Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Queen makes a fashionable turn
Inaugural award for British designer
THE unexpected attendance of Queen Elizabeth at a London Fashion Week show this week was an impressive coup for US Vogue editor Dame Anna Wintour – one that reduced the most powerful man in British fashion to tears.
While jaws dropped at the sight of her majesty sitting on the front row at the Richard Quinn show on Tuesday, one conspicuous absentee was Edward Enninful, who succeeded Alexandra Shulman as editor of British Vogue last year.
The 46-year-old, who received an OBE in 2016 for his contribution to the fashion industry, was deliberately kept in the dark by Wintour, who, in cahoots with Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council, secretly arranged the attendance of the queen.
“Edward was in tears when he found out,” reveals a fashion source. “He had no idea that it was happening.”
Enninful was not even in the country at the time because he had flown out to Italy for Milan Fashion Week, which started on Tuesday.
It is not clear when he learned that he’d missed the queen’s first – and possibly only – fashion show, which she attended to present the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design. However, at the time the fashion show started, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself meeting Prince Andrew’s wife, Kate, at Buckingham Palace on Monday.
“It was an honour to meet Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge at Buckingham Palace, for the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange,” he captioned it.
Wintour, famously the ice queen of the fashion world, also failed to forewarn Vogue’s international editor Suzy Menkes OBE, as well as Jonathan Newhouse, chairperson and chief executive of Conde Nast International in London, the company that publishes Vogue.
“None of them knew about it. They had all flown to Milan for Milan Fashion week, so they weren’t even in London when it happened,” adds the source.
“To say they were incandescent is an understatement.” – Daily Mail