Anna Wintour Is So Last Season

After 37 years as editor-in-chief of Vogue, Wintour is stepping down. Somewhere, André Leon Talley is giggling.

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Anna Wintour Is So Last Season

Is hell (location: New York City in 100-degree heat) freezing over? Are pigs (New York City police in 100-degree heat) flying? No? Well, stay vigilant because anything is possible. Anna Wintour has officially resigned from American Vogue.

That’s right. After 37 years as editor-in-chief of the fashion bible, the 75-year-old is now on the market for a replacement. Still, don’t expect to see Wintour on the golf course or in the garden or wherever else retired people are. (At the rate the world is going, I’ll never know!) According to WWD, Wintour will continue to serve in her roles as chief content officer for Condé Nast—which includes Wired, Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour, Bon Appétit, Allure, and more—and global editorial director for Vogue.

So basically, Wintour wanted to be rid of some of the responsibility of running what’s become one of the most scrutinized magazines in the world—largely because of her own work. In recent years, many of her decisions—from her blind allegiance to Annie Leibovitz to that Lauren Sanchez spread to multiple controversial covers—have garnered backlash. I imagine repeatedly justifying your own poor judgment must be exhausting.

Of course, there’s also the people she’s made enemies of, like her former longtime friend and colleague, the late, great André Leon Talley. In his 2020 memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, the famed editor and visionary wrote that their friendship ended without warning after decades, as he speculated he no longer had a role in her vision of Vogue. Of Wintour, he wrote: “She has mercilessly made her best friends people who are the highest in their chosen fields. Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Mr. and Mrs. George Clooney are, to her, friends. I am no longer of value to her.”

Oh, and who could forget the Met Gala…

After Wintour began chairing The First Monday in May in 1995, the Met Gala became regarded as the longest, most grueling night of the year for countless Condé Nast employees. In 2022, when hundreds of them organized to propose a union, it took over two years for Wintour and other leadership to formally acknowledge it at all. Worse yet: Another five months passed before management even joined them at the table. When it did, coverage for expanded healthcare for trans employees in the union never made it into the final contract.

“It’s incredibly frustrating, as a trans woman, to have to share your own experience and say, ‘I can’t afford gender-affirming surgery, I have to do my job at this glitzy company, knowing this thing that could be potentially life-changing—or even life-saving—for me is out of reach,” Alma Avalle, a Bon Appétit writer and web producer, and representative for the union, told Jezebel at the time. “Having to plead that case to a group of presumably cis people and have them tell you ‘What we have is enough’ is so draining.”
Now, this isn’t all Wintour’s doing, but come on. It’s noteworthy that she seems fairly comfortable wielding her global influence when it comes to frivolity and fashion, yet so very meek when it comes to ensuring the human rights of her employees…
Some lingering questions: Who will replace her? A celebrity? A media legend? Her daughter, Bee Shaffer? American Vogue being run by a nepo baby would make perfect sense, to be honest. Will Wintour still chair the Met Gala? Probably. But most important of all: where’s the party at, Vogue staffers?

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