The Future of Vogue

After holding the position for 37 years, Dame Anna Wintour’s decision to appoint Chloe Malle as the new editor-in-chief of American Vogue has sparked controversy. This follows accusations that Malle, the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and Louis Malle, a French film director,  is a “nepo baby”.

The critics who have labelled Malle as undeserving of the role fail to recognise the hard work and effort she has put into climbing the ranks at Vogue

This decision comes at a pivotal point for Vogue, when it is being forced to ‘redefine’ itself in order to stay not just relevant, but alive, since readership and interest in traditional fashion outlets continues to decline. Dwindling subscriptions have only been exacerbated by the backlash Vogue faced after using an AI model in its August print edition.

However, the critics who have labelled Malle as undeserving of the role fail to recognise the hard work and effort she has put into climbing the ranks at Vogue. She started her career writing about property for the New York Observer and worked her way up the Vogue ranks for 14 years, becoming the social editor at Vogue at age 25 and later the head of Vogue.com, as well as hosting The Run Through (Vogue magazine’s podcast). Her valuable contributions to Vogue include the photoshoot with Naomi Biden for her White House wedding in 2022, which Malle secured.

Chloe Malle is not afraid to support political causes, publicly supporting and campaigning for Democratic causes. This political involvement mirrors that of her predecessor. Dame Anna’s work at Vogue ‘reinvented’ it at the time; she was sent to America to shake things up, after running British Vogue for two years. She definitely succeeded, with her first Vogue cover in October 1988 leading to the printers questioning whether Vogue had sent the wrong image to print. However, the lesser-known model, Michaela Bercu, wearing jeans on the cover was just one example of Anna Wintour making fashion more accessible and inspiring a generation of creatives. As Wintour claimed, “It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups” of the time and established a new era of Vogue. In her first year as editor-in-chief, Dame Anna also put Madonna on the front cover, the first celebrity to feature, demonstrating her wider mission to merge the worlds of fashion and entertainment.

In an era racing towards digitisation, Malle’s role isn’t that dissimilar from what Wintour’s was when she was appointed as editor-in-chief

It was anticipated that there would not be any major changes straight away following the change in leadership to Chloe Malle. This is largely due to the fact that Anna Wintour still oversees the content for Condé Nast (including Vogue, GQ, Wired and Tatler), a role to which she was appointed in 2020. However, some people are already concerned by the recent closure of Teen Vogue, one of Chloe Malle’s first major moves in her new role. In 2025, the majority of Condé Nast’s most read stories were from the teen magazine. The teen magazine being absorbed into Vogue.com was “strongly condemned” by Condé Nast’s union and the NewsGuild of New York, who described it as “clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most.” The move happened just one day before the New York mayoral election, which former Teen Vogue reporter Emily Bloch described as convenient.

In an era racing towards digitisation, Malle’s role isn’t that dissimilar from what Wintour’s was when she was appointed as editor-in-chief. Both were tasked with ensuring the relevance of Vogue, whilst being forced to navigate new and constantly developing worlds. Anna Wintour, often recognised by her signature look of sunglasses and a bobbed haircut, was a pioneering force in terms of merging the fashion and entertainment spheres. She transformed US Vogue into a centre of popular and celebrity culture. As Marian Kwei, a stylist and contributor to Vogue, told BBC Radio 4’s Today, “[Wintour] took away the elitism that was in fashion, and brought a democratisation’. It remains to be seen whether Malle will prove her critics wrong and revive Vogue as Wintour did decades ago.