Chloe Malle will become American Vogue’s first head of editorial content, publisher Condé Nast confirmed.
The news is a key milestone in a years-long editorial restructuring at Vogue, bringing all the editions of the title under Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour’s leadership; previously the magazine’s international editions had each been run autonomously by their own individual editor-in-chiefs without editorial oversight from New York.
While Wintour, 75, is making way for a new editorial leader at Vogue, this hardly marks the end of her 37-year reign at the title. She will still oversee all international editions of Vogue as well as Condé Nast’s other titles, (with the exception of The New Yorker), as the company’s chief content officer for Condé Nast.
The fact that Malle, 39, will still report to Wintour in her new role and spent so many years under her leadership are both signs that a revolution at the title is unlikely. Still, her appointment marks the start of a new era at Vogue; Malle told The New York Times she feels it’s important to make her own vision for the magazine clear. She aims to make the print product feel more like a collector’s item, with fewer editions and thicker paper, and become more focused on Vogue’s website, catering less to a general digital audience and more to a fashion-specific one.
“Placing my own stamp on this is going to be the most important part of this being a success,” Malle told the Times. “There has to be a noticeable shift that makes this mine.”
Malle, the daughter of actress Candice Bergen (who, ironically, once played a Vogue editor on “Sex and the City”) and the late director Louis Malle, is an insider pick. Since 2023, she’s served as the editor of Vogue.com, but her tenure with Vogue overall goes back much further, having been employed by or contributing to the magazine in some capacity since 2011. Most recently, she’s served as a co-host of Vogue’s The Run-Through podcast, interviewed Lauren Sanchez Bezos about her wedding and spearheaded a canine-themed digital edition called Dogue that was a hit online.
“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 a statement. “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.”
Since Wintour’s June announcement that the search was underway for a new day-to-day editorial leader at the publication, speculation has abounded among fashion insiders. Various media outlets reported Malle was a top candidate for the role, with other names said to be in the running included Eva Chen, Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships and the final editor of Lucky magazine; Sara Mooves, editor-in-chief of W and Nicole Phelps, who runs Vogue Runway and Vogue Business.