The new ( male) Vogue editor who’ll be telling YOU what to wear
How male model talent-spotted at a Tube station aged 14 is VERY surprising new editor of Vogue
ONLY eagle-eyed viewers of The September Issue, the 2009 fly-on-the-wall documentary about American Vogue magazine, will remember the shy, dithering employee who was reduced to a quivering wreck by imperious editor Anna Wintour.
Stuttering and shaking as he entered Ms Wintour’s office to present one of his ideas to the notoriously frosty fashion matriarch, he seemed close to tears as she threw it — and him — out for not being good enough.
‘I want to kill myself,’ he wailed on screen to creative director Grace Coddington. ‘My idea got thrown out. What do I do?’
She retorted: ‘ You’ve got to be tougher, Edward. You have to demand, because otherwise you’ll be blamed. Don’t be nice, even to me. Otherwise you’ll lose.’
It seems he took her advice on board. For, eight years later, that young protégé has just been announced as the new editor-in-chief of British Vogue. Edward Enninful, 45, a Ghanaian-born stylist who grew up in London, will take over the coveted chair from Alexandra Shulman when she retires at the end of July.
Readers of the illustrious fashion bible reacted to yesterday’s news with astonishment. For not only is Enninful — at the risk of stating the obvious — a man, but he’s a man most ordinary, fashion-loving women have never heard of.
No matter. No sooner was his appointment announced, than Twitter exploded with congratulations from fashionistas hailing the news that Vogue was to have its first male, non-white editor.
Enninful, 45, has been fashion and style director of uber-trendy W Magazine since 2011 and is in a long-term relationship with American film-maker Alec Maxwell.
He has 27 years’ experience in the business and counts Madonna, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Rihanna among his friends.
Enninful was one of 60 people — mostly women — shortlisted for the job, which was advertised after Shulman’s shock announcement in January that she was leaving the title after 25 years.
He will take up his throne amid a bloody battleground that has engulfed the world of high fashion ever since candidates began vying for this most illustrious position.
Around him lie the bruised egos of, among others, Emily Sheffield — the sharp- elbowed sister of Samantha Cameron — and Love magazine editor Katy Grand. They were thought to be shoo-ins — or at least better qualified than Enninful. But in the Condé Nast offices, the news was greeted by a huge round of applause.
Fed up with the in-fighting and politics, they have been rooting for Enninful since he was revealed to be in the running last month.
‘Everyone here is very keen on him,’ a Vogue employee says. ‘He’s friendly and approachable — he’s impossible not to like.’
Edward Enninful first met Wintour in 2006, when he became contributing fashion editor for U.S. Vogue, after a triumphant eight-year stint as contributing editor to the Italian edition.
Though their early relationship was difficult, he soon learned to appease her and began impressing with his edgy fashion ideas.
He has always been full of praise for Wintour, both personally and professionally. ‘Anna is an incredible editor,’ he said in an interview in 2010. ‘With Anna, I learned that fashion can be fun and it didn’t have to be dark.’
More recently, he added: ‘Vogue is an institution and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the magazine and its editor.’
Already, questions have been raised about the team Enninful will build around him, most pertinently the relationship he will have with Emily Sheffield, who is deputy editor. She is said to be furious not to have got the job, making it unlikely she’ll smooth the path for his arrival in August.
Though he may not be a conventional choice for the role, industry experts say Edward Enninful’s fashion credentials are flawless.
Starting from humble beginnings in the Enyan Denkyira region of central Ghana, he arrived in Britain as a child in the mid Seventies. His parents raised him and his five siblings in a workingclass household in Ladbroke Grove, West London, where he attended local schools and they hoped he would become a lawyer.
Aged 14, Enninful was stopped one day while travelling on the London Underground. ‘ I saw this man who kept staring at me. I was trying not to freak out,’ he explained.
‘Then we got to King’s Cross, he came over, gave me a card and said, “My name is Simon Foxton and I’m a stylist . . . and I’d love you to model for me.” ’
His mother was sceptical — but a fortnight later he was stopped again, this time by a model scout, and agreed to do a modelling shoot for Nick Knight, the worldrenowned photographer.
It was the start of a rapid ascendancy, which would see him juggling a modelling career with a degree at Goldsmiths University of London, and a part- time fashion assistant job at i-D magazine.
Aged 18, he was made i-D’s fashion director, becoming the youngest ever fashion director for an international magazine.
In 1998 he moved to Italian Vogue, then American Vogue, and in 2011 cut his ties with the franchise to work full-time as fashion and style director of W Magazine. Enninful’s glamorous life — split between London, where he keeps a £400,000 apartment, and his home in New York — sees him mingling with supermodels and superstars.
He has known Kate Moss since she was 14, counts Naomi Campbell as a ‘ sister’ and invited Madonna to a lavish party to celebrate his OBE, which he was awarded for services to diversity in fashion last October.
His profile picture on Twitter shows him with Michelle Obama, their heads tilted affectionately towards one another.
Despite his glitzy lifestyle, Enninful remains humble, downto- earth and close to his family, especially his younger sister Akua, who acts as his assistant and business consultant.
Inspired by his dear friend Miss Moss, who notoriously filled a bath tub with champagne, he once waited for his other half in a bath full of milk and Cheerios.
His 485,000 followers on Instagram are regularly treated to wholesome images of Ru, the couple’s beloved Boston terrier (who has a 10,700- strong online following of his own).
His style is flamboyant rather than androgynous: billowing, feminine dresses, bold hues and
His style is flamboyant and bold
clashing patterns and prints. He learned his love of colour from his late mother, Grace, a seamstress, who used to sew magnificent colourful outfits for her friends when he was growing up.
Enninful has made a name for himself as a champion of diversity, spearheading the production of Italian Vogue’s landmark ‘Black Issue’ in 2008, which featured only black models, including Naomi Campbell and Jourdan Dunn.
He said he was trying to ‘end the white-out that dominates the catwalks and magazines’ — and the issue was so popular an extra 40,000 copies had to be printed.
He’s also railed against superskinny models. In 2011, Enninful styled the ‘Belle Vere’ issue of Italian Vogue, compiled entirely of shoots involving plus-sized models.
That same year, he told American journalists the Duchess of Cambridge was ‘the model princess’. ‘She’s definitely a part of the people, and I think she’s going to be as important to fashion and to the world as Lady Di was,’ he added. Recently, however, Enninful’s style has taken a more risqué turn. ‘Bad/ Good Kate’ — the photoshoot which saw Kate Moss dressed as a PVC-clad nun and an angel wearing a straitjacket — was his brainchild.
‘He does do some eccentric things,’ an industry insider admits. ‘He’s adventurous. But at the same time he’s visually astute. He would never make a woman look terrible — if he styles her, she will look beautiful, whatever she’s wearing.’
A source at the publication added that as well as style and connections, he’ll bring other things to the brand, too.
‘Conde Nast will of course be aware of the PR benefits of choosing a man from his background. It’s good for diversity and it generates positive headlines.
‘But that doesn’t negate the fact that Edward was the best person for the job. It’s such an important position — they wouldn’t risk appointing someone who didn’t have the skill or experience to do it properly. It’s too big a deal.’ Notably, the job specification for the role required candidates to have ‘a journalist’s instinct’, something which Enninful — for all his stellar fashion credentials — lacks.
But he turned fortunes around at W Magazine, which was suffering in the wake of the recession, boosting advertising pages — and accompanying profits — by 16.7 per cent in 2012, less than a year after his appointment. According to official statistics, it was the biggest advertising gain year-on-year of any title in the fashion world.
Only time will tell whether Enninful can win over the sceptics and prove it was merit — and merit alone — that got him such an eminent job.
As Queen Anna herself once said: ‘Vogue is a fashion magazine, and fashion is about change.’ Going by his extraordinary story to date, change is most definitely what we’re going to get.