonomy between every journal.

Malle is well-liked each inside and outdoors the business, and in hiring from inside the firm, Wintour will nonetheless have the ability to form the journal she’s going to at some point depart behind when she does lastly exit the corporate. Condé Nast have insisted that nothing is actually going to vary. But for essentially the most distinguished shiny journal on the shelf, Malle’s rent and Wintour’s transfer marks an finish to a really specific period for shiny magazines.