Is Vogue editor Anna Wintour about to be deposed?

Is Anna Wintour (pictured right) about to get the push from American Vogue? US Media gossip website Gawker reports a "red hot rumour" that Conde Naste owner Si Newhouse recently flew to Paris to meet with Carine Roitfeld (left), the slinky editor of French Vogue, where he discussed her taking over from Wintour as early as the New Year.

Wintour, 59, who has been Queen Bee at Vogue for 20 years, is certainly ill at ease with the gossip. When asked by a reporter about about the recent speculations at the National Book Awards last month, she lost her usual "Arctic Wintour" cool and snapped: "Just go away."

55-year-old Roitfeld certainly possesses the experience, elan and hunger for fashion’s top job. She began her career as a model in the 1970s, then became a stylist and sometime muse of Tom Ford, only entering journalism in 2001, when Si Newhouse’s nephew Jonathan made her editor-in-chief of the French title.

Meanwhile, Gawker suggests Wintour is aware the writing is on the wall, and that she's in the process of arranging a "soft landing" elsewhere. Matching her reported $2m salary, however, is seen as an inhibitor to prospective employers.

And it does not help that her attempts to position herself as a sort of mini-mogul over various baby Vogues has not gone well. The recent closure of Men's Vogue and the cancellation of Fashion Rocks, a publication she'd personally overseen, are considered black marks. ·