Is Anna Wintour Resigning From Vogue?

I write this on admittedly zero hours of sleep since I've been dedicating my time to refreshing my Twitter feed, where, all through the night, rumors of such an earth-shattering (but, of course, long overdue) possibility swept fashion media circles. And though that rumor circulates year after year (and has, as of now, been debunked) this time it felt different.

For the 70-year-old editorial gatekeeper, the decision to step down from the helm she's held for over three decades may indeed be a long time coming, but it would come amid a mass reckoning for exclusionary industries, especially media. In the past week alone, a number of high-powered cults of personality have been toppled in the name of change. Bon Appétit's Adam Rapoport, Refinery29's Christene Barberich, and even the Man Repeller herself, Leandra Medine, have stepped down from Editor in Chief roles. Media-adjacent spaces, too, have seen shakeups; Audrey Gelman, once considered a feminist entrepreneurial wunderkind, resigned as CEO of The Wing.

While Rapoport's departure seemed to be a direct consequence of a personally damning photograph of him in brownface at a Halloween party circa 2004 (after which more tales of his toxic workplace behavior came to light), many of the other moves came after accusations by employees past and present of the demeaning treatment of Black and POC staffers, racist environments, and a general lack of diversity overseen and perpetuated by company leadership. 

Wintour, for her part, sent out an internal email on Wednesday, apologizing to colleagues for Vogue's own role in upholding a sense of racial inequality. "I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. We have made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes."

"I know that it is not enough to say we will do better, but we will—and please know that I value your voices and responses as we move forward," she added. "I am listening and would like to hear your feedback and your advice if you would like to share either."

But the statement coming from someone whose entire career has been built upon a reputation of intimidation (earning her the nickname "Nuclear Wintour" and a forever infamous association with Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada) was unsurprisingly met with indifference at best, and total condemnation at worst. 

André Leon Talley, whose new memoir has made headlines recently thanks to his unapologetic commentary about Wintour and their longtime yet contentious relationship, said in an interview following the email, that "[her] statement came out of the space of white privilege." He continued, "I want to say one thing, Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad, she's a colonial dame. She comes from British, she's part of an environment of colonialism."

On Thursday, The New York Times published a story that seemed to add fuel to the fire: "Can Anna Wintour Survive the Social Justice Movement?" In it, reporter Ginia Bellafante relayed the sentiments of since laid-off employees of color at Condé Nast, who expressed frustration at trying to be heard while simultaneously dealing with damaging stereotypes and ignorance from their white bosses. Still, none of them felt comfortable enough to speak on record for fear of retaliation. A few candid accounts did, however, make it to Twitter.

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With an impressive media résumé, Shelby Ivey Christie was recruited as a media planner at Vogue in 2016. She tweeted that her time at the glossy was “the most challenging and miserable” of her career, adding that bullying from white colleagues was exhausting. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “A white male exec on the digital biz team dressed up in a chicken suit, with gold chains, sagging pants + rapped to our entire biz org as a meeting ‘kickoff’”, said one tweet. HR was alerted, but nothing was done. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Christie writes of Black employees being overqualified, underpaid, and overworked. She was assigned additional territories spanning the West Coast to Italy, would could stretch work days to 20 hours. Nepotism was also an issue. On Vogue’s social media team, two Black members were Ivy League grads while their white counterparts had “no prior relevant experience”. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Zara Rahim was hired as Vogue's communications director in 2017. A former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton, she also worked for President Obama before winding up Vogue. As the only WOC in a leadership role, she was given additional diversity responsibilities that equated an additional job. “I was told in the end I was ‘complaining too much’”. At her next job, her salary jumped $60k. “There are people who hold these keys and have held them for decades. They know what they are doing, fire them.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Journalist Noor Tagouri was never employed by Vogue, but her experience is telling of the racism that pervades legacy institutions. She was photographed for a feature in their Feb. 2019 issue, only to be misidentified in print as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ In attempts to remedy the situation, she was offered a written feature, but wasn’t allowed to address the misidentification. Tagouri countered with a separate feature on the topic, but was told that Vogue wouldn’t publish two diversity pieces in one year. An offer to lead a free Diversity & Inclusion event was also shut down because “it would make it look like Vogue has ‘a problem’”. Eventually, they settled on a Town Hall, but ghosted Tagouri after a schedule mix up. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If the problem wasn’t obvious to the public then, it is now lol.
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On Thursday evening, Condé CEO Roger Lynch sent out his own company-wide email which, according to Page Six, listed commitments such as “ensuring equitable representation within our content across our print, digital and video,” plus “accelerating our Diversity and Inclusion report” and “introducing our new global code of conduct with an updated anti-discrimination and anti-racism policy later this year.”

Lynch also said that he would be hosting a series of town halls this week and this morning, at the first, firmly denied that the rumors about Wintour's departure were true. 

Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch on rumors that Anna Wintour is resigning: "There is no truth to that."
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) June 12, 2020

Nevertheless, the fact that a figurehead once so untouchable is no longer beyond reproach shows how powerful this universal call for change - and action - really is. Who knows what masthead bombshells we're in for next week?