Loose Threads
When I was on vacation last week, the New York Post reported that Melania Trump rejected Vanity Fair’s cover offer. Employees allegedly told the magazine’s new head of editorial content Mark Guiducci that they would quit if he put her on the cover. As discussed ahead, now that Anna is not leading Vogue and can distance from editorial minutiae, it will be interesting to see if the magazine (or any other Condé title) makes more attempts to bring in MAGA readers.
Diotima’s Rachel Scott has been appointed to lead design for Proenza Schouler after founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez stepped back to take over design at Loewe, replacing Jonathan Anderson.
Speaking of Anderson: Alba Rohrwacher wore a Dior haute couture gown — Anderson’s first — on the Venice Film Festival red carpet. The exaggerated bustle was not my favorite but I’m still jazzed to see his debut show this season.
I keep waiting for an innovative fashion AI company to disrupt Google’s vice grip on online shopping. I’ve been playing around with Plush, a site that uses AI to deliver tasteful results, in effort to find a dress for a formal event this month, and have been genuinely very impressed with the results it shows me.
Ssense joins a cohort of struggling online retailers, announcing last week it would file for bankruptcy protection. The company blamed tariffs, but I also think the youth move away from luxury shopping can’t be helping them.
Finally, I loved how the Telluride Film Festival fashion is mostly just stars in jeans and shapeless pants, standing on concrete or grass, giving zero fucks. Take that, Venice!
And now, today’s big story!
Vogue's 'Head of Editorial Content' Era Commences with Chloe Malle
If anyone was still hoping that Anna Wintour’s replacement as Vogue’s first-ever “head of editorial content” would harken a creative revolution, those hopes were seemingly snuffed out Tuesday morning when Condé Nast confirmed that Chloe Malle had landed the job, effective immediately. Since Anna announced she’d step back, Malle — who has been running Vogue’s website — has been the rumored front runner.
As predicted earlier in Back Row, the news was timed to fashion month, allowing Malle to make a splash on front rows as Vogue’s new doyenne (though she’ll likely be sitting alongside Anna Wintour, who remains her boss as Condé’s Chief Content Officer).
Also as predicted in this newsletter, Anna chose a Vogue insider — someone with many years of experience at the title who has been thoroughly vetted and theoretically comes with no surprises for Vogue’s corporate overlords. Malle seems like someone who can capably and enthusiastically take on the drudgery of running a valuable media brand for a legacy shop like Condé Nast in 2025, hustling traffic, opening new revenue streams, monetizing every last scrap of content, worrying about engagement, jumping on trends like newsletters and talking-head videos, and so forth. These media jobs are unfortunately less about creative ambition than ever before, as managers must wrestle with ever-evolving platforms and ongoing budget cuts as they play whack-a-mole with technological threats like AI. This is also why, as I previously wrote in the New York Times, these jobs are not as desirable to many of the kinds of people who had all the advantages that Anna (also a nepo baby) did in her early career.
I hear Malle is lovely and competent and has a sense of humor. She is also clearly someone Condé feels safe with in this moment.
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