PLAYING FOR KEEPS

When she came under fire for supporting Kanye West through his antisemitic tirades, CANDACE OWENS didn’t mind. Triggering people is her business, and business is good. EMILY JANE FOX talks to the conservative firebrand about political theater versus deeply held belief

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YOU MIGHT THINK it’s silly to say that an unpaid intern with six figures of student debt living in one of the most expensive cities in the world has power, until you know that the internship was at Vogue in the Devil Wears Prada era. Budgets were fat. Everyone was skinny. And that year, among the 20 interns buzzing around the fashion closet, Candace Owens was queen bee.

Yes, that Candace Owens.

“She never took no for an answer,” a Vogue alum told me. “She was organized and relentless, smarter than everyone— and knows that.”

“She was running the show and completely kicking ass,” a fellow intern said. “There was not some kind of formal hierarchy, but it was very clear that she was running the show. People loved her.”

If not her style. People who worked with her said that she would come to work wearing hats with animal ears or “girl boss power suits” with a bra under a blazer. “Very eccentric and not normal,” as one person put it. Yet they all described her as one of the best interns ever. Nobody expected her to continue on at the magazine, though. “She was not a fit at Vogue,” a former higher-up said flatly.