Chloe Malle on the Hardest Part of Being Named Vogue’s Head of Editorial Content

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When Chloe Malle nabbed perhaps the most coveted role in fashion media as the Head of Editorial Content, Vogue US, last year, the industry had a collective sigh of relief that the Condé title would be in the capable hands of one of our own. Over the past year, she’s put her own stamp on the title while maintaining the brand’s legacy—and she’s been killing it. (The Anna and Meryl cover alone was pure genius!) THE DAILY sat down with the charismatic editrix to discuss her first year on the job, how she tackles everyone’s very strong opinions, and what makes a good issue.

You’ve been in the role for a year now. What have you been loving about the job?

I sound like Pollyanna saying this, but it really is true for me, the people that I work with are the thing I love most about Vogue. I’ve been here for a long time, so some people that I work with now I’ve worked with for 15 years and are some of the people closest to me. I’m so excited to be in meetings during the day and problem-solving with our team and thinking about how we’re going to cover the Chanel barefoot sandals and how we’re going to make this year’s Fashion Month coverage feel different and exciting and something people want to engage with. Laughing and problemsolving have always, and continue to be, what I love most about what I’m doing.

Any surprises?

Something that remains important to me and maybe is surprising to other people is I think of Vogue as a news organization; Vogue should be making and breaking news. That tends to take the form of fashion scoops from Vogue Runway and Vogue Business. Our weddings have been some of our biggest “news moments” because we are providing the first images of certain celebrities and people of note’s weddings and dresses. Those stories perform so well. It’s exciting to see how much traction that vertical has. It’s what Vogue should be doing best—an authority in the space that’s not purely fashion news, but about how people live fashionably and with style. That should be across all different areas.

When you got the job offer, what was the timeline, and how hard was it to keep it a secret?

It was difficult. Anna [Wintour] was very strict about the secrecy involved. My family was up in Connecticut at the time, and I was going back and forth to the city. My dog, Lloyd, was my first confidant! I purposely didn’t tell my mother [Candice Bergen] because I was afraid she would forget and tell one of her friends because she was excited about it. There was a lot of speculation. It was difficult with colleagues and friends who I was working with, but it wasn’t that long. It was about a week.

Every new editor wants to make their mark. What were some of the changes you wanted to make?

It was exciting to start this role at the exact moment that 15 creative directors were starting at fashion houses. Watching them was quite instructive and it was inspiring to see the way that young new creative directors were reinterpreting these historic maisons. Seeing someone like Matthieu Blazy, who approaches Chanel with such joy and gratitude and whimsy. Every time you meet with him about one of his collections, you feel like he’s a kid in a candy store. He is so reverent and informed by Coco Chanel and also Karl Lagerfeld and also so his own person. His collections feel so distinct and yet so Chanel. For me, I have always loved and read Vogue. I’ve worked here for most of my career. It wasn’t about ripping up the publication and starting new. It was very much an evolution and not a revolution. Certainly there was a list of stylists and photographers and writers who I wanted to be working with and bring into the fold, but I also love a lot of the people we have as contributors and have worked with for a long time. Our September cover paired Steven Meisel with [stylist] Spencer Singer, a young burgeoning stylist who is so talented. Carlos Nazario has come on in the past year as our contributing fashion editor, and that’s been so exciting to see his point of view. I want people to come to Vogue for the writers, the editors, the photographers who are bringing their own perspective. That’s been important to me.

What are the ingredients to a good issue of Vogue?

Obviously now Vogue extends beyond a physical issue, but I do think of the physical magazine as the center of a bicycle wheel and these other platforms become spokes that are coming out and speak in communication with what is featured in the magazine. It doesn’t have to be a direct connection; it can be a sensibility that’s shared. The issue will then inspire podcasts, events, social strategy, social concept, etc. I was just rereading Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries and she talked about when [Condé Nast Editorial Director] Alex Lieberman came to look at her first issue and said, “Where’s the glory? Where’s the glorious moment in the issue?” I feel with each issue you want one moment that feels breathtaking. What I’ve always loved about Vogue is how wide-ranging it is.

The Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere cover was great. Their parents, Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere, were famously on the cover while they were married 30 years ago. What’s the story there?

We love Kaia, and she’s been a Vogue girl for a long time. I think she’s a really talented model. She’s also such an A student, in the best way. She comes to a podcast prepared with notes with what she’s going to talk about. She’s such a joy to work with. I’m always happy to do something with her. Ryan Murphy has his grip on the culture, and we knew The Shards would be a big end-of-summer moment.

Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere (Steven Meisel for Vogue)

I’m personally a big Bret Easton Ellis fan, so that was exciting to me. When we found it was one of Homer Gere’s first roles, we did all think of the Herb Ritts cover with Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford. A lot of us came back from the shows in March and our overarching feeling was it’s so interesting to see how these new designers are reinterpreting the heritage of the houses. It suddenly started applying to a lot of the features and editorials we were thinking about for the September issue. How do you reinvent your heritage and reinvigorate the history you come from? Kaia and Homer felt so appealing for that. From a personal perspective, it was my first September issue and I really care about the history of Vogue and have great reverence for it. I feel no pressure to run away from that. I want to look at how we’re respecting what Vogue does best, but make it feel true to what I am and what I care about but also fresh and relevant for 2026 to today’s audiences across all our platforms. We certainly had Richard and Cindy in mind as a bit of a wink, but it was never the main proposition for why we’re doing it.

Everyone has an opinion about Vogue. Do you look at what people are writing and saying about it?

Obviously, some people are going to be negative. How do you deal with that? It’s hard to totally ignore what people are saying. I’ve also tried to pull back a little bit. I recently posted the photos of our September cover and I started getting negative comments, and I decided I wasn’t going to look at the comments. Then I had friends and colleagues leave nice comments and they asked if I saw them and I said, “No. If you don’t look at the bad comments, you don’t look at the good comments.” It comes with pluses and minuses. I was reading an interview with Tom Holland [recently] and he said someone gave him advice once that if they have a problem with me they should text me and if you don’t know my number, you don’t know me well enough to have a problem. Obviously that doesn’t apply because I’m not a superhero star. I’m sensitive to feedback and criticism and notes from people that I respect and work with. There’s a healthy balance to how that is taken. The minute the September cover photos came in, my heart skipped a beat. I thought, “This was classic, joyful, Meisel Vogue.” If people don’t like them because of the gray background, that’s okay. It doesn’t affect me. I really love these. If the issue had gone to press and I wasn’t sure I loved it, maybe I would have felt different. But because I knew I loved it, it didn’t affect me.

What does it take to be on an American Vogue cover? What do you look for in a cover star?

Someone who is directing or influencing the zeitgeist. Someone who is changing the way we’re thinking or interacting with culture. You could say Kaia and Homer are two young kids, but they are both good actors and in a show that people are talking about. It feels like a cultural moment. That felt exciting. It’s also about telling the wider story of the issue, which in this case was about looking back to look forward. How do you take your history and your heritage and reinterpret that? They worked for that. You want to be surprising and want someone who people want to know more about and also that people know who that person is. It’s a delicate balance of surprising people, so it’s not exactly who they expect but also bringing someone the thing they didn’t know they wanted. We like to be timed to a new film, a new album, TV show. It’s nice to have a news peg so they feel like they’re part of the cultural conversation.

Dogue is so cute and shows your sense of humor.

Vogue has always had a sense of humor, and Anna has always prioritized that. Maybe I’m hitting it harder over the head. That can extend beyond our Dogue cover. We did a story in our Summer issue on the enduring appeal of the potato. Our food writer went searching for a potato in Spain and compared tiny Spanish potatoes to Idaho potatoes. For the [story] image, we bejeweled a potato. It’s one of my favorite images in the issue because it feels so Vogue and cheeky and has a point of view. The Dogue meetings are such a joy. We all get such a kick out of talking about how these dogs should be photographed. It’s become its own engine.

Dogue

What can you say about the upcoming Vogue World in San Francisco?

I’m very excited about Vogue World Milan. Everyone keeps asking about San Francisco, and I have to get through Milan! Vogue World Milan is going to be amazing. I was just writing my October editor’s letter, and our October issue is dedicated to Vogue World and we have three covers. I attended the first Vogue World as a guest as I was not involved in the creation of it. It was such a feast for the senses and celebration of every art form from dance to music to film and obviously to fashion. That’s what I’ve always found exciting about this event. It’s throwing everything together to bring Vogue to life. San Francisco was exciting to us because Vogue World is about celebrating a city and what its unique proposition is. For us, San Francisco has been this cultural hub but also a city that is so created by and celebratory of immigrants and these immigrant communities. We’re excited to investigate.

Your September issue was very heavy! Why do you think print still matters?

People love to hold something. The experience of reading something you know is curated with you in mind as a reader is important. I find that as a reader and as an editor, there are certain pieces that I’m excited to have in the print issue that I know might not necessarily travel as far online, but they feel like an interesting surprise in print. Sometimes you’ll be excited about how they do travel online. For example, we like to have a long, surprising read at the front of the magazine. A New York Times political journalist, Annie Karni, wrote a piece about how after she got divorced, she started talking about it to all the political sources she had. It’s such a smart and funny piece. It did well online, but it’s such a treat at the beginning of the September issue to get there. People who might not read that online might spend time with it when they’re reading it on their travels. We increased our page stock weight and I do feel the difference of that. My goal is if you buy Vogue at the airport and you take it on the plane, I want you to think at the end of the flight that you bring it with you, you can’t leave it on the airplane. This is something that feels like a special product that you want to keep.

What are you still wanting to do with Vogue? What are your goals now?

What’s been exciting has been seeing how targeting smaller communities of Vogue readers has had great success. We launched a book club and to see young subscribers come to these book clubs and say, “It’s such a treat to feel seen. I love fashion and I’m a comp lit major at Yale and I get to read Emily Brontë and be part of the Vogue community.” I’ve been writing a newsletter every week that feels very personal and specific to me, and people have responded strongly to it. We’re playing with how our writers and editors are communicating with our audiences—really connecting with people at every level and space they can be.

What did you do for fun this summer?

Half of my family lives in France, so I went and was with my sister and three nieces in southwest France. It was lovely and such a treat to be there. I was there for about 10 days. My family has a house in northwest Connecticut, and my kids and husband have been there all of August doing forest camp. I’ve been going back and forth.

Good summer?

Really good summer! This summer felt really long, which is nice!

You can view the original article HERE.