Anna Wintour’s replacement may be weeks away from taking over at Vogue.
A new report from PageSix, claimed that Chloe Malle is currently the favored person to take over Wintour’s previous position as the new head of editorial content for U.S. Vogue.
Malle, 39, is the daughter of actor Candice Bergen and the film director Louis Malle, and is currently an editor at Vogue. She is most recently known for interviewing Lauren Sánchez ahead of her wedding to Jeff Bezos in June.
According to PageSix, Malle is in the middle of the “final rounds” of interviews after higher-ups at Condé Nast, including CEO Roger Lynch and Wintour herself, have narrowed down their selection to just a few candidates.
There are rumored to be four or five people left in the running for the position, including Nicole Phelps, global director of Vogue Runway, along with a handful of external candidates.
The new editor is rumored to be starting before the start of New York Fashion Week, which will be running from September 11 through September 16.
It was first revealed in June that Wintour would be stepping down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief after leading the publication for 37 years.
The Daily Front Row reported at the time that Wintour informed Vogue staff of her decision during an editorial meeting. The 75-year-old will remain as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director.
Wintour is one of the most powerful and influential figures in contemporary fashion, and her leadership helped Vogue cement its position as a “fashion bible.”
Born in London in 1949, Wintour got her first taste of the fashion industry at 15 when she started working at the influential 1960s boutique Biba, and her first journalistic experience at the underground magazine Oz.
She moved to New York in the early 1970s and worked for Harper’s Bazaar and New York magazine as a fashion editor.
Her first job at Vogue came in 1983 when she was poached to become the American magazine’s first creative director. In 1985, she replaced Beatrix Miller as editor-in-chief of British Vogue, but returned to New York City in 1987 to take over House & Garden before arriving the following year as editor-in-chief of Vogue.
Her early years at the magazine were marked by change and upheaval. She recruited her own staff, and her first cover for the magazine, which appeared in November 1988, marked the first time a cover model had worn jeans. She said later that the publication’s printers had called because they thought they’d been sent the wrong image.
Wintour’s reign as editor-in-chief saw Vogue reestablish itself as the leading voice in fashion in the 1990s, holding off competition from the likes of Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Mirabella. Wintour developed a reputation for a hands-on and painstaking approach to Vogue photoshoots, giving her personal approval to all outfits and set-ups. Since 1995, she has also presided over the exclusive guest list for the annual Met Gala.
Wintour was the inspiration behind the character in novel, and later movie, The Devil Wears Prada.
