The Washington Post loathes anyone trying to rebuke so-called "DEI," so it was unsurprising that fashion critic Robin Givhan was touting the queen of fashion, Vogue editor Anna Wintour for fighting it. The funny part was calling Wintour -- a big-time/long-time Democrat donor -- as an "unlikely activist." As in "An unlikely activist leans into DEI as Washington squashes it."
But the black leftists are always going to complain that the fashion elite was far too slow to champion models and designers of color, until they great shaming -- "racial reckoning" -- occurred after George Floyd's death in police custody five years ago. So Givhan felt it was time to celebrate "the recent Met Gala overseen by Wintour, the one celebrating Black style, perhaps the most public manifestation of change. The one that was accompanied by four different Vogue covers featuring four different Black men: Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams and Lewis Hamilton, as well as a video that oozed Black brotherhood and sisterhood."
Wintour is the chief content officer of Conde Nast magazines, including the radical leftists at Teen Vogue. But Givhan categories the left-wing extreme as "the most self-consciously inclusive."
Like a lot of companies, Condé Nast had pledged its allegiance to reframing its workplace structure to promote fair treatment of those historically undervalued. In the years since, however, companies have gone from filling their social media feeds with black squares to indicate their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement to wiping all references to diversity, equity and inclusion from their websites and their corporate ecosystem. Condé Nast struggled, too.
In 2021, it fumbled the hiring of Alexi McCammond as editor in chief at Teen Vogue, arguably the company’s most self-consciously inclusive brand, when her past racist tweets ignited a fury with the staff and online. Its chief diversity and inclusivity officer left in 2024 as employees wrestled with divergent responses to the war in Gaza.
"Divergent" -- as in the "DEI" hardliners lined up with Hamas in a war against Israel. Givhan suggested that while Wintour hasn't been perfect, she's on the right side of "equity" now:
While the Trump administration aims to halt all diversity programs, weed out “woke” sympathizers from the nooks and crannies of every industry, and muzzle conversations about racism and inequity, Condé Nast, unlike Meta and Google, continues to make a public effort. Wintour presses on. And in 2025, that alone is something of a win.
