← The Interview
The Interview
Edward Enninful, former editor of British Vogue: fashion has to be more inclusive
00:23:00
Amol Rajan speaks to Edward Enninful, British Vogue’s former editor, about fashion for all
Loading summary
Transcript118 lines
- [00:00]
John Humphrys
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:06]
Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
- [00:10]
Tristan Redman
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [00:18]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [00:21]
Tristan Redman
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [00:25]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [00:30]
Tristan Redman
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:38]
Amal Rajan
Hello, I'm BBC presenter Amal Rajan, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world.
- [00:51]
John Humphrys
I'm disappointed in him. A deal done four times and then you go home and you see just attack a nursing home in Kiev. I said, what the hell was that all about?
- [01:00]
Edward Enninful
I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me. But I was still 15 years old and I did not know who I was. I love singing, and so my goal was always to do better and better at it.
- [01:12]
Asma Khalid
Today we are spending trillions on war.
- [01:15]
Edward Enninful
And peanuts on peace.
- [01:18]
Amal Rajan
For this interview, I met Edward Eninfel, former editor in chief of British Vogue, in London. You're going to hear what it was like to emigrate from Ghana as a boy and about his rise to the top of British fashion, inspired by his seamstress mother and the bodacious African women she dressed in their home. After more than 20 years as fashion director at British magazine iD, a position he first held at the age of 18, Edward Enniffel spent six years at the helm of Vogue, the first black person in the role. It was pretty lonely as one of the few people of color in the industry, he says. So he set about changing that industry, tearing up the rulebook on which models sell magazines and what constitutes beauty have to represent the world we live in today. He tells me he believes fashion is more democratic now than it has ever been, thanks to social media. And we also discuss fast fashion and its environmental impact. He's now launching a new fashion and media platform, EE72, named for the year he was born. And he's put a woman in her 50s on the COVID of his first print edition, a celebration of ageless beauty, which he says goes unseen.
- [02:25]
Edward Enninful
It was very important to me that the first cover was a woman of a certain age. It's the age where women are seen as invisible when they hit their 50s or 60s. And I felt like talking of Inclusivity that is the kind of woman I wanted to target for the first issue. Sort of the invisible woman. There's such an emphasis on being young, especially now, you know, with all these beauty procedures. You know, I mean, I see these incredible women. I've always championed them. I think women get so beautiful the older they get. The wisdom they have, the way they navigate the world. I grew up with my mother watching my bodacious aunts who are women of a certain age. So that's what I grew up with, these incredible women. I never placed beauty on youth necessarily.
- [03:18]
Amal Rajan
Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Edward En in full.
- [03:26]
Edward Enninful
I remember the airplane ride on the way to London. We were so excited. I remember being detained at Gatwick airport.
- [03:36]
John Humphrys
Detained?
- [03:37]
Edward Enninful
Detained. We were detained because we had to wait for my father. I think the papers were out of order or something. But in the end it was okay when he arrived. So I remember all of us, we were so happy and excited. Then I remember sort of arriving, walking out the next day and thinking, oh my God, there are white people everywhere. Because don't forget, I grew up in an all black country. The doctors were black, nurses were black, president was black, everybody I saw was black. And then there I was, odd one out and I mean my brothers, we were all so shocked.
- [04:08]
John Humphrys
Were you very conscious of being an outsider?
- [04:11]
Edward Enninful
Did you feel maybe you. The minute I arrived in England, I mean, with so, so much excitement, you know, they were going to love my family and I, you know, because don't forget in Ghana we love people from England. So it was a bit of a shock to realize that it wasn't quite the case, you know, with the suss.
- [04:33]
John Humphrys
Laws and that stop and search, which.
- [04:35]
Edward Enninful
Was a very Stop and search, very.
- [04:36]
John Humphrys
Big issue in 1980s London.
- [04:38]
Edward Enninful
And you know, it was quite shocking for me to sort of arrive in a country where we're just great on one hand but also quite hostile on another.
- [04:46]
John Humphrys
It's just a couple of aspects your childhood I wanna. One was the influence of your mother.
- [04:50]
Edward Enninful
She was amazing.
- [04:51]
John Humphrys
Why?
- [04:52]
Edward Enninful
My mother was the seamstress. She really gave me this love of fashion and beauty and she was always making incredible clothes. And I remember always having these incredible women around. My mother would be sort of measuring them, squeezing them into these African outfits and I'll be right there just mesmerized by the beauty of these full bodied women. And don't forget, you know, in Ghana, being curvy was the norm. If you were skinny, everyone thought something's wrong with you. Like doesn't she eat, is she? Okay, so for me, I grew up with those bodacious, sort of big, wonderful, curvy, loud, strong women, you know, aunts, mother's friends. So, yeah, that was my upbringing.
- [05:38]
John Humphrys
And for you, the thing about your mum and being a seamstress was it was fashion as craft, wasn't it? It was fashion as skilled, practical work and practical manufacture more than fashion is kind of, you know, catwalk stuff or.
- [05:51]
Edward Enninful
Kind of, no, I shouldn't know what the catwalk.
- [05:53]
Amal Rajan
Exactly.
- [05:53]
John Humphrys
And so his fashion is skill. So your mom was a big influence on you, and you're on the tube and a chap called Simon Foxton sees you, goes on to be a big influence on you. Just tell us what happened when you met Simon Foxen.
- [06:05]
Edward Enninful
You know, I got on the train, it was a guy sitting opposite and he kept staring at me. You know, I was a little scared, I was a little nervous, I was very innocent, you know, 16 years old. He literally got up and gave me his card. And I remember he said he was a stylist for. I didn't know what a stylist was, but he was a stylist with Arena. I remember arena and ID magazine.
- [06:24]
John Humphrys
And you would go, and a couple years later you became fashion director of ID Magazine at the age of 18. An extraordinary achievement as a teenager. But your parents had slightly different ideas, I think it's fair to say.
- [06:37]
Edward Enninful
I mean, my mother, I think secretly was quite happy because I was following in her footsteps. My dad wasn't so happy, sort of kind of kicked me out basically.
- [06:45]
John Humphrys
But you've now been reconciled with your dad?
- [06:46]
Edward Enninful
You see, you know what, in his defense, it's what he knew. He wanted his children to succeed in a foreign country. He wanted us to do very well. I understand him now. And the idea of going into fashion or media at that time was so alien to him.
- [07:04]
John Humphrys
Of course, you know, that time you mentioned, you sort of evoke an era where you grew up with extraordinarily famous and really iconic figures. Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and so on. Heady days in fashion magazines were very powerful, very well funded glossy at that time, did you always have a bubbling sense that there are issues within the magazine? Issues, if you like, that it wasn't representing everyone, that it was kind of promoting maybe toxic behavior. What were. Did you have bubbling concerns about the fashion industry even as you were in it?
- [07:35]
Edward Enninful
No, I mean, you know, I started at ID as an 18 year old fashion director, but at the same time I was the only person of color. You know, if you're a person of color and you get a position, you can either choose to just be there for yourself and achieve incredible things, or think, hey, I need to bring people with me. So my thing was, how do I get more people of color here with me in this lonely industry?
- [07:59]
John Humphrys
But do you think that the. I mean, we're talking late 90s here. Britain has got a lot of black people in it, and we're talking, you know, half a century. Really, after Windrush. Was that lack of representation active racism or was it unconscious bias?
- [08:14]
Edward Enninful
I think it was unconscious bias on one hand and active racism on the other hand. Because, you know, the people will say things like, oh, black models can't sell Asian models, Forget it. And I just was like, I don't care. And maybe it was naivety, maybe it was the fact that I've always had to fight. But if you look at my work on I D magazine from the early 90s, it was black models, Indian models, white models. Let's create inclusivity. Even before I knew what inclusivity was, I knew something wasn't right.
- [08:43]
John Humphrys
You know, it's very easy with hindsight. It's a danger of all history that you look back and say, oh, oh, he was a pioneer, he was radical, he was changing things.
- [08:52]
Amal Rajan
And this went really well.
- [08:53]
John Humphrys
But at the time, did you face opposition?
- [08:56]
Edward Enninful
I remember there was three ID issues. I had a black model, an East Asian model, and another black model on the COVID And I was told, you can't have three models of color back to back. And I went, can't I? Here we go, number four. So there was this naivety which was, you know, I was very headstrong. So even if you told me not to do something, I would. I would want to do it more. Had it not worked, I would have been having a different conversation with you today. Because people ask me, didn't you face opposition? Didn't people try and stop you? I'm like, they didn't because financially it was so successful. If you're going to sort of talk about race, if you're going to talk about inclusivity, you still have to have your eye on how that's going to pan out commercially.
- [09:41]
John Humphrys
Well, if you're making money, people leave money.
- [09:44]
Edward Enninful
Some people leave you alone.
- [09:45]
John Humphrys
When you got approached about British Vogue or when there was a chance for you to become the editor, one of the most influential positions in global fashion, what was your winning pitch?
- [09:58]
Edward Enninful
First of all, when I looked around in the world I lived in, I didn't see the women I knew in the magazine, I didn't see women from different backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, you know, different age. I didn't see any of that. So to me, that was, you know, apart from, okay, let's make it more inclusive. It was just bad business because a whole selection of, you know, of the population was being ignored. That was really the pitch. Like, you know, we have to represent the world we live in today.
- [10:30]
John Humphrys
Do you fear that the fashion industry is reverting to type and to a time a couple of decades ago when basically a very particular, quite narrow model of Eurocentric. Eurocentric. Do you worry about that?
- [10:44]
Edward Enninful
I mean, look, I've been there. And the early 90s, when black models disappeared completely, and we're going through that time again. And like I said, you know, are we really, like, launching my company? It's a. The perfect time to be able to sort of say, hey, guys, let's. Let's create an even playing field for everybody. Let's be. Let's be inclusive again. But the fashion industry in itself is very cyclical. Things move so fast. So unless they're sort of gatekeepers, sort of reminding people, you know, it could easily sort of end up in a place where people don't feel very welcome.
- [11:18]
John Humphrys
So can I be really clear about that? Because I want to get into what EE72 is, which. Your company. But what do you think we're potentially going.
- [11:24]
Edward Enninful
I think we're potentially going back to sort of an industry that's just sort of one type is the norm. You know, being European is the norm.
- [11:33]
John Humphrys
Being.
- [11:33]
Edward Enninful
Being super thin is the norm. But also we're in an industry in flux at the moment because this is the perfect time to be able to shape an industry.
- [11:43]
John Humphrys
What do you want to do with EE72?
- [11:46]
Edward Enninful
Look, I want to create sort of a company, entertainment and media company, where everybody's welcome. Born of inclusion and empathy. It's not a traditional media company. I mean, you know, and to be.
- [11:59]
John Humphrys
Clear, it's beyond the website because you're doing something which is pretty crazy, which is you're coming out in print.
- [12:04]
Edward Enninful
Yeah.
- [12:05]
John Humphrys
Four times. So it's a quarterly thing.
- [12:07]
Edward Enninful
Quarterly.
- [12:07]
John Humphrys
And issue one is going to have no adverts.
- [12:11]
Edward Enninful
No ads.
- [12:12]
John Humphrys
Are you mad?
- [12:13]
Edward Enninful
I sort of. The business model creating doesn't rely on print to survive. The main heart of the company is the platform, you know, where we sort of engage clients, where we have podcasts, events are. So what I can offer clients is a package. So we work on. What is that package. Is that a curated event? Is that a curated Influencer event. Can we give you space on the website? And selling that way, we realized it's so profitable because right now, clients want something more than just paid pages.
- [12:53]
John Humphrys
So Julia Roberts is on the front.
- [12:55]
Edward Enninful
Julia Roberts on the front.
- [12:56]
John Humphrys
Why Julia Roberts?
- [12:57]
Edward Enninful
I love Julia Roberts. I mean, you know, when I was at British Vogue, she was one of my. What do I call it? Bucket list. And I could never get her until the penultimate issue. And I remember just loving what she stood for. She's a real human being. She lives in San Francisco with her kids. You know, she doesn't have a nanny. She goes shopping on her own. She's outspoken. She's ageless. Where I'm concerned, when I talk about inclusivity, people always automatically go to race. But my work at British Vogue, my work has always been about women who I call ageless. And it was very important to me that the first cover was a woman of a certain age. It's the age where women are seen as invisible when they hit their 50s or 60s. And I felt like talking of inclusivity, that is the kind of woman I wanted to target for the first issue. Sort of the invisible woman. There's such an emphasis on being young, especially now, you know, with all these beauty procedures, you know, and what I love about Julia, she hasn't had any work done. She's a naturally effervescent, beautiful woman. And I feel like, yes, she does represent a generation of women who kind of feel unseen. I think women get so beautiful the older they get, the wisdom they have, the. The way they navigate the world. I. I just find them so beautiful. And, you know, I said, going back to British folk, you know, I had Dame Judy Dench on the COVID You know, it's not. It's not a first.
- [14:26]
John Humphrys
She was the oldest ever.
- [14:28]
Amal Rajan
Oldest ever.
- [14:28]
Edward Enninful
But like I said, there's too much emphasis on youth.
- [14:31]
John Humphrys
So interesting. You say women in their 50s become ever more beautiful. What do you think when you see a woman who's beautiful? What makes them beautiful in your eyes?
- [14:40]
Edward Enninful
Oh, my God. It's definitely more than physical. For me, it's how they think. For me, it's how they carry themselves, how they see the world. Like I said, I grew up with my mother watching my bodacious aunts who are women of a certain age. So that's what I grew up with, these incredible women. I never placed beauty on youth necessarily.
- [15:02]
John Humphrys
Do you feel like there is a kind of attempt, a kind of political, cultural attempt right now to assert that beauty is actually quite narrowly defined?
- [15:11]
Edward Enninful
I mean, you know that, that I feel like that's always been the case. But also look in other parts of the world, look in Africa. That standard is different. But you know, my whole career I've just seen beauty in all these shapes and forms. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right. I don't really pay much attention to what is beautiful. If I did, I wouldn't have done the work I've done in my career. I wouldn't have shone a light on all those sort of invisible women.
- [15:36]
Amal Rajan
You're listening to the interview from, from the BBC World Service people shaping our world from all over the world.
- [15:44]
Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
- [15:48]
Tristan Redman
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [15:56]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington D.C. i'm.
- [15:59]
Tristan Redman
Tristan Redman in London and this is the global story.
- [16:03]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [16:08]
Tristan Redman
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:17]
Amal Rajan
For this episode of the interview, I spoke to Edward Enfil. He was enjoyable to talk to. It's not the first time I've spoken to Edward Enfil. He's a remarkable character, a pioneer in many ways. Pretty well connected if you look at his social media accounts. But it's clear too that he's a man with a mission. He thinks that the industry that he loves has been not hijacked but somewhat taken over by particular conceptions or ideals of beauty which tend to be European. And he wants to broaden them out to celebrate the craft of garment making and think of fashion in much more universal and non racial terms. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Edward Eninfel.
- [16:52]
John Humphrys
You said something about influencers and the fact that, you know, you might do work with them in your new kind of online platform. Do you think of the movement from this kind of culture of pre Internet where a few key gatekeepers and curators decided what the culture was to this era of mass, everyone's got their own social media channel. Do you see that as broadly a good thing because it's been democratic and opened up, you know, fashion or different career opportunities to lots of other people? Or do you think the downsides outweigh the upsides because it's created a kind of obsession with the self? Instagram suggests that you should live your life as a kind of exhibition. It's a sort of damaging to kids. How do you Think about that movement to a kind of smartphone age.
- [17:35]
Edward Enninful
I feel like things can exist side by side. We can have these incredible curators, and I feel like there needs to be a maybe a little bit of gatekeeping, especially when it comes to the really young. Yeah, Some kind of curation, I believe. You know, I am a curator, so of course I would say that. But there needs to be people that people can listen to that can lead the way a bit, can help young people especially.
- [17:58]
John Humphrys
This is about the nature of influence. And there are a few people online who are now kind of able to launch their own channels who are uninhibited. They don't need a.
- [18:06]
Edward Enninful
And that's a great thing.
- [18:07]
John Humphrys
Has it transformed fashion for the better, do you think?
- [18:10]
Edward Enninful
I think it's made fashion more democratic, more welcoming. It's made fashion less scary, more approachable. But the industry in itself has to sort of figure out, you know, where we stand, what we stand for. It's an industry in flux, the fashion industry right now, because before there was you had to read magazines to get what was going on. You had to sort of, who's the designer, who was in or out. Now even the way of selling is different. Now in the fashion industry, you don't need to go to the designer store like we used to. No, you just go to where your friends are going. Here's the drop. Come and buy. So the whole system is. Is sort of looking at itself and trying to figure a way forward.
- [18:49]
John Humphrys
I think in that context. Can I put you two criticisms of the fashion industry? One is about fast fashion, that fashion costs the earth, basically, although there's huge amounts of effort going into things like recycling and reducing carbon footprints, basically. Fashion as an industry for decades, if not longer, has incentivized mass production of things that exist for a few moments, and then they're gone. Do you think there's something in that?
- [19:17]
Edward Enninful
I mean, you know, I know that the fashion industry is a great polluter, but it's not the only industry. And I feel like at the moment, the fashion industry is sort of getting it from all angles. But we also have to realize that this is also the industry where stories can be told. You can use fashion to sort of put a spotlight on, you know, people of a certain age, people from different backgrounds. Yes, it is a polluter, but also that side. Now we have to sort of speed up the side that is positive and it's inclusive. All those things that slowly people seem to be forgetting. You know, it's not just clothes at the end of the Day.
- [19:52]
John Humphrys
It's what you stand for.
- [19:53]
Edward Enninful
That's one of the things I feel like fast fashion. Okay, fast fashion's here. Yes, it's a, it's a, it's a big polluter. But a lot of young people will also argue that they can't afford the prices. So how do we, what do we do as an industry to sort of create things that maybe young people can buy or. That was gonna be the conversation now.
- [20:11]
John Humphrys
That was going to be my second criticism, which is that a lot of fashion is basically just completely unaffordable and.
- [20:16]
Amal Rajan
That therefore of its stage.
- [20:18]
John Humphrys
I mean, interestingly, you grew up working class. I mentioned Kate Moss, she grew up working class. I mentioned Naomi Campbell, she grew up working class.
- [20:24]
Amal Rajan
But you guys have, you know, you've.
- [20:25]
John Humphrys
You'Ve been on a sort of class journey. But is there something to the criticism of the industry which says fashion basically is a way of selling very, very, very expensive things to a lot of.
- [20:37]
Amal Rajan
People who can't afford it and that.
- [20:39]
John Humphrys
Luxury just costs too much?
- [20:41]
Edward Enninful
I mean, you know, luxury has always been for the elite, but now that you know, fashion is sort of an even playground. Yes. There are ways in which companies can think of a new generation. How do we reach this elusive Gen X? How many rooms have you been where people are trying to capture Gen X? I think, yeah, there needs to be solutions or we're going to lose a whole new generation.
- [21:01]
Amal Rajan
A lot of people worry about the.
- [21:02]
John Humphrys
Impact of fashion on particularly young girls. And they think that there's a danger that the fashion industry, particularly its adoration and adulation for very skinny women, does terrible, toxic things to young girls minds. There's a lot of people that separately worry hugely about the impact of social media on young girls. And there's a lot of research coming out which shows there's been a very, very sharp rise in anxiety and depression in the last 10 to 15 years, which might coincide with the explosion of social media. When you put fashion and social media together, people really worry about the impact it's having not just on young girls, but on young minds. What do you think the fashion industry needs to do to try to stop these toxic behaviors and to try to stop damaging young minds in the way young people think of themselves.
- [21:52]
Edward Enninful
Fashion has to be more inclusive. It has to speak to sort of people outside the normal demographic. It has to be more, more welcoming. It has to talk about issues that maybe hasn't talked about in the past, mental health issues. You know, you had advocates like Adjoa Aboa back in the day, was One of the first models to say, hey, I've got, you know, I'm having mental health issues. We need more role models like that.
- [22:17]
John Humphrys
Is that why she was your first cover?
- [22:18]
Edward Enninful
It was my first cover of British Vogue because she represented beauty. On one hand, she's very beautiful. She was a model, but also she was somebody who says, I need help. I been through so much. My mental health is not at its best. And that really opened up conversation to millions of young women. So we need those going back to the Internet. We need those kind of leaders, people who can share their pain, people who are not scared to talk about, you know, what they've been through. I feel like that's what young people need, role models, those role models more than anything, you know, and we need to make space for those role models to speak different points of views, pluralism, hearing different voices.
- [22:57]
John Humphrys
Do you feel excited for this new chapter?
- [22:59]
Edward Enninful
Here's this point.
- [22:59]
John Humphrys
I'm super excited, if I may say. We're nearly 40 years since fifth of six boys, turns up in Vauxhall at his aunt's house from a military barracks in Ghana, finds out he's gay, is black, working class gay? In a time of 1980s London, you've had an extraordinary 40 years, 50 plus years. But do you feel that you're about to embark on a whole new chapter?
- [23:20]
Edward Enninful
I feel like my whole career has been leading up to this. To be able to create something new, something for generations to come for all their little Edwards in their room, like, if I can do it, they can do it too. To be able to have a voice away from a masthead, be able to sort of work even closer with people from my generation and a new generation.
- [23:43]
Amal Rajan
Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. You'll find more in depth conversations on the interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with education activist Malala Yousafzai, the President of Botswana Duma Boko and banking titan Jamie Dimon. Until the next time, Bye for now.
- [24:14]
Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
- [24:19]
Tristan Redman
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [24:27]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, dc.
- [24:29]
Tristan Redman
I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global Story.
- [24:33]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [24:39]
Tristan Redman
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.