Anna Wintour stepping down as Vogue editor-in-chief

Anna Wintour is stepping down from her longtime top role at American Vogue after 37 years at the helm. (Edward Berthelot/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

After nearly four decades as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour is stepping down and seeking a replacement.

Wintour broke the news to staffers on Thursday. Although she’ll exit the US edition’s top role, she is not leaving Condé Nast or Vogue altogether, but scaling back her duties. She will remain on Vogue’s global editorial director as well as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer, according to Vogue.

The new role replacing her atop the storied American fashion magazine will be titled head of editorial content.

As Vogue’s editor-in-chief, she reinvented the publication, transforming an increasingly unadventurous title into a powerhouse that could set and destroy both trends and designers.

Though magazines shouldn’t be judged by their covers alone, Wintour’s covers signaled that she was unafraid of spotlighting lesser-known figures and eschewing the norms of high-end fashion titles. Her first issue, published in November 1988, was fronted by Israeli model Michaela Bercu in a pair of stonewashed jeans — the first time that jeans had ever appeared on Vogue’s cover.

This set a tone for the hundreds of issues that followed, and Wintour would go on to make countless editorial decisions her predecessors would have considered unimaginable. Gone were the days of controlled studio headshots; in their place came casual, outdoor, upper-body shots. In 1992, she broke with a century-old Vogue tradition by featuring a man on the cover (in the form of Richard Gere, who appeared alongside Cindy Crawford, his wife at the time).

Though Wintour is most closely associated with Vogue, in 2020, she became Condé Nast’s chief content officer, overseeing all its titles globally, including Vanity Fair, Wired, GQ, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit and Condé Nast Traveler.

Rather than a retirement announcement, Wintour’s shift, as well as the new role atop Vogue’s US edition, are part of a wider global restructuring of the company.

Still, the changing of the guards is a seismic shift for American Vogue, offering a coveted opening for fashion editors as well as the opportunity for the industry’s most influential publication to head in new directions. Two years ago, Chioma Nnadi became the first Black woman to lead British Vogue as she succeeded Edward Enninful’s own history-making six-year run as the magazine’s first Black editor-in-chief.