Chloe Malle ’08 was named head of editorial content for American Vogue on Tuesday, taking over the flagship publication that was led by fashion icon Anna Wintour for the last 37 years. Wintour will stay on as Vogue’s global editorial director and as the global chief content editor at Condé Nast, Vogue’s parent company.
Malle began her career at Vogue in 2011 as a social editor before rising in the ranks to lead the magazine’s digital coverage as the editor of Vogue.com and a co-host of Vogue’s weekly podcast “The Run-Through.”
Malle grew up exposed to the limelight, raised by French director and screenwriter Louis Malle and actress Candice Bergen, who played the editor of Vogue in HBO’s “Sex and the City.” She grew up in Los Angeles and New York City before heading to Brown in 2004.
In a 2014 interview with beauty website Into The Gloss, Malle reflected on her time at Brown, where she studied comparative literature and literary arts. “I was so excited to be with an entire community of people who just loved reading, and our job was to read a bunch of books and then talk about them,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘This is heaven.’”
She remembered being “hesitant” to join the fashion industry, noting that “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.”
Malle told the New York Times on Monday that she looks forward to making the head editor role her own, saying that “whoever took on this job would not succeed if what they produced was ‘Anna lite.’”
“Placing my own stamp on this is going to be the most important part of this being a success,” Malle added.
In her Vogue statement, Wintour wrote that Malle “is not so buried in the industry that she misses the world: Like the best designers, she understands fashion’s big picture, its role shaping not just what’s on the runway but the changing fabric of modern life.”
Wintour commended Malle on her “creative imagination” and “sense of fun,” noting that her colleagues “admire her startling acumen but also her warmth.”
According to Wintour, Malle’s “desk is a place of guidance and contagious joy.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Candice Bergen's name. The Herald regrets the error.
Kate Butts is a university news editor covering admissions & financial aid as well as the career and alumni beat. She previously was a senior staff writer covering University Hall. Outside of The Herald, she loves running, board games and Trader Joe's snacks.
