Anna Wintour ruined her Vogue legacy in one…
The shiny web page is being turned — type of.
Anna Wintour, the supreme chief of Vogue, is stepping down after 37 years at the fashion bible.
Long dubbed “nuclear Wintour” for her icy nature, the 75-year-old is leaving her function as editor-in-chief, but still retaining her cold death grip on it from above as the worldwide chief content material officer at writer Condé Nast. Plus, she’ll still lord over the Met Gala — guaranteeing celebrities will proceed to bow to her in a bid to rating invitations.
After 37 years at the Vogue helm, Anna Wintour is stepping down. Dylan Travis/AbacaPress / SplashNews.com
Part of me is gloomy to see Wintour go, albeit out of pure nostalgia. Her departure indicators an official finish to the golden age of glossies, when magazine editors ruled the New York City media panorama with impossibly glamorous designer wardrobes and their noses in the air.
She represents a bygone period of black vehicles, expense accounts, standing lunch reservations at Michael’s and sanctioned imperious conduct in the nook workplaces.
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Before the digital revolution and social media influencers upended conventional gatekeepers, magazine editors had been rock stars with a close to monopoly on cultural affect.
And daring characters with the strongest factors of view — and, typically, unsparing management kinds — had been often rewarded with prime jobs.
Wintour not only epitomized this, she was the difficult empress of it in the ’90s and aughts.
Anna Wintour is the reigning queen of the fashion world and palled around prime designers just like the late Karl Lagerfeld. Stephen Lovekin
Stories abound about her alleged therapy of peasant underlings. Eye contact with her was reportedly forbidden, as was hopping into the elevator with her. A creature of continuity, she hasn’t modified her signature bob, her darkish sun shades or, reportedly, her lunch order of uncommon steaks in a long time.
Her legacy was mythologized in “The Devil Wears Prada,” a roman à clef written by a former Wintour assistant, as properly as its 2006 film.
They don’t make those artistic bullies like they used to. Now, executives have to sanitize their conduct through HR compliance and lead with kindness and compassion.
Anna Wintour, who repeatedly attends the US Open, is a tennis fanatic and champion of some of the game’s prime stars. Annie Wermiel/NY Post
It’s good for workplace morale, but not for media gossip pages. How boring. Imagine a “The Devil Wears Prada” reboot where everyone seems to be sitting around finishing anti-harassment coaching videos and pitching Website positioning-driven tales about TikTok fashion trends. No cerulean blue monologue. No speech like, “I said to myself, go ahead. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl.”
Where have all the characters gone?
Things modified at Vogue in 2020 when Wintour had to shake the lily-white elitism from her ranks.
“I want to start by acknowledging your feelings and expressing my empathy towards what so many of you are going through: sadness, hurt, and anger too,” she wrote in a observe to employees, collaborating in the mass white atonement of the second.
Anna Wintour’s stewardship of the Met Gala has turned it into a star-studded occasion. FilmMagic
“It can’t be easy to be a Black employee at Vogue, and there are too few of you. I know that it is not enough to say we will do better, but we will … ”
Absolutely, hiring a more numerous employees was most likely a good factor. But the arbiter of privilege turned her fashion bible and its digital website into a place for progressive politics, identitarianism and intersectionality. It grew to become laughably woke.
Vogue also grew to become more and more partisan — a software of the resistance.
While Republican first girls Laura Bush, Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan weren’t given covers like their Dem counterparts, they had been at least given the scraps of an inside unfold. Then got here Trump — and all that stopped.
In the 2006 film ‘The Devil Wears Prada,” Meryl Streep (proper, with Anne Hathaway) performed Miranda Priestly, a character primarily based on Anna Wintour.
After shelling out tongue baths and a number of covers to Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Jill Biden (including final summer season while her husband’s marketing campaign imploded), Vogue not only snubbed Melania — who was good enough for a cowl in 2005. Earlier this yr, a story ripped her official portrait, evaluating her to a “freelance magician.”
Wintour, long a champion of Dem politicians, has channeled her snobbery against the best and anybody who wasn’t a card-carrying Dem. She absolutely turned her magazine into an arm of the DNC.
Anna Wintour attended the 2025 Tony Awards in her trademark sun shades. Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions
It grew to become apparent that Vogue was not about American fashion, celeb or tradition — only left-wing figures. People like Stacey Abrams, a two-time loser for the Georgia governor’s mansion, and Sarah McBride, the first trans member of Congress, along with Kamala Harris.
Funnily enough, Second Lady Usha Vance — a first-generation American and completed attorney — is somebody Vogue would bend over backward to shoot … if only she was married to a Dem.
So the time is true for Wintour to go. Her magazine might use a makeover to shake off the ingrained partisanship of the final 15 years.
But since Wintour is still hanging on to some energy, I’m guessing we’ll just see final season’s assortment again.
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