How The Fashion Industry’s Reacting To Chloe Malle’s Vogue Appointment

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It’s official: American Vogue has found its next leader in Chloe Malle! Malle will take the reins of the magazine as its new head of editorial content, a new role replacing the traditional “editor in chief” title after Anna Wintour stepped down from the post this summer. However, Wintour will still oversee the title as Vogue‘s global chief content offer and Condé Nast’s chief content officer, where she oversees all international Condé titles except The New Yorker.

Chloe Malle (Courtesy of Condé Nast)

“I’ve spent my career at Vogue, working in roles across every platform—from print to digital, audio to video, events and social media,” Malle said. “I love the title, I love the content we create, and I love the editors who create it. Vogue has already shaped who I am, now I’m excited at the prospect of shaping Vogue. I look forward to embedding myself even more fully across print, video, and events—fostering the true cross-platform plurality that our audience craves and demands. Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled, and awed, to be part of that. I also feel incredibly fortunate to still have Anna just down the hall as my mentor.”

Chloe Malle, Meredith Melling Burke, Rickie De Sole Webster

Malle’s appointment was confirmed in a widespread Condé press release this morning, but not before Puck‘s Lauren Sherman broke the news on Monday night in her latest “Line Sheet” column. Malle’s succession at Vogue came after months of speculation if she’d follow Wintour, due to her various positions and career trajectory at the magazine—and the resulting reaction from the fashion industry is largely celebratory. “Biggest congratulations to @chloemalle,” Vogue fashion market director Naomi Elizée Blue shared on Instagram Stories. Similar sentiments were echoed on social media by Vogue staff like Leah Faye Cooper, TK, and José Criales-Unzueta, who deemed Malle “warm but firm, serious and thoughtful yet simply hilarious. Kind, generous, creative—all of the words!” Meanwhile, congratulations filled Vogue‘s post on the appointment from Eva Chen (herself a rumored Wintour successor), Olivia Munn, Stellene Volandes, Brandon Maxwell, Laura Brown, Karla Welch, Jessica Stam, Sarah Brown, Sophie Elgort, Rebecca Ramsey,  and more.

Cries of nepotism, however, have bubbled up online. Malle’s parents are Candice Bergen—who played fictional Vogue editor Enid Frick in Sex and the City—and filmmaker Louis Malle, while renowned perfumer Frederic Malle is her uncle, as was often mentioned in Sherman’s columns. Regardless of parentage, there’s no denying Malle’s lengthy tenure and work ethic at Vogue, where she first started as social editor in 2011, leading its social media and weddings coverage while writing across various topics for the title. Later on, she worked her way up to contributing editor from 2016 to 2023, additionally serving as sittings editor, editing several Vogue photography books, and co-hosting “The Run-Through with Vogue” podcast, covering broad ground at the title. As IDeserveCouture’s Hanan Besovic pointedly said on Reels, “To discredit somebody’s career and fourteen years of work just because they have famous parents—I think that’s not fair. If she wasn’t doing a good job for these fourteen years, I think that Anna Wintour would fire her a long time ago. Yes, she has famous parents, but if you’re not doing the work there is no famous parents that can save you. And on top of it all, I’m curious to see what she’s going to do with U.S. Vogue. is she going to bring the change? Is it going to be different, or [is] she going to help it elevate?”

As for Malle? She’s currently awash in a rainbow of congratulatory floral arrangements—which Criales-Unzueta is ranking, as spotted in senior lifestyle writer Elise Taylor’s IG Stories. Plus, she has Wintour’s blessing for her new position—a stamp of approval if there ever was one.

“I believe that warmth, joy, experience, and keen vision are what Vogue will thrive on through the years ahead,” Wintour said. “At a moment of change both within fashion and outside it, Vogue must continue to be both the standard-bearer and the boundary-pushing leader. Chloe has proven often that she can find the balance between American Vogue‘s long, singular history and its future on the front lines of the new. I am so excited to continue working with her, as her mentor but also as her student, while she leads us and our audiences where we’ve never been before.” We’re all in!

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