Anna Wintour Steps Back as Vogue Editor-in-Chief After 37 Years — and She’s Hiring!

After 37 years at the helm of American Vogue, editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is stepping back.

The Daily Front Row, WWD and Business of Fashion confirm that the longtime editor of the “fashion bible” is leaving her position leading the monthly magazine. Per the outlets, Wintour, 75, announced the news in a staff meeting on the morning of Thursday, June 26. Vogue will seek a new head of editorial content (who will report to Wintour), while Wintour will stay on as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer and global editorial director at Vogue, overseeing every brand globally, includingVanity Fair, GQ, AD and more.

“Anybody in a creative field knows how essential it is never to stop growing in one’s work. When I became the editor of Vogue, I was eager to prove to all who might listen that there was a new, exciting way to imagine an American fashion magazine,” Wintour told Vogue staff in a meeting on Thursday.

She continued: “Now, I find that my greatest pleasure is helping the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas, supported by a new, exciting view of what a major media company can be. And that is exactly the kind of person we need to now look for to be HOEC for US Vogue.”

Wintour went on to explain that many of her responsibilities at Vogue would remain the same, “including paying very close attention to the fashion industry and to the creative cultural force that is our extraordinary Met Ball, and charting the course of future Vogue Worlds, and any other original fearless ideas we may come up with…and it goes without saying that I plan to remain Vogue’s tennis and theater editor in perpetuity.

“But how thrilling it will be,” she concluded, “to work alongside someone new who will challenge us, inspire us, and make us all think about Vogue in a myriad of original ways."

The longtime editor began her career at Vogue in 1988, taking the reins from former editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella. Wintour immediately started reshaping the magazine and one of her first major moves made history for the brand.

Her first cover (the November 1988 issue), featured model Michaela Bercu in a $50 pair of jeans (the first time denim was on the cover of Vogue) with a $10,000 Christian Lacroix sweater in a fun and relaxed shot photographed by Peter Lindbergh.

“It was so unlike the studied and elegant close-ups that were typical of Vogue’s covers back then, with tons of makeup and major jewelry. This one broke all the rules,” Wintour told Vogue in 2012. “Afterwards, in the way that these things can happen, people applied all sorts of interpretations: It was about mixing high and low, Michaela was pregnant, it was a religious statement. But none of these things was true. I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change. And you can’t ask for more from a cover image than that.”

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That groundbreaking cover debut signaled another major magazine advancement that she would be credited for — putting celebrities on the cover. She ushered in a whole new era of magazine covers designs which the rest of the industry followed.

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Her longstanding reputation for being intimidating was thought to have inspired Miranda Priestly's character in The Devil Wears Prada, a book written by her former assistant Lauren Weisberger and later made into a movie starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

Weisberger said she drew inspiration from stories her friends across the industry told her about their bosses, but still, many associated the type of boss to Wintour. When the film premiered in 2006, Wintour arrived at the theater wearing Prada.

In 2009, she turned the tables, letting cameras inside the sacred world of Vogue during the making of the annual “September issue.” The documentary, The September Issue filmed the day-to-day tasks of Wintour and her team as they compiled the largest September issue to date. It was one of the first inside looks of the "fashion bible."

In 2013, Wintour became the artistic director of Condé Nast and in 2019, earned her third job title when she was named global content advisor.

Wintour's replacement has been not yet been named.