Anna Wintour is stepping down from her role as editor-in-chief of Vogue after 37 years leading the magazine, HuffPost has confirmed.
Wintour told staff on Thursday that, as she steps out of the position, the outlet plans to hire a new title: head of editorial content of American Vogue.
It’s unclear when her last day as editor-in-chief will be. The change will allow the iconic British editor to focus on her other roles as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director. (Condé Nast is the publisher of Vogue, as well as other well-known publications like The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest and Condé Nast Traveler.)
Wintour, 75, got her start in fashion journalism as an editorial assistant at Harper’s & Queen in 1970. She also spent time at Harper’s Bazaar and New York Magazine before moving to American Vogue in 1983 as creative director.
Two years later, she landed the editor-in-chief role at British Vogue before returning to American Vogue in 1988, this time as the editor-in-chief.
While at the helm of Vogue, Wintour made groundbreaking changes at the magazine and also molded the annual Met Gala benefiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, earning her a legacy as one of the most prominent figures in the fashion industry.
Her first cover as head of the “fashion bible” magazine in November 1988 featured Israeli model Michaela Bercu, who had been photographed by Peter Lindbergh and styled by Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele.
“It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue’s covers back then, with tons of makeup and major jewelry. This one broke all the rules,” Wintour reflected in a Vogue article in 2012, the publication’s 120th anniversary year. “Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true. I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that.”
Wintour is speculated to have inspired the quintessential diva editor-in-chief character, Miranda Priestly, memorably played in the 2006 film “The Devil Wears Prada” by Meryl Streep.
The film was based on a book of the same name, which was written by Wintour’s former assistant Lauren Weisberger. In 2010, Weisberger told the Daily Mail that the film “wasn’t a one-to-one portrayal of Wintour. But of course, my time at Vogue informed the book; there’s no denying that.”
Many years later, Wintour spoke on the film to the BBC.
It’s “for the audience and for the people I work with to decide if there are any similarities between me and Miranda Priestly,” Wintour said in December 2024.