Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Vogue

After 37 years as editor-in-chief of American Vogue, it has been announced today (June 26) that Anna Wintour is stepping down from the position. She will remain Met Gala co-chair, as well as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director.  

Though this seems like pretty major news, the 75-year-old editor’s role won’t be entirely different to what it already is. That said, waving goodbye to the title that she spent her career chasing – and a position she kept for almost 40 years – won’t have been a light decision.

In fact, Wintour’s journey with Vogue began 42 years ago, when she was hired as the American publication’s creative director. Rumour has it that Condé Nast had been eyeing her for Vogue, but didn’t know exactly what position to give her, hence ‘creative director’. Two years later, she returned home to London to replace British Vogue’s Beatrix Miller as editor-in-chief. There’s a well known tale that Wintour once, very boldly, told America Vogue editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella that she wanted her job, which is exactly what she got in 1988, moving back across the pond to New York, where she’s held the position ever since. 

Her first cover, the November 1988 issue, was so much fresher than the previous statuesque model covers that the printers thought it must be a mistake. She made history with her first issue — putting denim on the cover of Vogue for the first time in the magazine’s history — and has continued to make history for the past 37 years.

Rather than find a replacement for the editor-in-chief role at American Vogue, Condé Nast will instead search for a “head of editorial content”. This title was introduced four years ago when the publishing org restructured internally so that magazine and website content could be shared across the various international editions of Vogue. With that, the editor-in-chief title was abandoned in favour of heads of editorial content in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, India, Taiwan and the Middle East, with Wintour presiding over them as global editorial director. As Wintour is set to remain in this powerful role, she will still be the direct boss of whoever is chosen for the new job at American Vogue.

According to The Business of Fashion, Wintour’s decision to step down was revealed to Vogue staffers this morning. Though it may seem like a departure, the decision is seen by many as a further consolidation of power, as the editor will be able to rule over all the other titles she’s responsible for more directly (Wintour is effectively in charge of every single Condé Nast title, bar The New Yorker). Despite this, however, the BOF also reported that, “while this move is certainly far from a retirement, it is the surest sign that the company is considering succession plans for the inevitable post-Wintour era.”