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.
At the Paris Fashion Week that ended on Tuesday, the international Vogue editors-in-chief who once dominated the front rows were notably absent. In the nine months since Vogue publisher Condé Nast announced a major editorial restructuring that consolidated power in the hands of American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, most of them have exited their posts.
Now, heavyweight editors like French Vogue’s Emmanuelle Alt and Vogue China’s Angelica Cheung, who were once Wintour’s equals and ran local editions as independent fiefdoms, have been largely replaced by heads of editorial content who report to Wintour and her newly crowned deputies.
As European editorial director, British Vogue’s Edward Enninful now oversees France, Italy, Germany and Spain, while Vogue Taiwan’s Leslie Sun, editorial director for Asia Pacific, oversees India and Japan. Vogue China’s Margaret Zhang and Vogue Russia’s Ksenia Solovieva report directly to Wintour, as does Karla Martínez de Salas, who oversees Mexico and Latin America, but only Zhang and Solovieva’s roles carry the editor-in-chief title.
Enninful and Sun, plus Vogue heads of editorial content for France and Italy, Eugénie Trochu and Francesca Ragazzi, were the only top international editors to attend the Paris shows this season, though global chief executive officer Roger Lynch, Vogue Runway global lead Nicole Phelps and Vogue.com executive fashion director Rickie De Sole were among those who also hit the fashion week circuit, along with a number of international fashion directors. They mostly report to American Vogue’s Virginia Smith, who has taken on the title of global fashion lead.
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The editorial reshuffle, executed over the course of this year, is part of a wider push at Condé Nast to streamline its operations and retool for a digital world after merging its US and international arms. But with Vogue still sitting atop the hierarchy of major fashion magazines, everyone from brands to their PR agencies must understand and adapt to the new operating model.
Here, BoF charts Vogue’s new global editorial structure.
Editor’s Note: This article was revised on 8 October, 2021. An earlier version of this article misidentified the fashion director of Vogue Russia. She is Olga Dunina.
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