Vogue’s Anna Wintour Believes Everyone ‘Should Be Fired Once’

Anna Wintour has one unexpected piece of career advice.

On Friday, Sept. 5, the former Vogue editor-in-chief opened up in a New Yorker profile about her tenure at Condé Nast, her newly announced successor, Chloe Malle, and her belief that everyone should be fired from a job at least once.

As Wintour, 75, detailed her career trajectory, she recalled being fired from her junior fashion editor position at Harper’s Bazaar in 1975.

“I was told I would never understand the American market,” she explained, adding that the firing “was very brief.”

“But I think everyone should be fired once,” she said, adding, “It helps you get everything into proportion.” 

She notes that after she was fired, she learned to pick herself up, which ultimately led her to a role at New York Magazine. 

“My multitasking really came into full use, because there wasn’t anyone there that understood anything that I was doing,” she said of joining the organization in 1981. 

“That’s where I caught the eye of Alexander Liberman — the editorial director of Condé Nast — and I moved over to American Vogue,” she said.

During a 1997 Women in Journalism event, Wintour said she was fired by Harper’s Bazaar’s then-editor-in-chief, Tony Mazzola, for being “too European.”

“At the time I didn’t know what he meant, but in retrospect I think it meant that I was obstinate, that I wouldn’t take direction and that I totally ignored my editor’s need for credits,” Wintour said. “In his eyes, I was neither commercial, nor professional.”

In June, Wintour announced that she was stepping down from her famed role of American Vogue editor-in-chief after 37 years in the role.

“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 at the time. 

“Now, I find that my greatest pleasure is helping the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas … that is exactly the kind of person we need to now look for to be HOEC for US Vogue.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, Vogue announced that Malle would be her successor.

“Fashion and media are both evolving at breakneck speed, and I am so thrilled — and awed — to be part of that,” Malle, the former editor of Vogue.com, said in a statement.

Wintour added, “At a moment of change both within fashion and outside it, Vogue must continue to be both the standard-bearer and the boundary-pushing leader.” 

“Chloe has proven often that she can find the balance between American Vogue’s long, singular history and its future on the front lines of the new,” Wintour continued. “I am so excited to continue working with her … while she leads us and our audiences where we’ve never been before.”