Vogue’s new editor faces uphill battle to revive – Business News
This 12 months, Vogue’s September problem is touchdown with a totally different form of thud.
Anna Wintour named her successor as editor for Vogue’s prestigious US version on Tuesday, however media and fashion insiders shrugged because the shiny faces declining readership — and relevance.
The feared editrix, the icy inspiration for Meryl Streep’s cold and calculating fashion editor in “The Devil Wears Prada,” handpicked longtime social media editor Chloe Malle — the 39-year-old daughter of actress Candice Bergen and the late movie director Louis Malle — because the new head of editorial content material at Vogue US.
Chloe Malle has been named the new head of editorial content material at Vogue US. Instagram/chloemalle
Industry insiders famous that whereas Malle brings stability and a few well-known contacts, she doesn’t necesarily have the chops to grow the fashion bible’s business to counterbalance systemic readership losses within the magazine industry.
“Let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter who they hire at Vogue, it’s over,” one source informed The Post.
“They could have hired Carrie Bradshaw from ‘Sex and the City’ and it would still be over.”
The shiny’s decline can actually be weighed by the slimmed-down measurement of its famed September problem, which in its heyday ballooned to practically 1,000 pages. This 12 months’s model, that includes Emma Stone on the duvet, got here in at 365 pages.
A Vogue spokesperson informed The Post that income from digital and occasions make up 70% of Vogue’s business. They embody main occasions like Vogue World, The Met Ball and Forces of Fashion.
The shift in strategy by the Conde Nast-owned company was linked to the decline in print and the magazine’s need to deal with new avenues to drum up business, the rep added.
Anna Wintour attends the 2025 Meta Gala in May. AFP by way of Getty Images
In her pitch to Condé Nast, which additionally owns The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and Wired, Malle mentioned Vogue ought to print simply a handful of points every year as an alternative of a month-to-month magazine, in accordance to The New York Times.
Printed on thick, high-quality paper and tied to particular themes or cultural moments, these magazines might function collectibles, mentioned Malle, who is anticipated to publish her first print problem subsequent 12 months.
“Placing my own stamp on this is going to be the most important part of this being a success. There has to be a noticeable shift that makes this mine,” Malle informed the Times, including that a new Vogue editor can’t simply churn out “Anna lite.”
But the thought isn’t novel — magazines have been doing it for many years amid falling print readership — and received’t possible be enough to pull Vogue back to its glory days when it boasted lots of of promoting pages in its September problem.
“The model of monthly issues doesn’t seem to work anymore,” one other source informed The Post. “Nobody is buying magazines. I do think that each magazine needs to feel very special. Why else would you read the magazine? Themed-issues can seem very special to the reader.”
While Malle is reimagining Vogue’s print, Wintour, who has held the title for 37 years, plans to keep in her similar workplace simply down the corridor, and work on increasing the model’s world attain.
Chloe Malle, then Vogue’s social editor, at a post-Met Gala early morning picture assembly in 2014. Anne Wermiel/NY Post
Wintour, 75, will stay Malle’s direct supervisor as chief content material officer at Condé Nast and Vogue’s world editorial director.
“The truth is that no one’s going to replace Anna,” Malle informed the New York Times.
Malle mentioned she’s “very happy” that Wintour will stay within earshot – however she admitted that “some people who were interested in this job were sort of daunted by the idea of Anna being down the hall.”
In remarks to employees members on Tuesday, Wintour acknowledged the unusual set-up, referring to herself as Malle’s “mentor but also…her student.”
Chloe Malle, Virginia Smith and Nicole Phelps (left to proper) on the 2024 Meta Gala. Getty Images
The new US editor is considered as a more relaxed and outgoing character than Wintour. Malle is understood to enhance her workplace with Lego fashions of Disney villains constructed by her 5-year-old son and has danced with musician Jon Batiste at a Tommy Hilfiger runway show.
“People in the fashion industry and at Vogue respect Chloe,” the fashion insider who is aware of Malle informed The Post, including that she is a “firm” however “very personable” chief.
The source added that Condé Nast, which is in perpetual cost-cutting mode, was possible ready to keep away from shelling out the large bucks that include touchdown a greater title.
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The Vogue rep wouldn’t touch upon Malle’s wage.
Vogue’s web site might additionally use an overhaul, Malle admitted, focusing much less on trending information tales and more on witty, in-depth options that appeal to “a more direct, smaller, healthier audience.”
The digital website rushed out a pre-written story about Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce – but it surely was the magazine’s evaluation of her diamond ring that really carried out higher, Malle mentioned.
Emma Stone on the duvet of Vogue’s September problem. Jamie Hawkesworth
Identifying more as a journalist than as a fashionista, Malle has written main profiles for Vogue – not too long ago receiving death threats for her digital cowl story on Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who married Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in an extravagant Venice ceremony in June.
“I do think there is an element of endorsement with a Vogue cover, and I do think that it is worth taking a calculated risk,” Malle informed the New York Times.
“You want something to be a moment, and that was a huge moment for us,” she mentioned. “That was what everyone was talking about. And we had that, and we owned it.”
She declined to touch upon whether or not she would ever put Melania Trump on the duvet of Vogue.
As the web site’s editor, Malle helped the location break WNBA information and employed Kennedy inheritor Jack Schlossberg, recognized for his wild social media rants, as a political correspondent during final 12 months’s presidential election.
Malle calls herself a “proud ‘nepo baby’” – saying it will be “delusional to say otherwise.”
“I will say, though, that it has always made me work much harder. It has been a goal for a lot of my life to prove that I’m more than Candice Bergen’s daughter, or someone who grew up in Beverly Hills,” she informed the Times.
