The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Priya Tanna has led the Mumbai-based fashion title since its launch in 2007. Now she is joining a growing group of international Vogue editors who have exited over the last six months as the company streamlines its operations and consolidates power in the hands of its New York-based leadership.
Vogue editorial teams in the Asia-Pacific region (not including China and Russia) have been under the leadership of Vogue Taiwan editor Leslie Sun, according to sources with knowledge of the structure. She reports to Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour, who was also promoted to become the publisher’s chief content officer in December.
More editors-in-chief are expected to exit the publisher in the coming weeks as the consolidation shakes out, and at more titles than Vogue. BoF has learned that India’s Architectural Digest editor Greg Foster is also exiting his title.
Starting in April, some Condé Nast employees in the UK and Europe were notified their jobs were at risk of redundancy as part of the streamlining. In December, Natalia Gamero del Castillo was named managing director for Condé Nast in Europe and British Vogue editor Edward Enninful was named the European director the fashion title, overseeing French Vogue’s Emmanuelle Alt and Italian Vogue’s Emanuele Farneti, among others. (Vogue Germany’s Christiane Arp and Vogue Spain’s Eugenia de la Torriente exited at the end of last year).
“As we continue to bring together our European business and transform our global operations, we are entering into a collective consultation process to evolve some of our teams, roles and capabilities,” said a representative for Condé Nast. “We are fully committed to supporting employees during this time.”
Vogue China’s Angelica Cheung also exited the company last November after 15 years. Wintour hired the 27-year-old Chinese Australian super-blogger Margaret Zhang to succeed her.
The consolidation is designed to cut costs and rethink the way Condé Nast manages its portfolio of titles, whose international editions have historically competed for advertising dollars, covers and features.
“We were certainly all very collegial ... but we did not collaborate,” Wintour told the Financial Times in April. Sources told the paper that Condé Nast will operate at a loss again in 2021, following several years of losses as the print publisher adapted to digital, but expects to break even in 2022 and see “double-digit operation profit margins” by 2024.
Almost all of the editors-in-chief that Condé Nast promoted to global roles are based in the US: Anna Wintour now oversees Vogue globally, GQ editor Will Welch oversees the men’s fashion title globally, Architectural Digest editor Amy Astley oversees the interior design title globally and Wired editor Gideon Lichfield oversees the tech title globally. Condé Nast Traveler is lead by the editor of its edition in India, Divia Thani.
In Europe, Italy’s Simone Marchetti leads Vanity Fair. Architectural Digest’s Germany editor Oliver Jahn, GQ Middle East’s editor Adam Baidawi and Condé Nast Traveler US’s editor Jesse Ashlock were also each named to deputy global editorial director roles.
Condé Nast owns and operates its publications in the US, France, Spain, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Latin America, Taiwan and UK, and operates its own titles in China through copyright cooperation. The rest of its international editions are operated as licenses with local publishers and are not impacted by this new structure.
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