The owner of fashion’s most famous bob is stepping back from day-to-day duties at the magazine. Who has the chops to take over?
“No-one can replace Anna” has long been the refrain among fashion’s highest echelons.
Not being a 500-year-old immortal like the Highlander, however, someone eventually must. Nothing –
Which is why June’s announcement that she would be stepping back from her day-to-day duties at Vogue came as such a surprise – and why speculation over her successor is now at fever pitch. While Wintour still holds two powerhouse titles – chief content officer of Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue – relinquishing the hands-on editorship of US Vogue marks the end of an era. It also signals the fading of a golden age for glossy magazines, when seven-figure salaries, chauffeured limousines and lavish expense accounts were de rigueur.
Her successor, taking on the newly created role of head of editorial content, will face a daunting challenge. With magazine sales in decline, they will need to combine journalistic rigour, marketing acumen and managerial diplomacy with formidable networking skills, elite hosting and fundraising prowess – not to mention the hide of a rhinoceros.
“This is an extremely challenging role, and it’s a big reach to assume that any one candidate will possess all the necessary skills,” says one well-placed source in New York.
“We talk a lot about musical chairs in the fashion industry, usually in relation to the steady turnover of designers at luxury houses. This role is likely to feel like a game of its own – only instead of chairs disappearing, it’s staff and budgets.”
Multiple sources say that Vogue’s parent company, Condé Nast, hopes to make a decision before the next round of shows – New York Fashion Week begins on September 11 – suggesting an announcement is imminent. With rumours that the shortlist has been cut to single digits, we assess who might soon be wearing a smaller, meeker version of Wintour’s crown.
The frontrunner
Chloe Malle, 39
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
The current frontrunner, Malle, studied comparative literature and writing at Brown University, landed her first internship at The New York Observer, and joined US Vogue in 2011 as social editor – despite admitting in a 2013 interview that she was “hesitant […] because fashion is not one of my main interests in life.” An instant disqualifier, surely?
Malle now serves as editor of Vogue.com and is well-regarded for a down-to-earth manner somewhat at odds with her privileged upbringing. She has two children with her asset manager husband and, like Wintour, is a Democrat unafraid to express her views.
The Francophile
Claire Thomson-Jonville, 40
Vogue editor, or cover star? Much has been made of Thomson-Jonville’s “model looks”, with breathless profiles lingering on the bikini shots she shares with her 201,000 Instagram followers. Born in Glasgow, educated at Edinburgh University and once editor of indie style mag Self Service, she has been head of editorial content at French Vogue since 2021. “Anna and I have a very similar vision […] a definite complicité,” she has said (she’s fluent in French).
That’s not all they share: both have two children (though the father of Thomson-Jonville’s remains unknown), both are exercise devotees (tennis for Wintour, yoga for Thomson-Jonville) and both are famously disciplined, rising at 5am. Where they part ways is in their fondness for motivational mantras – you wouldn’t catch Wintour posting “energy flows where intention goes”.
The protégée
Amy Astley, 58
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Michigan State University-educated Astley is a Wintour protégé of long standing, joining US Vogue in 1993 and rising to become beauty director before being tasked with launching Teen Vogue in 2003. In 2016, Wintour handed her the editorship of Architectural Digest, which Astley swiftly transformed into a must-read with cachet and relevance well beyond the design world.
A recent feature on Pamela Anderson’s love of gardening underlined her sharp commercial instincts. Some insiders suggest Astley is being groomed to replace Wintour as chief content officer when she finally retires. If she ever does.
The digital savant
Eva Chen, 45
With magazine sales in terminal decline, who better to refine and drive Vogue’s digital strategy than Instagram’s head of fashion partnerships? Another Wintour protege, Chen was recruited by the platform in 2015 and has been monetising its fashion and e-commerce potential ever since.
Armed with a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and a CV that spans Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, Elle and Lucky (where she became the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history), the question isn’t so much whether Chen could do the job, but whether Condé Nast could afford her.
The safe pair of hands
Nicole Phelps, 53
As global director of Vogue Runway and Vogue Business – and former executive editor of the now-defunct Style.com – Phelps is a longtime Condé Nast insider who is both unflappable and well regarded.
A Wesleyan University graduate with a degree in Women’s Studies, she is also a confident public speaker who knows the fashion industry inside out, having cut her teeth at WWD and W Magazine before joining Vogue in 2004. With 100,000 Instagram followers and years of digital-first expertise, she is certain to be in contention.
The stylist
Edward Enninful, 53
Enninful’s name was bound to be in the mix: Wintour hand-picked him to succeed Alexandra Shulman at British Vogue, which he led from 2017 to 2024. Rumours of a rift with his former boss are wide of the mark – it’s less a case of bad blood than bad timing, even if he was once thought to covet the role. Rather than wait in the wings for Wintour’s abdication, he has built his own fiefdom. In May, he announced the launch of EE72, a media and entertainment company co-founded with his sister, Akua Enninful.
Next month brings the debut issue of a glossy magazine, staffed largely by former Vogue employees. “Edward would never cede EE72 for a job at Vogue,” says a source. “Especially when he stands to make so much revenue. Vogue is old media; EE72 is new.” Indeed. Where Condé Nast’s rules around lucrative brand consultancy work remain opaque, as head of his own company Enninful can set the terms – and make a fortune in the process.
The newspaper journalist
Jo Ellison, 45
A former fashion features director at British Vogue, Edinburgh University-educated Ellison ticks every box on the Wintour Approvability Chart: the right experience (including extensive event-hosting of the kind Vogue increasingly needs to monetise), the right look (tall, sharp cheekbones, a wardrobe heavy on old Céline) and the right character (dry wit, little patience for fools).
She also has the right job. As deputy editor of the Financial Times and, more pertinently, editor-in-chief of HTSI [formerly How To Spend It], the FT’s weekend lifestyle supplement, Ellison enjoys unfettered access to luxury’s highest echelons – not to mention almost any A-list name she chooses to feature. Crucially, she avoids the pressure of generating robust news-stand sales, since HTSI is not a standalone magazine. Why would she trade all this for the headaches of Vogue? Unlikely.
The wild card
Lauren Sánchez Bezos, 55
Could she? Would she? For many Vogue readers, it would be the stuff of nightmares. While Sánchez holds a journalism degree from the University of Southern California (pre-Bezos, she worked as a newsroom anchor and TV host), she is unlikely to be in contention for this particular role – not least because her sights may be set elsewhere.
If rumour is to be believed, her husband is plotting an acquisition of Condé Nast, Vogue’s parent company – a move that would change everything, should he succeed. After her cover appearance in the June issue, sources even claimed Bezos was considering buying Sánchez the title as a “wedding gift”. Katy Perry on the cover in a space suit? Brace, brace.
