It was an announcement the industry had predicted would come for years — and yet when news broke on Thursday, June 26, that Dame Anna Wintour, 75, was stepping down as editor in chief of American Vogue after a 37 year tenure, even close insiders were taken aback.
Reports confirmed the editor, who took on the role in June 1988, announced the news during a staff meeting on the morning of Thursday, June 26. The title will now seek a new head of editorial content, while Wintour remains its publisher, Conde Nast’s, global chief content officer as well as being global editorial director at Vogue. Her role will continue overseeing Conde’s stable of magazines, which include Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest, Tatler and more.
Insiders say Wintour will oversee the hiring process of a new head of editorial content, and maintain a tight grip on future decisions of the magazine. While “she did not think the news was a big deal,” said someone close to the source, the British-born editor said to staff: “Anybody in a creative field knows how essential it is never to stop growing in one’s work. When I became the editor of Vogue, I was eager to prove to all who might listen that there was a new, exciting way to imagine an American fashion magazine.”
“Now, I find that my greatest pleasure is helping the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas, supported by a new, exciting view of what a major media company can be. And that is exactly the kind of person we need to now look for to be HOEC for US Vogue,” she continued.
Wintour’s first cover as editor of American Vogue, where she replaced Grace Mirabella, saw model Michaela Bercu wear a Christian Lacroix jewelled crucifix top with denim jeans.
Reflecting on her debut cover, Wintour said: “It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue's covers back then, with tons of makeup and major jewelry. This one broke all the rules. Michaela wasn't looking at you, and worse, she had her eyes almost closed. Her hair was blowing across her face. It looked easy, casual, a moment that had been snapped on the street, which it had been, and which was the whole point.” She continued: “it was about mixing high and low.”
In the years that followed, she successfully blazed a path for the magazine to maintain its role as the most influential publication in fashion media.
Wintour was fictionalised in the role of Miranda Priestly by a former personal assistant, Lauren Weisberger, in The Devil Wears Prada, and has since become one of a handful of fashion industry household names. She also became well known thanks to her role in transforming the Met Gala from a society dinner to the Academy Awards equivalent of the fashion industry.
Charles Wintour, her father, was editor of the Evening Standard from 1959 to 1976, and had consulted the now grande dame of fashion on how to make the then daily newspaper relevant to younger audiences.
Conversation will now turn to who the successor might be. It is likely to be someone already established inside Wintour’s close circle, with some tipping Chioma Nnadi, British Vogue’s head of editorial content since October 2023, and who was formerly based in New York, as an option.
