narratives, a particular approach to styling that im-
pressed i-D enough to hire him as their youngest ever
fashion director at only 18, a post he held for the next
20 years. Without the courtesy designer clothes later
at his fingertips, he would customize, shred, dye and
bargain for the right look, using the skills he’d devel-
oped at home in the sewing room. “I realized that I
could say a lot with fashion,” he says, “that it wasn’t
just about clothes, but could tell a story of the times
we’re in, about people’s experiences in life. And that
freedom to portray the world as you saw it.”
What was innate to Enninful—this blend of
skilled creativity with the perception of difference
as normal, as both subject and audience—was rela-
tively unique in an industry dominated by white, co-
lonial notions of beauty and mainstream. Legendary
Somali supermodel Iman remembers a 2014 W mag-
azine shoot in which she, Naomi Campbell and Ri-
hanna were cast by Enninful, the publication’s then
style director, wearing Balmain, designed by Olivier
Rousteing. “Until Edward appeared, no one at the
mainstream fashion magazines would have cared to
commission a portrait exclusively featuring three
women of color, and furthermore who were all wear-
ing clothes designed by a person of color,” she says.
“He’s an editor in vocation and a reformer at heart,
compelled to spur woefully needed social change.”
He shows me his various old haunts and abodes,
the top-floor bedsit where he used to haul bags of styl-
ing gear up the stairs, the Lisboa and O’Porto cafés of
Golborne Road—or “Little Morocco”—where he’d sit
for hours chewing the fat with people like makeup
artist Pat McGrath, Kate Moss, Nick Kamen and pho-
tographer David Sims. Name-drops fall from his lips
like insignificant diamonds— stylists, photographers,
celebrities—but he navigates his domain in a manner
apparently uncommon among fashion’s gatekeepers.
Winfrey says of him, “I have never experienced in all
my dealings with people in that world anyone who
was more kind and generous of spirit. I mean, it just
doesn’t happen.”
Her shoot for the August 2018 cover of British
Vogue left Winfrey feeling “empress-like,” and she
ascribes his understanding of Black female beauty to
his being raised by a Black mother. “Edward under-
stands that images are political, that they say who and
what matters,” she adds. Enninful’s father Crosby, a
major in the Ghanaian army who was part of U.N.
operations in Egypt and Lebanon, had thought that
his bright, studious son would eventually grow out
of his fascination with clothes and become a lawyer.
But three months into an English literature degree at
Goldsmiths, University of London, studying Hardy,
Austen and the usual classics, thinking maybe he’d
be a writer, or indeed a lawyer, Enninful quit to take
up the position at i-D. His father did not speak to
him for around 15 years, into the next century, until
Grace suffered a stroke and entered a long illness.“Now that I’m older, I realize he just wanted to pro-
tect us. He’s come to understand that I had to follow
my heart and forge my own path.”
He credits his parents for his strong work
ethic—“drummed into you from a very early
age by Black parents, that you have to work
twice as hard”—and his Ghanaian heritage
for his eye for color. His approach to fashion
as narrative comes from the “childish games
I would play with my mother,” creating char-
acters around the clothes, sketching them out.
“I can’t just shoot clothes off the runway,” he
says. “There always has to be a character, and
that character has to have an inner life.” Since
Grace’s death three years ago, his father has
lived alone by the Grand Union Canal and
is very proud of his son, particularly of the
Order of the British Empire awarded to him
by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for his services
to diversity in fashion. The Queen, inciden-
tally, is high on Enninful’s list of Vogue cover
dreams.The British Vogue Enninful inherited
from former editor in chief Alexandra Shul-
man three years ago was starkly different
from today’s rendition. During her 25 years
in charge, only 12 covers out of 306 featured
Black women, and she left behind an almost
entirely white workforce. Now the editorial
team is 25% people of color—“I needed cer-
tain lieutenants in place,” he says—and similar
shufflings are being called for over at Condé
Nast in New York. Enninful is reluctant to
tarnish names any further, maintaining that
Shulman “represented her time, I represent
mine,” and declining to comment on the U.S.
headquarters.
Enninful’s rise is particularly meaningful
to people like André Leon Talley, former edi-
tor at large of American Vogue, where Enninful also
worked as a contributing editor. Talley describes the
new British Vogue as “extraordinary,” and was joy-
ous at Enninful’s appointment. “He speaks for the
unsung heroes, particularly those outside the priv-
ileged white world that Vogue originally stood for.
He has changed what a fashion magazine should be.”
“I’m a custodian,” Enninful says of his role, sit-
ting in a sumptuous alcove of the club bar at Elec-
tric House. “Vogue existed before I came, and it will
still exist when I leave, but I knew that I had to go
in there and do what I really believed in. It’s our re-
sponsibility as storytellers or image makers to try
to disrupt the status quo.” Ironically, though, he
does not see himself as an activist, rather as some-
one who is unafraid to tackle political issues and
educate others, while remaining firmly within the
Vogue lens. “They said Black girls on the cover don’tFrom top: Train
driver Narguis
Horsford on
British Vogue in
July; a January
1995 Fashion
Week report by
Enninful in i-D;
Naomi Campbell
on Vogue Italia
in July 2008