Vogue Paris on Friday promoted its fashion director Emmanuelle Alt to editor-in-chief -- one of the most coveted jobs in fashion journalism -- succeeding Carine Roitfeld who suddenly announced her resignation three weeks earlier.

In a statement, Xavier Romatet, chairman of Conde Nast France, said Alt, who is in her early 40s, would take over on February 1 and work closely with deputy editor-in-chief Olivier Lalanne, who will also be in charge of the menswear bible Vogue Hommes International.

Emmanuelle Alt: new editor in chief of Vogue Paris

"It is a great honour for me, and also a great pleasure, to arrive at the head of Vogue Paris which I know so well," said Alt on the Vogue Paris website (www.vogue.fr). "By working with such a talented team, I am confident of developing the incredible potential of the magazine."

Over the past decade, Alt -- a front-row regular alongside Roitfeld at Paris fashion shows -- helped inject a rock-chic aesthetic into the venerable pages of Paris Vogue, which began publication 90 years ago this April. Her own style -- long straight black hair, skinny jeans, lots of black -- was as closely followed as the fashion shoots she put together with such photographers as David Sims, Mario Sorrenti, and Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.

Alt has spent her entire career in fashion journalism. Before joining Vogue Paris in 2001, at around the same time as Roitfeld, she worked at such magazines as Elle, where she became fashion director at the age of 20, and at 20 Ans, which she edited. Roitfeld, long rumoured to be the heir apparent to Anna Wintour as editor of American Vogue, a magazine with 10 times the circulation of Paris Vogue and a much more commercial editorial perspective, has said that she wants to pursue unspecified personal projects.

On the Vogue Paris website, Romatet underscored the magazine's expansion into digital publishing, saying that in five years it would be a "global multiple brand" of French origin that would be "recognised around the world, from America to China via India or Japan".

Conde Nast, headquartered in New York, is privately held by the Newhouse family. Its stable of titles include the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and while profit figures are never released, it is thought that Vogue Paris makes robust profits.