Anna Wintour defended her new U.S. Vogue successor, 39-year-old Chloe Malle, from “nepo baby” criticism on Friday.
Speaking to The New Yorker, Wintour, 75, insisted that Malle, the daughter of Murphy Brown actress Candice Bergen and director and screenwriter Louis Malle, “really had to prove herself during the interview process.”
Wintour explained, “We saw a lot of amazing, amazing candidates, and Chloe consistently came back with the clearest vision and the most original ideas and understanding of what a Vogue in—well, I don’t think we can talk about five, 10 years anymore—in two years is going to look like.”
Malle was confirmed Tuesday in Vogue’s newly created role of head of editorial content, as Wintour steps down from her role as editor-in-chief after 37 years. Wintour will continue working from the same office, however, right “down the hall” as Malle put it to the Times, as she will remain in her posts as Condé Nast’s chief content officer and global editorial director.
Wintour insisted Friday that passing the American Vogue torch to Malle, who’s worked at the brand for the past ten years and served as its Vogue.com editor, means Malle is free to bring “her own point of view” to the role.
Malle, whose mom played the editor of Vogue on Sex and the City, hasn’t shied away from the “nepo baby” term. She told The New York Times she’s a “proud nepo baby” on Wednesday.
“There is no question that I have 100 percent benefited from the privilege I grew up in,” she told the publication. “It’s delusional to say otherwise,” she added, “I will say, though, that it has always made me work much harder. It has been a goal for much of my life to prove that I’m more than Candice Bergen’s daughter, or someone who grew up in Beverly Hills.”
Wintour echoed that sentiment as she praised the young editor.
“She understands a newsroom. She understands immediacy. She understands culture. She understands completely that fashion doesn’t exist in a vacuum, that it’s a result of many different forces—whether it’s something that might be happening in music, or a film, or politically—and wants to put it into a kind of context. Plus, she has a great sense of humor,” Wintour added.
Malle raised her profile at the magazine when she interviewed Lauren Sánchez for her Vogue cover in June, ahead of Sanchez’s wedding to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The Sánchez cover prompted backlash at the time and came as somewhat of a surprise given Wintour’s standoff with Melania Trump over one day appearing on Vogue’s cover a second time. Wintour, a vocal Democratic Party supporter and fundraiser, had skipped inviting Melania onto the magazine’s cover pages after her husband was elected president—but had no problem highlighting the Bezos couple despite their close relationship with the Trumps.
Malle defended the decision to the Times on Tuesday, “I do think there is an element of endorsement with a Vogue cover, and I do think that it is worth taking a calculated risk… You want something to be a moment, and that was a huge moment for us. That was what everyone was talking about. And we had that, and we owned it.”
She declined to answer whether she’d consider offering a cover to Melania Trump when asked, however.
Wintour’s political stance hasn’t changed. She told the New Yorker, “It’s a tough time for Democrats, there’s no question, but hopefully, somebody will emerge in the not-too-distant future who will challenge our current Administration.” As for who that “somebody” might be, Wintour offered, “I’ve been impressed by Governor Newsom. I think he’s certainly making a stand. I’m sure there’ll be many other candidates that will emerge, hopefully soon.”
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