Anna Wintour Fires ‘Pitchfork’ Staff While Keeping Her Sunglasses On

Infamous Conde Nast editor Anna Wintour fired the staff of the music website Pitchfork while wearing her signature sunglasses.

Pitchfork was launched in 1996, and it became known for supporting its favored musical artists while harshly disapproving of others.

Condé Nast decided to merge the music criticism site into GQ, resulting in mass layoffs.

The decision “was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our music coverage can continue to thrive within the company,” according to Wintour in a memo to the staff.

Wintour works for Condé Nast as their chief content officer and global editorial director of Vogue. She was made famous as the inspiration for the imperious editor Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada.

The people affected were editor-in-chief Puja Patel and features editor Jill Mapes. Mapes took to X to express her disappointment, “after nearly 8 yrs, mass layoffs got me. Glad we could spend that time trying to make it a less dude-ish place just for GQ to end up at the helm.”

About half of the staff are expected to get laid off, including senior writer Marc Hogan, associate editor Sam Sodomsky, associate news director Evan Minsker and associate staff writers Hattie Lindert and Matthew Ismael Ruiz.

Wintour did not take off her sunglasses during that entire meeting with the staffers.

A former Pitchfork writer, Allison Hussey, wrote on X, “One absolutely bizarro detail from this week is that Anna Wintour — seated indoors at a conference table — did not remove her sunglasses while she was telling us that we were about to get canned. The indecency we’ve seen from upper management this week is appalling.”

Staffers were left to speculate whether her decision to keep them on was a fashion choice or a way to avoid looking at the Pitchfork employees in the eye.

In a 2009 interview with 60 Minutes, Wintour commented on her sunglasses, saying, “They are seriously useful. I can sit in a show, and if I am bored out of my mind, nobody will notice. At this point, they have become, really, armor.”

The company’s CEO, Roger Lynch, mentioned he wanted to cut costs and lay off around 5% of its total staff after suffering years of losses in the publishing industry.

Last June, Wintour was seen at the Tony Awards supporting her daughter, Bee Carrozinni, who produced the hit show Parade.