THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 NBU 7I truly apologize.”
In the 2017 email, Ms. Wintour requested
that a specific Black staff member evaluate
the photo shoot. The employee, an assist-
ant, told her superiors that the work was
fine. The real problem, she continued, ac-
cording to several people familiar with the
meeting, was why a low-ranked person
such as herself had been asked to assess it.
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.
‘A Colonial Broad’
For Ms. Wintour, who descends from
British nobility and was recently made a
Dame Commander of the Order of the
British Empire, the pace of the current mo-
ment of protest may be a challenge. But she
is also the daughter of a London newspaper
editor and has made a career out of antici-
pating and responding adroitly to cultural
trends.
In 2016, Ms. Wintour made a change to
her pool of assistants. (She had three aides
for many years, but more recently has had
two.) That year, according to three Condé
Nast employees, she told the company’s hu-
man resources department that her next as-
sistant should be Black. Eventually, most of
her assistants were people of color, the peo-
ple said. The job is highly sought after, a
steppingstone to bigger roles in fashion and
media, but because it is low-paying, it usu-
ally goes to women from wealthy families.
The sight of Ms. Wintour’s new adjutants
made for a vivid contrast with the usual
Vogue hires.
In 2017, Ms. Wintour was part of the small
committee that decided to replace the de-
parting Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter
with Radhika Jones, the editorial director of
the books department at The Times, mak-
ing her one of the few top editors of color in
Condé Nast’s history. Ms. Wintour has since
championed Ms. Jones against in-house
naysayers who complained that she had
featured too many people of color in Vanity
Fair. “My experiences with Anna have been
nothing but positive,” Ms. Jones said. “She’s
supportive of my vision and she under-
stands what I’ve been trying to achieve and
she has helped me to achieve it.”
Last month, Ms. Wintour replaced Stuart
Emmrich, a former Styles editor at The
Times, as the editor of the Vogue website
with Chioma Nnadi, a Black woman who
had been the magazine’s fashion director.
And in August, Ms. Wintour was instrumen-
tal in the hiring of the superstar book execu-
tive Dawn Davis, who is Black, as the editor
of Bon Appétit. (She replaced Adam
Rapoport, who resigned under pressure in
June after staff members accused him of
running a discriminatory workplace.)
In a statement, Condé Nast said that 42
percent of its editors in chief were now peo-
ple of color — all of them put in place by Ms.
Wintour — and that all photo shoots are ulti-
mately overseen by Raúl Martinez, the cor-
porate creative director, who is the son of
Cuban émigrés.
Some of Ms. Wintour’s relationships with
Black editors have been rocky. André Leon
Talley, a fashion titan, was one of Vogue’s
most recognized personalities, often seated
beside Ms. Wintour in the front row at run-
way shows in Paris, Milan and New York.
She lavished professional and financial sup-
port on Mr. Talley, but the two had a falling-
out, and he left the magazine in 2013.
This year, he published a memoir, “The
Chiffon Trenches,” which reads in part as a
scathing takedown of the fashion industry
for its whiteness. During a promotional in-
terview, a podcaster asked Mr. Talley about
Ms. Wintour’s apology for Vogue’s “hurtful
or intolerant” content. “Dame Anna Win-
tour is a colonial broad,” Mr. Talley replied.
“She’s part of an environment of colonial-
ism. She is entitled and I do not think she
will ever let anything get in the way of her
white privilege.”
Edward Enninful, a Black editor at Condé
Nast who has led British Vogue since 2017,
is among the next generation of Condé Nast
leaders, and is often mentioned as Ms. Win-
tour’s potential successor at the magazine’s
American flagship. The two are said to have
a difficult working relationship, according
to people in New York and London who
have directly observed their dynamic. (In
July, Mr. Enninful said that a security guard
at Condé Nast’s London office racially pro-
filed him, telling him to “use the loading
bay.” Mr. Enninful described the incident on
Instagram, writing “Change needs to hap-
pen now.” Condé Nast dismissed the guard,
he said. The post has since been deleted.)
When Ms. Wintour promoted Elaine Wel-
teroth, a Black woman, to a top position at
Teen Vogue in 2016, the appointment was
heralded as a step forward for diversity. But
the promotion was fraught, Ms. Welteroth
wrote in her 2019 memoir, “More Than
Enough.” Instead of running Teen Vogue
herself, as the editor in chief, she was given
a more ambiguous title, “editor,” and was
asked to split leadership of the publication
with two others. Ms. Welteroth felt that the
structure effectively sidelined her, giving
her less power than that of the previous
Teen Vogue boss, Amy Astley. (A year after
her appointment, Ms. Welteroth was named
editor in chief. She left Condé Nast in 2018.)
“Would any of it have gone down this way
if I were a White man?” Ms. Welteroth
wrote.A Summer of Discontent
The killing of Mr. Floyd set off difficult dis-
cussions about race and diversity in maga-
zines and newspapers across the country,
including at The Times. Employees every-
where have become more vocal about what
they see as racist attitudes in the work-
place.
At Condé Nast, Bon Appétit, a rising prof-
it center thanks in part to its popular cook-
ing videos, has been the red-hot center of
dissent in recent months, with many of its
staff members quitting in protest. Before
the hiring of Ms. Davis to lead the maga-
zine, Ms. Wintour watched closely over its
editorial operations, people who worked at
the property said.
At the time, people of color who had been
featured in the videos complained that they
were paid less than their white colleagues
and that Bon Appétit had whitewashed
their recipes — a trend in food journalism
where ethnic cuisines are recast from a
white perspective. Readers flooded the
comments section of Bon Appétit’s Insta-
gram account with messages of support for
those who complained.
In a post to Bon Appétit’s account, Priya
Krishna, a freelancer who had accused
Condé Nast of unequal pay, was quoted as
saying: “I have been forced to think outside
of myself and my identity my entire career.
So why can’t white editors change their
mindset now?”
Ms. Wintour asked to have the item re-
moved, according to internal Condé Nast
Slack messages. But by the time of her re-
quest, the Krishna post had been online for
hours, and Ms. Wintour was warned that
deleting it would only attract more atten-
tion. The social media team suggested post-
ing new content that would push the item
down in users’ feeds. Ms. Wintour approvedthe plan, according to two people involved
in the discussion.
Marcus Samuelsson, a celebrity chef who
signed a one-year agreement with Condé
Nast as a Bon Appétit consultant, said the
company’s history with diversity “was chal-
lenging,” but he added that Ms. Wintour had
worked to create more inclusivity. “She
championed it from Day 1,” he said.
Many people who have worked at Vogue
or with Ms. Wintour said that despite her
moves toward a more diverse staff, she was
still responsible for a hostile workplace.
They singled out two of Ms. Wintour’s best
known lieutenants: Phyllis Posnick, a
Vogue editor who styled the 2017 geisha and
head scarf shoots, and Grace Coddington,
another fixture at the magazine.
In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential
election, as staff members were despondent
that Mrs. Clinton had lost to Donald J.
Trump, Ms. Posnick said, in a voice that
three people could hear, “I knew this was
going to happen. It’s all the Blacks’ fault.
They didn’t vote.” The next year, when Ri-
hanna showed up late for Vogue’s annual
fashion conference — hardly an unusual oc-
currence for a musician — two people heard
Ms. Coddington say, “Black people are late
everywhere.”
In a statement, Ms. Posnick, 78, denied
making the comment. “I have never and
would never say something like this for the
simple fact that I don’t believe it,” she said.
Ms. Coddington, 79, also disputed that she
had made the Rihanna remark: “Why
would I say that when I am perennially late
myself ?”
Ms. Coddington is perhaps the second-
most visible figure of the Wintour era at
Vogue, having stolen multiple scenes in
“The September Issue,” a popular 2009 doc-
umentary about the magazine. In 2016, the
year she switched her Vogue status from
employee to freelancer, Ms. Coddington
was photographed in her Manhattan
kitchen, with a shelf of racist “mammy” fig-
urines clearly visible in the background.
The collection was roundly criticized.
In a statement, Condé Nast noted that
Ms. Posnick and Ms. Coddington no longer
contributed to the magazine.‘Condé Nasty’
To work at Vogue is to inhabit a kind of prep
school dormitory where relationships are
defined by family ties and social connec-
tions that span generations. For many
younger people of color who came from less
rarefied backgrounds, gaining a toehold
was considerably more difficult.
Condé Nast assistants famously put up
with grueling hours and humiliating tasks,
a job satirized in “The Devil Wears Prada,” a
best-selling novel by a former Wintour as-
sistant and later a hit movie starring Meryl
Streep as the demanding boss. The hazing
is seen as a rite of passage, part of why the
company has the nickname “Condé Nasty.”
And while Black staff members acknowl-
edge all that, they said that race compli-
cates matters.
Black employees are often asked to par-
ticipate, or merely show up for, high-level
meetings — a corporate practice known as
fronting, six people interviewed for this ar-
ticle said. At Vogue, they have been asked to
weigh in on cover images or take part in dis-
cussions with advertisers, forums that do
not typically call on junior employees.
In a statement, Condé Nast said, “Anna
and Vogue and all the leaders at our brands
have made concerted efforts to build inclu-
sion into all we do every day.”
In 2016, the actress Lupita Nyong’o was
at Vogue’s office at One World Trade in
Lower Manhattan to discuss a planned
photo shoot. Ms. Nyong’o sat down with top
editors, who had proposed photographing
her in her home country, Kenya, along with
some family members. The accompanying
article would also focus on her family.
Ms. Nyong’o expressed concern about
how her family would be portrayed, saying
she feared they might come across as cul-
tural props, according to several people
with knowledge of the meeting. After a long
pause, a junior editor — the only Black staff
member in the room — piped up. Address-
ing the actress, she suggested that the shoot
would be an opportunity to showcase Afri-
ca, a rarity in any American magazine, let
alone Vogue.
The shoot was a go. And the junior editor
was never asked to attend a fashion meet-
ing again.WILL RAGOZZINO/GETTY IMAGESMIKAEL JANSSONLeft, André Leon Talley, a
former editor at Vogue. Below,
Chioma Nnadi, who now
oversees Vogue.com. Below
her, Ms. Wintour and Edward
Enninful, the editor of British
Vogue. Bottom, Grace
Coddington, who worked with
Ms. Wintour for many years, at
her home in 2016. Behind her is
a collection of “mammy”
figurines.GEORGE ETHEREDGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESWILL OLIVER/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCKLESLIE KIRCHHOFFACIELLE TANBETOVA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.