AI Summary
5 min readChloe Malle became head of editorial content for American Vogue in fall 2024, and her first print issue landed in February 2025. In this conversation with NPR’s Michelle Martin, she describes how she thinks about the magazine’s authority in a moment of constant digital noise, why she believes joy and fashion are not frivolous even when democracy feels fragile, and what she learned from a career path that started with writing about New York real estate and party reports.
How to get the job (and why to take it)
Malle’s advice for anyone trying to break into a place like Vogue is simple: “Always take the meeting, and always never have a preconceived notion about what you think makes sense for you or doesn’t.” She began her journalism career covering real estate transactions at the New York Observer, which she calls “a great way to learn about the way power moves in New York.” From there she went freelance, wrote for the New York Times style section, and did a freelance piece for Vogue. Then she got a call about a features editor role that was then called “social editor”—nothing to do with social media, but someone who edited the front-of-book section about weddings, parties, and young people out and about. She admits she initially wondered whether writing about parties was what she wanted to sink her teeth into. But after two days of interviews with eight or nine editors
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction and First Impressions** - Host Michelle Martin introduces Chloe Malle as the new head of editorial content for American Vogue, and they open with a lighthearted discussion about the pressure of dressing for the interview.
- 2 (03:11) **How to Get a Job at Vogue: Career Advice** - Malle shares her unexpected career path, from reporting on New York real estate to freelancing for the New York Times and Vogue.
- 3 (08:55) **The Purpose of Party and Society Reporting** - Malle defends society reporting as valuable anthropology and sociology, not just gossip.
- 4 (12:42) **Vogue Then vs. Now: Authority in a Noisy World** - Malle describes her first relationship with Vogue in college as a must-read authority, and contrasts that with today's non-stop digital firehose.
- 5 (16:27) **Passions Beyond Fashion and a Holistic Brand Strategy** - Malle lists her many obsessions (books, film, theater, art, family) and explains how Vogue is a "bike wheel" with the print magazine at the center.
- 6 (19:42) **Vogue's Mission: Gracious Living in Any Era** - Malle invokes a WWII-era quote from a former Vogue editor, Edna Woolman Chase, to define the publication's purpose.
- 7 (21:51) **Fashion vs. Democracy: Is Vogue Frivolous in a Crisis?** - Michelle Martin presses Malle on whether thinking about fashion is a waste of energy when the fundamentals of democracy are crumbling.
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Show Notes
Last fall Malle was tapped to succeed Anna Wintour as Head of Editorial Content. The daughter of actress Candice Bergen and the late filmmaker Louis Malle, she started at Vogue 15 years ago as what she describes as a “social editor,” overseeing a weddings-and-parties section that once struck her as too frothy for a serious journalist.
Now, in a time when trends are accessible on your phone at any hour of the day, Malle says she believes people still care about Vogue. Under Malle’s leadership, the magazine’s summer issue published in June focused on celebrating the 250th birthday of the United States.
In this episode of NPR’s Newsmakers, Malle sat down with Michel Martin to discuss how the Vogue of today is different from the one she read as an adolescent, why Vogue still matters and how legacy media is evolving.
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