The internet mourns Teen Vogue, a magazine brand that ‘took young people seriously’

On November 3, Vogue announced that it’s folding the sister publication Teen Vogue into Vogue.com. Now, the internet is mourning the loss of a rare publication that “took young people seriously.”

The news came in the form of an article posted to Vogue’s business vertical. Per the post, the transition is “part of a broader push to expand the Vogue ecosystem.”

The article goes on to explain that Teen Vogue “will remain a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission,” and that the publication will “focus its content on career development, cultural leadership and other issues that matter most to young people.”

Further, it notes that Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Versha Sharma will be leaving the company, while Vogue’s head of editorial content, Chloe Malle, will step in to oversee the sister publication.

In the wake of Vogue’s announcement, Condé Nast laid off several of Teen Vogue‘s staffers, reportedly including a majority of its BIPOC and trans employees. Now, Teen Vogue’s former editors and writers, and many of its current fans, are taking to the internet to mourn the loss and criticize the magazine giant that owns it.

Here’s what to know:

What happened to Teen Vogue?

While Vogue is framing the absorption of Teen Vogue as a way to provide “a more unified reader experience,” members of Condé United, a union that represents workers across Condé Nast’s magazine brands, call the move “clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine’s insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most.”

In a post to X, the union said that “Management plans to lay off six of our members, most of whom are BIPOC or trans, including Teen Vogue’s Politics Editor,” adding that “Teen Vogue now has no writers or editors explicitly covering politics.”

In a statement to Fast Company, a Condé Nast spokesperson said, “Teen Vogue has faced ongoing challenges around scale and audience reach for some time. Rather than continuing to operate independently with limited reach, bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution, and more resources.”

Neither Vogue nor Condé Nast directly responded to questions about whether the layoffs primarily impacted BIPOC and trans staffers and how many employees were let go in total.

Teen Vogue’s robust political reporting previously earned the publication several major awards, including the April Sidney Award for social justice coverage in 2018 and the Roosevelt Institute’s Freedom of Speech Medal in 2025.

In a statement published on November 3, the Roosevelt Institute called Vogue’s decision to incorporate Teen Vogue “evidence that corporate concentration eliminates innovative ideas and silences voices with less power.”

Fans react to the news

Fans of Teen Vogue—which was first published in 2003—are taking to the internet in droves to express their sadness that one of the only major publications geared toward teens (and primarily teen girls) will no longer maintain an independent presence. 

“Teen Vogue took young people seriously. It’s impossible to overstate how important, how rare, and how profoundly needed that is,” one tweet from writer Rainesford Stauffer reads.

“[Depressed] at the teen vogue news,” wrote another X user, adding “there’s going to be nothing left for youth/teens to reach for when they are curious about news and issues, whether it’s about fashion or politics or pop culture.”

Readers are most concerned by the apparent gutting of Teen Vogue staffers who focused on identity and politics coverage, especially during a moment when conservative messaging has become more common in media and concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are under attack.

In one TikTok explainer with more than 12,000 likes, creator @nya.etienne describes the overhaul as “an intentional silencing of underrepresented voices.”

“[They] laid off the majority of their BIPOC and trans staff, and this should be a huge concern for everybody that cares about free press in media,” she says in the video. “Teen Vogue is a magazine that taught a generation of us how to think critically.”

Former staffers take to social media

Teen Vogue’s former writers, editors, and staffers are also taking to social media to express alarm at the sudden change. 

Aiyana Ishmael, the publication’s former style editor, shared on Bluesky that she has been laid off—adding that, in the wake of the layoffs, there are no Black staffers remaining at the publication.

“At [the Teen Vogue Summit], I was asked how it felt to be 1 of 2 Black women left and what that meant for representation,” she wrote. “Now, there are no Black women at Teen Vogue and that is incredibly painful to think about.”

Teen Vogue’s most recent politics editor, Lex McMenamin, was also laid off this week: “certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue,” they wrote on Bluesky on November 3.

In a lengthy blog written for the publication TPM, Allegra Kirkland, who served as Teen Vogue’s politics director for six years until June 2025, condemned Condé Nast’s decision.

She told Fast Company that the publication served as a place for young people—especially young women and LGBTQ people—to put themselves “on the frontlines of the fight against The Presidentism,” advocating for issues “from the atrocious war on Gaza to book bans and gun violence in schools.”

Now, she says, that platform is gone.

“The mainstream media too often disregards young people’s opinions, or condescends to them in their coverage,” Kirkland says. “They’re smeared as woke scolds, checked-out TikTok addicts, or kids who are too naive to have fully-formed opinions about politics.”

She noted mainstream journalism’s tendency to write about certain topics from the outside, citing “feature-length articles” about transgender youth that did not include a single quoted source from within the community itself. “Teen Vogue’s coverage tried to provide a counter to that—to let young people speak for themselves,” she says.

Kirkland points to Teen Vogue’s coverage of gender-affirming care for trans youth, workers’ rights, and organizing safely under the The President administration as just a few ways that the publication served crucial information to its readers.

Her former colleagues are now pushing Condé Nast to preserve Teen Vogue’s archives so that those resources aren’t lost. The magazine’s print edition folded in 2017, with the New York Times reporting 80 job cuts at the time.

To help former Teen Vogue staffers in the wake of the news, McMenamin has organized a fundraiser on GoFundMe dedicated to covering “rent and utilities, medical bills, car payments, relocation expenses, major purchases like personal computers in order to work, and other necessities” for impacted employees.

“Condé Nast killed a beloved publication that meant so much to generations of young writers and readers, especially those from marginalized backgrounds,” Kirkland says. “They did so during an oppressive, authoritarian presidential administration that is trampling on the rights of those young people and on the First Amendment. It’s a damn shame.”

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