headquarters of the company The company traces its roots to 1909, when
Condé Montrose Nast, a New York City-born publisher, purchased
Vogue, a printed magazine launched in 1892 as a New York weekly journal of society and fashion news. Nast initially published the magazine under the corporate name Vogue Company. In 1922, he incorporated Condé Nast Publications as the holding company for his interests. Nast had a flair for nurturing elite readers as well as advertisers and upgraded
Vogue, sending the magazine on its path of becoming a top
haute couture fashion authority. Eventually, Nast's portfolio expanded to include
House & Garden,
Vanity Fair (briefly known as
Dress and Vanity Fair),
Glamour, and
American Golfer, published from 1908 to 1920. The company also introduced
British Vogue in 1916, and Condé Nast became the first publisher of an overseas edition of an existing magazine. Condé Nast is largely considered to be the originator of the "
class publication", a type of magazine focused on a particular social group or interest instead of targeting the largest possible readership. Its magazines focus on a wide range of subjects, including travel, food, home, and culture, with fashion the larger portion of the company's focus. This company also opened a
printing facility in
Old Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1924 but closed in 1964 to make way for more centrally located sites capable of producing higher volumes. During the
Great Depression, Condé Nast introduced innovative typography, design, and color. ''Vogue's
first full color photograph by Edward Steichen was featured on the cover in 1932, marking the year when Condé Nast began replacing fashion drawings on covers with photo illustrations―an innovative move at the time. Glamour'', launched in 1939, was the last magazine personally introduced to the company by Nast, who died in 1942. The Nast family connection to the publishing business remained, with Nast's son
Charles Coudert Nast serving as the company's longtime general counsel. In 1959,
Samuel I. Newhouse bought Condé Nast for US$5 million as an anniversary gift for his wife Mitzi, who loved
Vogue. He merged it with the privately held holding company
Advance Publications. His son,
S. I. Newhouse, Jr., known as "Si", became chairman of Condé Nast in 1975. Under Newhouse, Condé Nast acquired
Brides in 1959, revived
Vanity Fair in 1983 after it was shuttered in 1936, and launched the new publication
Self in 1979.
2000–2009 At the outset of the new
millennium in January 2000, Condé Nast moved from 350
Madison Avenue to
4 Times Square. The move was viewed as a significant catalyst for the redevelopment of
Times Square. In the same year, Condé Nast purchased
Fairchild Publications (now known as Fairchild Fashion Media), home to
W and
WWD, from the
Walt Disney Company. In 2001, Condé Nast bought
Golf Digest and
Golf World from
The New York Times Company for US$435 million. On October 31, 2006, Condé Nast acquired the content aggregation site
Reddit, later on spun off as a wholly owned
subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company in September 2011. The company folded the women's magazine
Jane with its August issue in 2007, and later shut down its website. One of Condé Nast's oldest titles, the American edition of
House and Garden, ceased publication after the December 2007 issue.
Portfolio,
Mademoiselle and
Domino were folded as well. On May 20, 2008, the company announced its acquisition of a popular technology-oriented website,
Ars Technica. On October 5, 2009, Condé Nast announced the closure of three of its publications:
Cookie,
Modern Bride, and
Elegant Bride.
Gourmet ceased monthly publication with its November 2009 issue; the Gourmet brand was later resurrected as "Gourmet Live", an
iPad app that delivers new editorial content in the form of recipes, interviews, stories, and videos. In print,
Gourmet continues in the form of special editions on newsstands and cookbooks. That same year, Condé Nast announced the launch of
Love magazine, a bi-annual British style magazine founded by fashion journalist Katie Grand. In 2020, Grand announced her departure and was replaced by Whembley Sewell.
2010–present In July 2010,
Robert Sauerberg became Condé Nast's president. In May 2011, the company was the first major publisher to deliver subscriptions for the
iPad, starting with
The New Yorker; the company has since rolled out iPad subscriptions for nine of its titles. In the same month, Next Issue Media, a joint venture formed by five U.S. publishers including Condé Nast, announced subscriptions for
Android devices, initially available for the
Samsung Galaxy Tab. In September 2011, Condé Nast said it would offer 17 of its brands to the
Kindle Fire. The company launched
Conde Nast Entertainment in 2011 to develop movies, television series, and digital video programming. In May 2013, CNÉ's Digital Video Network debuted, featuring
web series for such publications as
Glamour and
GQ.
Wired joined the Digital Video Network with the announcement of five original web series including the
National Security Agency satire
Codefellas and the animated
advice series
Mister Know-It-All. In October 2013, the company ended its
internship program after being sued by two former interns claiming they had been paid less than
minimum wage for summer internships there. In November 2014, the company moved into
One World Trade Center in Manhattan, where its headquarters are now located. On September 14, 2015, the company announced Sauerberg as its new CEO, with former CEO Charles H. Townsend taking the role of Chairman, and S.I. Newhouse Jr. taking the role of Chairman Emeritus in January 2016. On October 13, 2015, Condé Nast announced that it had acquired
Pitchfork. In July 2016, the company announced the launch of Condé Nast Spire, a new division of the company focusing on consumer purchasing data and content consumption through the company's own first-party behavioral data. The chairman of the company, Charles Townsend, retired at the end of 2016, and the Chairman Emeritus Newhouse died the following October. In March 2018, Condé Nast announced the launch of the
influencer-based platform
Next Gen. The company's chief revenue and marketing officer, Pamela Drucker Mann, stated that the platform would feature both "in-house and external talent with significant and meaningful social followings". In April 2019, Condé Nast appointed the former CEO of
Pandora Media,
Roger Lynch, as the company's first global CEO. It also sold the magazine
Brides to the digital media company
Dotdash, and in May of the same year, announced the sale of
Golf Digest to
Discovery, Inc. In June of the same year, Condé Nast sold
W to a new holding company, Future Media Group.
W editor Stefano Tonchi later sued the company for
wrongful termination, with Condé Nast suing Tonchi in response, seeking the return of "all monies paid to [Tonchi] during his period of disloyalty," claiming that he had acted as a "
faithless servant" during the sale of
W, and had interfered with the sale to benefit himself.
Roger Lynch was appointed CEO in April 2019, and in October 2019, announced plans to increase Condé Nast's revenue from readers. In June 2020, following the
global outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19, it was reported that Condé Nast had experienced a drop in advertising revenues of 45% as a result of the pandemic. It was also reported that the company had, in previous years,
sublet six of the company's 23 floors in the One World Trade Center, following the cancellation of a number of its publishing titles. In November 2023, Condé Nast announced it would be cutting about 5 percent of its workforce which would impact approximately 270 employees. Some of the reasons given for this were pressures from digital advertising, decreasing social media traffic, and shifting audience preferences towards short-form video content on platforms like
TikTok and
YouTube Shorts. In January 2024, union members from the company's publications set a
strike for 24 hours aligned with the announcement of
96th Academy Awards nominees claiming that the company was "engaging in regressive
bargaining and breaking the law in bargaining by rescinding an offer that they had previously made around layoffs".
Anne Hathaway walked out of a
Vanity Fair photo shoot the same day, January 23, in solidarity with the union. In December 2024, Condé Nast announced additional layoffs specifically targeting top executives at the company. In October 2025, the company announced that it would no longer feature new animal
fur in its editorial content or advertising. The decision followed a nine-month campaign against Condé Nast and its business partners by the
Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade and years of protests by
PETA. In November 2025, the
NewsGuild of New York filed an
unfair labor practice charge against Condé Nast with the
National Labor Relations Board on behalf of Condé United, the
union that represents most Condé Nast employees, accusing the company of wrongfully terminating four employees who were engaging in "protected concerted activity" when they confronted the company's head of
human resources over
layoffs at
Teen Vogue. ==American digital assets and publications==