Privileged beauty with a troubled past who’s the new face of Vogue
WHEN the latest edition of Vogue hits the stands this week, its fashionconscious readers will inevitably want to know everything about the beautiful young woman on its cover.
The much-anticipated December issue is the first to be published under the leadership of Edward Enninful, Vogue’s first male and black editor-in-chief in its 101-year history.
And having vowed to ‘remove the posh girls’ and diversify a publication seen by many to have been out of step with modern Britain, speculation has been rife about who 45-year-old Enninful would choose to be his very first cover girl.
Perhaps surprisingly, the woman Enninful has chosen to mark the start of a new, more modern era at Vogue is a stunning young model who is more privileged and well-connected than many of the ‘Sloaney sloth’ staff members who tottered out of the doors of Vogue House when Enninful walked in this August.
For while Adwoa Aboah may be one of the most talked-about British supermodels of the moment, she also boasts an extraordinary pedigree — and is even descended from the Earls of Lonsdale.
The 25- year- old’s mother is flame-haired fashion management agent Camilla Lowther. Her father is Ghanaian-born Charles Aboah, who runs a fashion location scouting business.
And thanks to her parents’ powerful positions within London’s fashion aristocracy, well-spoken Adwoa enjoyed a privileged childhood with a family home in Notting Hill and a £37,000-a-year education at Millfield boarding school in Somerset. Her younger sister, Kesewa, is also a successful fashion model.
Adwoa, whose name means ‘Monday’s Child’ in Ghanaian, was snapped up by model agency Storm while studying drama at Brunel University.
Thanks, no doubt, to a combination of extraordinary looks and impeccable professional connections, it wasn’t long before she was being booked by designers such as Chanel, Dior and Versace. She appeared on the cover of Italian Vogue in 2015 and on the cover of American Vogue in March this year.
So HAVING promised to launch the biggest makeover in Vogue’s history, why did Enninful choose to put a successful young woman from such a comfortable background — someone he has known for years — on his maiden cover?
on one level it’s obvious. Adwoa’s striking face, all shimmering sea-coloured eyeshadows, glossy red lips and dangling diamond earrings, is breathtaking.
But Enninful’s reasons may go beyond Adwoa’s red hair, freckled caramel skin and doe-like brown eyes.
For despite her parents’ wealth, life has not all been plain sailing for this plummy-voiced girl from West London. She has been vocal about the depression and bipolar disorder she has suffered which was, she has said, partly caused by living away from home at 13 and partly because she was insecure about her looks.
‘I looked a lot different to all the other girls,’ she explained in an interview with the Evening Standard in July. ‘Everyone was blonde and blue-eyed. It was: “This is how you dress. This is how you do your hair, and you put loads of foundation on and wear high heels.” I was like, “F***. I don’t even know how to be this person. I felt very unattractive at that school.’
Painfully shy and finding it hard to make friends, she began experimenting with drugs at the age of 14. At first it was cannabis, then ecstasy and mephedrone. She eventually became addicted to the horse tranquilliser ketamine.
Realising their daughter was spiralling towards a breakdown, her worried
parents sent her away to rehab in Arizona when she was 21.
But back in London she relapsed twice and just two years ago, in October 2015, she tried to take her own life, spending four days in a coma after overdosing while staying at a rehab centre.
In the aftermath of her recovery, Adwoa set up Gurls Talk, a movement aimed at encouraging women to open up about their feelings on issues such as health, body image, addiction and sexuality.
In 2016, she made a raw, emotional video about her struggles. She can also be seen talking to her mother about this period of her life in a short film made earlier this year in collaboration with Heads Together, the mental health charity set up by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.
‘Mental health isn’t all of me but it’s a massive part of my journey and a massive part of my whole being,’ she said.
‘Having got through it, it’s 100 per cent my responsibility to use it for something bigger and to be one of many voices for people who might not have someone to talk to or understand what’s going on.’
But Adwoa’s relationship with the fashion industry has clearly been a mixed one. At one stage she shaved her head as a ‘kind of f***you to the industry’. Ironically her agency loved it and the style has since become her signature look.
For at a time when the taboo of speaking about mental health problems is being broken, it is Adwoa’s emotional grittiness and honesty which has helped enhance her reputation as a powerful force for good within the industry.
It’s no coincidence that British GQ — published by Conde Nast, like Vogue — voted her ‘Woman of the Year 2017’.
Enninful, who has known her for years, has made no secret of his admiration for her. She is one of the ‘celebrity’ contributing editors he has appointed to Vogue, taking her place alongside the likes of Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss.
Is it any surprise he offered the cover to a woman who embodies the racial diversity and emotional bravery Enninful and his influential friends have been calling for?
As one fashion commentator puts it: ‘Aboah is changing the rules of how a modern model makes it big’.
Certainly, Enninful had his work cut out from the moment he took over the editor’s chair at Vogue House in London’s Hanover Square in August, cheered on by close friends including Kate Moss, Cara Delevingne and Naomi Campbell.
It was Campbell who, as Enninful took up his post, ripped into the old Vogue regime run by Alexandra Shulman, posting a photograph on Instagram of the magazine’s staff taken to mark the outgoing editor’s final edition.
Pointing out that there were only white people in the photo, she tweeted: ‘Looking forward to an inclusive and diverse staff now @edward_enninful is the editor’.
Naomi appears to be getting her wish. Since the departure of Alexandra Shulman and news of Enninful’s appointment there has been a fast-flowing stream of high-profile departures from the fashion bible.
Among those to have left are former deputy editor Emily Sheffield, the sister-in-law of former prime minister David Cameron, who was tipped as a future editor.
The lower ranks have been cleared out, with a voluntary redundancy package said to be aimed at losing a substantial number of staff.
Enninful, who was awarded an OBE in 2016 for services to diversity in fashion, was undoubtedly under pressure to produce a cover that justified all that upheaval and drama. He is said to have spent a fortune on producing an issue that will live up to his promise to be a modernising influence.
Aside from Adwoa’s striking appearance on the cover, Enninful has printed an extraordinarily long list of famous, and eclectic, names of those t who appear inside. Naomi Ca Campbell and Kate Moss are there, alo along with Victoria Beckham. So too is Cara Delevingne and former On One Direction singer Zayn Malik.
J Just in case anyone thought Vo Vogue was merely about fashion an and beauty, he has featured London Ma Mayor Sadiq Khan and author Sa Salman Rushdie — neither of whom are exactly famous for their fas fashion credentials.
AND if anyone is still in any doubt about what Enninful is trying to achieve, he has printed ‘Gr ‘Great Britain’ on the cover, too. T This is the biggest clue. Enninful wa wants Vogue to become indelibly lin linked to a contemporary vision of Br Britain — one which, in his view, is re represented by his choice of cover m model and this mix of celebrities. I In an interview in June, Adwoa herself h gave her own thoughts on the th old Vogue and what she hoped to see from the new one. ‘It doesn’t represent what the c country is now, or only a small p part of it,’ she told the Guardian. ‘I h hope Edward is going to make it som something that represents all the a amazing things about Britain. ‘Vogue should be about giving a voice to all different cultures. In 2017, there is more than one way to be beautiful, and more than one way to be cool. And who you put on an image on the cover of Vogue, that means something that goes beyond fashion.’
SEE the full shoot in the December issue of British Vogue, on sale Friday.