Chloe Malle, the newly appointed head of editorial content for American Vogue, has described herself as a “proud nepo baby,” acknowledging her parents and her privilege.
Daughter of actor Candice Bergen and the film director Louis Malle, Malle was announced as the new U.S. editorial director on Tuesday. Anna Wintour, who led the magazine for 37 years, first announced in June that she would be stepping down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief.
Malle, 39, started at Vogue in 2011 as social editor, and then went on to become podcast host and then editor of Vogue.com in 2023.
In a new interview, Malle described herself as a “proud nepo baby” and how her famous parents affected her work ethic.
“There is no question that I have 100 per cent benefited from the privilege I grew up in,” she told the New York Times. “It’s 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.”
Candice Bergen is known for her roles in Boston Legal and Murphy Brown, and received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress in 1979 for her role in Starting Over and won the Bafta award for best actress in a supporting role for Gandhi in 1982.
Louis Malle is a celebrated filmmaker who won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival and the Bafta for best director for his films Atlantic City in 1981 and Goodbye, Children in 1987. He also won the Cannes’ Palme d’Or and the Oscar for best documentary in 1956 for Le Monde du silence, which he co-directed with Jacques Cousteau.
On what she intends to do in her new role, Malle said she would be focusing on building a more “direct, smaller, healthier audience” by providing them with “original, witty, irreverent, joyful points of view on things”.
Wintour isn’t leaving Vogue entirely; she will remain as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director.
“I know that some people who were interested in this job were sort of daunted by the idea of Anna being down the hall,” Malle said of Wintour.
She is reportedly starting in her new position before the start of New York Fashion Week, which will be running from 11 September through 16 September.
When asked whether she would ever feature Melania Trump on the cover, Malle declined to answer.
This comes after Mark Guiducci, the new top editor of Vanity Fair, which is also owned by Condé Nast, said he’s potentially interested in putting the First Lady on the magazine’s cover, according to Semafor. Some staffers were upset about the suggestion, and one editor threatened to “walk out” if it came to fruition, according to a report by The Daily Mail.
