Edward Enninful: A west London fashion force

Model, stylist, fashion director, editor: Edward Enninful has worn many hats within the fashion industry.

Enninnful grew up around style in his birthplace of Ghana. His mum made dresses and suits for glamorous, high-society women.

But his own career kicked off in London, where he and his family moved when he was 13. Enninful began assisting on shoots at street style magazine i-D, and later took on influential positions at publications like Vogue and W. From 2017 to 2023, he was editor-in-chief at British Vogue.

Across all these roles, Enninful was a driving force for change in the fashion industry – making it more inclusive, more reflective of society and more willing to take risks.

In 1985, Enninful’s family fled political instability in Ghana and moved to London. He, his dressmaker mother and five siblings joined his army officer father in Ladbroke Grove, North Kensington. This was Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The country was divided by the prime minister’s "cruel and repressive policies", Enninful wrote in his autobiography, A Visible Man.

The 1981 New Cross Fire and uprisings in Brixton in 1981 and 1985 highlighted the deprivation, racial discrimination and police mistreatment experienced by London’s Black communities.

Enninful later wrote in Vogue: “Growing up in Ladbroke Grove, I saw black people persecuted, arrested, abused – this happened all the time. My mother told me to watch myself whenever I left the house.”

His entrance to fashion happened by complete chance. Or perhaps it was fate. He got scouted by top stylist Simon Foxton on the Hammersmith and City line and, aged 16, started working as a model.

Through modelling, Enninful met Terry and Tricia Jones, the founders of the then Covent Garden-based i-D magazine. He began assisting their fashion director Beth Summers on shoots. And when she left, in 1991 Enninful was offered her role. He was 18 – the youngest ever fashion director of an international magazine.

Enninful’s style compass was oriented in his mum’s workshop in Ghana. When he was young, he’d sit with her and soak up the colours, fabrics and the rituals of measurements and fittings. He could pick up on the silent cues of how a woman feels during a fitting, or when wearing a piece of clothing.

Many of his sources of inspiration also came from London’s streets. Enninful put hip-hop looks on the cover, and styled model Kate Moss in grunge fits for Calvin Klein adverts. Trainers, leather, chokers and mesh – the kinds of clothes he and his friends would buy from west London charity shops and customise themselves – came to define the look of the decade.

The 90s was all about culture colliding in the capital. Music, fashion and film industries came together, and the Young British Artists shook up the art world. Enninful’s styling process borrowed from his obsession with all these different art forms. He’d visit London’s museums and galleries and listen to musicians like David Bowie.

By the time he was appointed editor-in-chief at British Vogue in 2017, Enninful had moved through the ranks of a number of prestigious fashion publications. In 1998, he became contributing editor for Vogue Italia. Then contributing editor for US Vogue in 2006. Then fashion and style editor for W magazine in 2011.

Enninful embraced a more inclusive vision of fashion, one that shook up the industry status quo. He brought more diversity to the models on his covers and within magazine pages, featuring people of all genders, sizes and backgrounds. Take Vogue Italia’s ‘Black Issue’ from 2008, featuring only Black models, for example. Enninful was a driving force behind it, saying he wanted to end the "white-out that dominates the catwalks and magazines". It sold out in Britain and the US.

His leadership at British Vogue was no different. “People always say, ‘Oh, you brought diversity into Vogue,’ but it was always out there in the world around us,” he said in an interview with Grazia. “I just chose to reflect our reality.” Enninful was himself the magazine’s first male, first Black, first working-class and first gay editor.

Enninful stepped down from his position as editor-in-chief in March 2024. His final issue featured 40 former cover stars from his six years at the magazine’s helm, including supermodel Naomi Campbell, tennis great Serena Williams and TV star Oprah Winfrey.

He handed the reins to the London-born editor of US Vogue’s website, Chioma Nnadi, who took on the title of head of editorial content. Enninful moved on to a new role as Vogue’s global creative and cultural advisor.