Photo: Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
On Sunday at the Oscars, Anna Wintour took part in a skit with Anne Hathaway (a.k.a promo for The Devil Wears Prada sequel), where she brushed off the actress’s outfit. In the first movie, Hathaway famously plays an unfashionable assistant to a harsh Meryl Streep, a caricature of Wintour in real life. But according to some very anonymous reports, this “skit” actually hits close to home. After Chloe Malle, Vogue’s new head of editorial content, stepped out in a (in my opinion) perfectly fine blue sweater during Paris Fashion Week, armchair fashion critics quickly compared her look to the frumpy, infamous “cerulean blue” look from The Devil Wears Prada.
Since then, flimsy anonymous reports have emerged that Wintour, now Condé Nast’s chief content officer and known for her biting critique, is staging a fashion “intervention” for Malle. An industry “insider” told Rob Shuter, a gossip columnist, that the complaints about Malle’s outfit had reached Wintour.
“When designers start whispering about how someone looks in the front row, that becomes a Vogue problem,” someone allegedly told Shuter.
While the tabloid headlines are thin, the moment has driven ample commentary on TikTok, with some accusing Malle of not being a “power user of fashion,” while others said they loved her “whole library-chic era” on the app. Rumors like this are as much about Wintour as they are about the lore of old-school fashion editors like her and the fictitious Priestly.
After a rigorous fashion month, running from show to show, city to city, I’ll be the first to say I’m impressed Malle was even upright at that point in the week. Additionally, fashion has evolved into a space where personal style is king, and if this is Malle’s way of expressing herself, then why isn’t that considered stylish? I say let a woman live.