Vogue, As We Knew It, Is Dead

Meryl Streep’s performance as the fearsome Editor-in-Chief of Runway, a stand-in for Vogue’s Anna Wintour, in The Devil Wears Prada cinematic universe gagged an entire generation in the best way possible. Streep earned herself an Oscar nomination for an otherwise reputedly silly movie adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name.

That novel, written about a boss from hell and Editor-in-Chief of the most prestigious fashion magazine in the world, was reportedly based on the author’s own experiences interning at Vogue under Anna Wintour herself. While the author tried to play coy about the novel’s source material in its early years, the cat was slowly let out of the bag and acknowledged subtly by the devil herself, Miss Wintour, who showed up to the premiere of the book’s film adaptation dressed in head-to-toe Prada. What a power move.

The Devil Wears Prada started a discourse about ethics and integrity in fashion. It also demanded a sense of respect for an otherwise easy-to-slight industry of the time. The fashion world was widely regarded as vacuous, stick-thin bimbos, anorexic models, and self-obsessed materialists who dictated what covered the pages of glossy magazines. What was there to like? They were self-obsessed, vain classists who stuck their noses up at us plain Janes and Joes who shop at the bargain bin and concern ourselves with real matters. Right?

At the helm of this campy cinematic masterpiece, the peak of chick-flick cinema back when the genre still had whimsy, stood the Priestly character: a scapegoated girlboss cast as the pinnacle of evil, the wealthy hand from which our most dreaded beauty standards were fed. But the film’s real power lies in how it unpacks the source of Priestly’s venom, revealing her as a product and victim of a cutthroat, misogynistic industry. And while the story ultimately celebrates Andy’s rejection of Priestly’s version of success for fear of becoming like her and a desire to return to her journalistic roots, it also eviscerates Andy’s own above-it-all attitude.

Her pretension toward the fashion industry as something beneath and external to her, and her colossal underestimation of the labor, precision, creativity, and sheer number of jobs involved in what she so dismissively calls “just a pile of stuff.” As the audience surrogate, Andy is humbled, then comes to appreciate the hard work and dedication that go into the craft, even if it's not her particular dream. While the film does not redeem Priestly or Wintour, it does redeem the fashion industry. The pillars of that industry, like Runway or Vogue, are just as worthy of esteem and respect as The New York Times, Andy comes to learn.

Wintour, the long-reigning Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, never publicly addressed the villainous legacy Streep portrayed for more than a decade, but in recent years she has playfully acknowledged it, even doing interviews with Streep where they dance around the elephant in the room.

Building Vogue Into an Empire

Wintour transformed Vogue into the cultural powerhouse it is today by making bold, visionary choices. On her first cover, she put Michaela Bercu in Christian Lacroix couture and jeans, a shocking move for a previously aristocratic flavor of fashion gatekeeping. This was no frilly ballgown. She did not just transform the look of Vogue, but the face and essence of it.

Where before the magazine exclusively featured models and seasonal looks, effectively acting as a runway catalogue, Wintour brought celebrities, actresses and pop stars, into the mix, blending fashion with Hollywood prestige. She recalls a man once telling her, “Vogue to me means Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, never Madonna,” which made her think it was time for a change.

Madonna became one of the first celebrity Vogue centerfolds. Suddenly, it was not just a fashion catalogue but a token of legitimacy for upwardly mobile Hollywood artists, a form of career validation that you had “made it.” Wintour continued to expand Vogue beyond clothes, transforming the Met Gala from a humble fundraising event into a global fashion spectacle. Under Wintour’s leadership, she coordinated international Vogue editions to achieve cohesive global branding.

However, after a 37-year reign, Wintour stepped down as Editor-in-Chief in June 2025. She remains in the company as chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director for the magazine, but the head position was filled by “proud nepo baby” Chloe Malle. Malle is the daughter of actress Candice Bergen and the late French director Louis Malle. She has worked for Vogue in various capacities since 2011, including as social editor, contributing editor, host of Vogue’s podcast The Run-Through, and editor of Vogue.com.

The magazine no longer has any formal Editor-in-Chief, but Malle has taken up the highest position within the American magazine as head of editorial content. She will continue to be mentored by Wintour, whose office is just down the hall, and will run the Vogue website’s day-to-day editorial content. Wintour will quietly continue to steer the ship from behind the scenes.

Shifting the Ethos of Vogue Away From Print & Fashion, Toward Digital, Culture, & Politics

From doing away with the Editor-in-Chief in favor of a different leadership arrangement to absorbing Teen Vogue and Vogue Business under the main Vogue masthead, a lot of changes have been made in recent years. American Vogue is also rethinking its relationship to print. Malle has spoken about her intention to move away from a monthly print cadence in favor of fewer, more intentional issues, eight per year in the U.S., timed to tentpole moments and events such as spring and autumn fashion, the Met Gala, and Vogue World.

The issues will be different in form, too. Vogue intends for print to become something of a collectible, with issues larger, printed on thicker paper, and tied to more niche periodicals where substantial shoots and cover stories will live. Moments in fashion that will stand the test of time and which people will want to keep and look back on. Things that have “weight and import,” as Malle says. So print is not going away, but the role it plays in the current media ecosystem is being reworked, and Vogue is not alone in that.

The print industry has fundamentally changed. It's currently in a transformational phase for industries for which it was the vehicle to report on current unfolding trends and news every month. With a fast-moving online news cycle, by the time something rolls out to print, it's old news. This is why the magazine now boasts digital covers as cultural touchpoints tied to timely press tours and news, which some have criticized as glorified Instagram posts. This month’s digital cover star is Amanda Seyfried, profiled by Claire Messud, who discusses her recent work in The Housemaid and The Testament of Ann Lee amid awards season.

The magazine now boasts digital covers as cultural touchpoints tied to timely press tours and news, which some have criticized as glorified Instagram posts.

As a result, many magazines are following suit, reducing their annual print runs and anchoring issues to fewer, more significant moments, treating them as collectible objects for devoted readers and archivists rather than as timely reports. The real future of Vogue, as with its competitors, is digital. While Wintour says Vogue is investing in print to make it more special and impactful, she says she likes to think of it as their runway. Meanwhile, she says they are “making more space in our year to do ambitious stories on digital platforms. That is where we can be versatile, agile, and timely, and hopefully we try new things everywhere.”

The question is, what is to come of Vogue’s pivot to digital and away from what made the fashion magazine iconic? If their current strategies are any sign, it doesn't look like a good omen. Let us start with the absorption of Teen Vogue following the solo publication’s shutdown in November 2025, which led to layoffs of its Editor-in-Chief and unionized culture and political editors. Having adopted a strong political focus in the wake of Donald Trump’s first presidential term in 2016 and going digital-only, the magazine was no longer advertiser-friendly and began bleeding money.

Per The Guardian, “Over the following years, Teen Vogue deepened its coverage of politics and identity, becoming an unlikely hearth for progressive, even radical, feminism within the manicured offices of its publisher Condé Nast. Its target demographic was teens aged 13 to 19 years old, but in the mid-2010s, they began pursuing deeply political stories from far-left perspectives as well as inappropriate sexual stories, if not how-to sexual guides.”

Over the years, Evie Magazine has been vocally critical of Teen Vogue’s editorial content, including its promotion of communism, teen sexting, anal sex, transitioning children, and radical groups like Antifa and the Black Panthers to minors.

The Odd Politics of Vogue

The interesting tidbit to note is that Wintour reportedly told Teen Vogue’s former politics director she did not want to hear the word “politics” during the magazine’s annual strategy meeting ahead of Trump’s second inauguration. When Vogue announced the merger, they promised to keep Teen Vogue’s unique editorial identity and mission, but that the outlet would now focus on “career development” and “cultural leadership.”

That's curious, because Wintour’s chosen somewhat-successor, Malle, is a writer through and through but not native to the fashion world. Malle has repeatedly stated that fashion was not her main interest in life when she first joined Vogue. Rather, she studied comparative literature and writing at Brown University, freelanced for esteemed publications, and then interviewed for Vogue, eager to add a reputable publication to her résumé and work her way up as a writer.

“I was hesitant when I was interviewing, because fashion is not one of my main interests in life, and I wanted to be a writer more than an editor, but I was so seduced by the Vogue machine that I couldn’t resist,” she said.

Fashion, she says, did not come naturally to her but was something she had to learn through osmosis. Vogue enthusiasts have criticized her for making frequent public comments about her work, which they say are at odds with everything she stands for. During her time as social editor at Vogue, she told Into the Gloss in 2014, “I work on the best-dressed lists and write party coverage for Vogue.com, which is so funny because I used to hate going out.”

Malle’s account of getting hired at Vogue ironically mimics The Devil Wears Prada’s Andy Sachs. Both aspiring serious writers, Sachs’ dream was to write for The New York Times, while Malle had already freelanced there before working her way into Vogue’s hierarchy. She tells of the moment she first met Wintour dressed in a series of fashion no-nos. The learning curve must be steep, as she's frequently called out for the juxtaposition between her role at Vogue and questionable fashion taste, if there is any to speak of. It does admittedly make her frustratingly interesting to become the next Anna Wintour and have little to no understanding of, nor interest in, fashion.

That's why Wintour hired her in the first place. In a sit-down interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick, Wintour expounds on admiring Malle for having her own point of view. She admires that Malle is “interested in fashion but not obsessed with it” and how that plays into the many levels that will weigh into her decisions, that she will not be drawn into a “fashionista conversation” and will be able to take a step back and look at things in a healthy context. Whether or not Vogue’s head of editorial content really needs to look the part is up for debate.

There are, after all, few areas of expertise that require you to embody the subject matter of interest. An art historian does not need to be the next Van Gogh, and it does not mean Malle has not brought innovative ideas to the magazine. The tongue-in-cheek canine Vogue spin-off “Dogue” is her pet project, no pun intended, and has been incredibly successful, with numerous celebrities sending in their dogs eager for their fluffy companions to get their own spread.

Where the magazine once shaped taste and defined fashion, it now moderates discourse no one asked for.

Remnick praised Wintour for making Vogue a political magazine in many ways over the years and characterized Wintour as a political person who has famously fundraised for the Democratic Party, notably for Hillary Clinton. Though she says she prides herself on providing balance in their coverage, Vogue has not shied away from its pro center-left bias, regularly featuring high-profile Democratic politicians, including cover stars like Michelle Obama (three times), Jill Biden (twice), and Kamala Harris (two print covers and one digital).

Conspicuously absent from these covers and profiles is First Lady and former model Melania Trump, who previously graced the cover of Vogue in 2005, dressed in a Christian Dior wedding dress for her marriage to Donald Trump. Mainstream publications have famously avoided featuring Melania Trump in their magazines after Donald Trump entered the political arena, treating her like the black sheep of First Ladies.

National Review ran a recent piece on Malle titled “Don’t Expect Vogue’s New Editor to Correct the Mag’s Left-Wing Slant,” taking note that the newly promoted editor of Vogue.com’s “social media record and professional contributions reveal a commitment to fashionable progressive causes and politicians.” Of course, it's not illegal nor some grave faux pas to have a political bias, but the fact that Vogue tries to present itself as an apolitical fashion magazine providing fair and balanced coverage is, at this point, quite hysterical.

Most recently, Vogue published several articles following the death of 91-year-old legendary actress, singer, model, and animal-rights activist Brigitte Bardot, including a historical fashion deep dive on how Bardot mainstreamed the bikini, a vintage photo collection, a 2016 From the Archives profile, and a more tonally restrained official obituary. However, it was this opinion piece, “Mourning Brigitte Bardot Doesn’t Mean Absolving Her,” written by Vogue culture writer Emma Specter, that did the internet’s head in.

Bardot’s transgressions include “dismissing actresses who came forward about their experiences of sexual harassment during the #MeToo movement,” namely pointing out that some actresses participated in the casting-couch system for career gain before later claiming victimhood, and for “inciting racial hatred” through “blatantly bigoted comments about Muslims.” The author notes these offenses resulted in routine fines.

What's striking is not moral clarity but the emptiness of it all: the authoritarian precedent is waved away, even when the underlying “hate” in question includes opposition to ritual animal slaughter on religious grounds.

Specter uses she/they pronouns and aligns herself with fat liberationist politics, has written the book More Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing and the Lust for ‘Enough’, and covers several culture beats at Vogue, including “almost anything queer.” Bardot’s fans and Vogue’s critics were incensed on social media, with many insisting “the fat girl era is killing Vogue.” Others attribute the magazine’s dwindling relevance to it no longer focusing on high fashion and instead trying to get by as a thinly veiled political rag run by influencers.

Considering Bardot was a style icon who trailblazed multiple entertainment industries, including fashion, before walking away at the peak of her career and sex-symbol status to devote her life to animal rights, you would think Vogue could muster a few kind words and keep it moving. But no. Vogue’s old business model, and with it its cultural relevancy, is long gone.

As Megan Wray Schertler told the Financial Review, “When I say Vogue is ‘dead’ as a magazine, I mean that its value proposition now is focused on optimizing content, which essentially means eyeballs.” She added, “The playbook that made magazines successful 15 or 20 years ago simply doesn’t define success anymore. The magazines that are thriving today are niche, sharper, and much more intentional. They build trust by being culturally fluent and editorially uncompromising. And that trust is gold.”

So, is Vogue going to hell in a handbasket? I wouldn't go that far. The magazine still produces interesting interviews, ASMR videos, celebrity morning routines, and fashion retrospectives, but much of this now exists as celebrity fodder on its YouTube channel. What made Vogue “Vogue” is no longer with us. Where the magazine once shaped taste and defined fashion, it now moderates discourse no one asked for. Instead of crowning icons, it's tone-policing the dead, and not even for their fashion sins but for banal infringements against leftist orthodoxy.