‘The boss wears Prada ...the workers get nada’
Vogue boss faces employees’ mutiny over pay and ‘unethical practices’
AS ONE of fashion’s most influential stars, Dame Anna Wintour is no stranger to controversy.
But the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, who has been on a mission to preserve her legacy and make the fashion bible more ‘woke’, has now found herself at the centre of an escalating staff mutiny over allegations of tokenistic hiring decisions and poor pay and conditions.
Workers last year staged protests outside Dame Anna’s Manhattan townhouse, chanting ‘You can’t eat prestige’ and ‘The boss wears Prada, the workers get nada’.
And now 400 employees of Condé Nast, Vogue’s parent company – which also includes The New Yorker and Glamour magazines – have formed a union to protest
‘Dame Anna is trying to distance herself from it’
against what they describe as the corporation’s unethical practices. One of the union’s most vocal members, Cortni Spearman, has personally accused the company of using people of colour like her to fulfil a ‘diversity quota’.
And in a two-minute video circulated to rally support, members of staff are seen declaring: ‘We’re burned out, we’re underpaid. We’re unionising for a future where any worker from any background can thrive. The company thinks we’re replaceable, that we should be grateful to be here.’
Ms Wintour, 72, who has also been Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020, sought to distance herself from the complaints last week, with a source from her camp insisting it was a corporate issue, which is not ‘her bag’. But sources say the issues may become harder for her to dismiss. Another source told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Everyone answers to Anna. The idea she’s not involved, given all the effort she has been putting in lately to make Vogue ‘woke’ is hard to swallow. The workers are rising up in mutiny. London will be next.’
The legendary magazine editor has, in recent years, been attempting to atone for past missteps. She apologised to staff for racerelated mistakes in an internal email, and in one editorial meeting is rumoured to have declared: ‘Why are there so many white people in the room?’
Some claim Ms Wintour is simply jumping on the latest trendy bandwagon as Vogue undergoes a woke overhaul with the UK edition now operating under its first black UK editor, Edward Enninful.
UK Vogue has featured a more diverse range of faces on its cover, opened a trendy new London office and started policing its fashion cupboard, where employees were once encouraged to supplement their meagre income with freebies.
There are concerns Enninful will lift the lid on the industry’s discriminatory history in his autobiography, A Visible Man, which is due to be published in September.
Spearman, who left her job as a senior social-media manager at Glamour yesterday, said: ‘I’ve never seen or experienced firsthand the kind of discrimination, burnout, or pay disparities that I’ve witnessed at Condé Nast.’
A Condé Nast spokesman said: ‘We plan to have productive and thoughtful conversations with them [the union] over the coming weeks to learn more.’