Vogue’s new editor on what Anna Wintour taught him about rich women

Perhaps not, but there’s a magnetism beneath the subfusc. His social media feed is peppered with images of him being clutched, kissed and variously clung to by Rihanna, Madonna, his best friend Naomi Campbell and their like. There’s even a photo of him with Michelle Obama.

When it was announced in April that he was taking over at Vogue from its editor of 25 years, Alexandra Shulman, the reaction was one of pleasant surprise if not downright excitement. There was some consternation at his not being female, but as one front-rower said to me: “Better a man than a rich woman whose friends have all launched a range of kaftans.”

When we meet, Enninful is tight-lipped about his next move, but in the weeks after our breakfast the fashion world is abuzz with gossip about his planned changes. First, he announced new appointments, Campbell and the director Steve McQueen, alongside the super-stylist Grace Coddington. Next, the sacking of Vogue’s veteran fashion director, Lucinda Chambers — and her subsequent candid interview about it with an online magazine — and the departure of the deputy editor (and Samantha Cameron’s sister), Emily Sheffield, sparked headlines about a “Vrexit”.

Today, though, Enninful is in town to talk about styling next year’s Pirelli calendar — not the tyres’n’titillation greasy rag grotmag that hangs in the back of your average body shop, but rather a luxe, limited-edition, only slightly less titillating version that is sent out to VVVIP clients and which, thanks to the A-list names involved, has become an annual news event in itself.

Pirelli’s ability to persuade (that is, its multimillion-pound budget) women such as Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet and Julianne Moore to join its ranks of pin-up girls has made the calendar — known by insiders simply as “The Cal”— a talking point, something Pirelli is keen to build on by swapping the usual oiled-up torsos for buzzwords such as “empowerment” and “authenticity”.

Last year’s Cal featured Serena Williams, Yoko Ono and Patti Smith shot by Annie Leibovitz; another sitter, the 66-year-old writer Fran Lebowitz, quipped that “perhaps clothed women are going to have a moment”. This year Kidman, Winslet and Moore pose “truthfully” in black and white for Peter Lindbergh, make-up-free (well, sort of).

For 2018 The Cal has been shot by Vogue’s celebrated photo-fabulist Tim Walker, known for his experimental takes on ethereal beauty and preoccupation with gamine aristo-surrealism rather than anything raunchy. Its theme is very much within his purview, however: Alice in Wonderland, played out by models, actors, rappers, a comedian, a drag queen, even (whisper it) a man, all of whom are black.

This is what drew Enninful in to be the stylist on the project. Although this summer he is relocating to London from New York for a place at the heart of the fashion establishment (he takes up the corner office next month), he has spent his career championing diversity in the industry. He has used the glossy pages of high-end magazines to scrutinise and skewer its more questionable idiosyncrasies, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek and filter set to fabulous.

Almost a decade ago he came up with Italian Vogue’s “black issue”, featuring Campbell and Jourdan Dunn. The edition proved so popular that 40,000 extra copies were printed; they continue to change hands as collectors’ items for far more than their original cover price. After this came shoots with a plus-size focus, as well as ones that poked fun at cosmetic surgery and lucrative luxury advertising. After President Trump’s attempted travel ban in February, Enninful released a short film online entitled I Am an Immigrant, starring 81 fashion designers and models who have made America their home.

“I’m not a political person,” Enninful says, when I ask him about his views. “But I do believe we can make the world a better place. For me, a fashion story works best when it says something about the times we live in.

“Doing Pirelli was always on my bucket list — it felt like making a blockbuster movie,” he continues. “The sheer magnitude of the sets, the talent — I’ve been around, but this was one of the biggest productions I’ve done. I kept thinking, ‘OK, now I see why Pirelli is so special.’ ”

On the roll call for 2018 are the Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, Whoopi Goldberg, Naomi Campbell, the drag artist RuPaul and the rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs, among many others.

The Pirelli calendar shoot

ALESSANDRO SCOTTI

“I was floored,” Enninful says. “For a long time, I was the only black editor [at Fashion Week]. We just didn’t have these conversations back then. We’re so much more aware now. Diversity today isn’t just black or white, it’s religion, body image, people who feel outside the norm.”

Enninful won’t just be the first man to edit Vogue, he will be the first black person and the first gay person in the job too (his partner is the film-maker Alec Maxwell). How does it feel to be an inspirational figure to minorities? And is there a weight of expectation to reflect that in the magazine?

“I believe that if you have a position, you can use it to the good of others,” he says. “It’s how I was brought up. You don’t have to get on a soap box, you have to do it through your work — inclusiveness has always come naturally to me.”

There is one way in which Enninful is the continuity candidate at Vogue House, however: he, like many of its staffers, is a Notting Hill-ite through and through. His family are delighted that he’s moving back to the area.

“My west London was more Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues and Buffalo,” he says with a laugh, listing local Ladbroke Grove club nights. “My dad was in the military, a real disciplinarian — he made us go to [Lilian Baylis] school in south London because he didn’t want us mixing in the neighbourhood.”

Enninful remembers chip butties outside the newsagent with his classmates, then coming home to his mother, a seamstress, who was always surrounded by African fabrics and the aroma of Ghanaian food. “I always felt like I lived in two worlds,” he says. “One day-to-day and one fantasy — it informed who I am.”

The comprehensive-educated immigrant walking the same halls that Issy Blow wafted along, and where the HR department, according to legend, only recently stopped marking CVs with “NTF” (no trust fund) won’t be as much of a square peg as he sounds. Having been scouted as a model in his teens, Enninful has been part of the in-crowd since he became the youngest fashion director in the industry at the club kids’ style bible i-D in 1990, at the age of 18. His brief there was to reflect the scene on London’s streets in the early days of grunge and rave.

“I’m still obsessed with what people wear every day,” he says. “The definition of street style seems to have changed — now it’s girls at the shows who get changed every five minutes. I like the authenticity of what people wear to leave the house, to catch a train, or at a party — that kind of street style, not the ones just getting ready to have their photograph taken.”

Yet the latter have become a firm fixture on the fashion circuit and in every magazine. Might Enninful’s Vogue attempt to hold back the tide of Instagram stars and digital “influencers”? It seems unlikely given their reach.

“Some of those girls look great, but it’s a sign of style to take something not cool and make it cool. You need that mix of high and real — it’s what makes the world go round.”

One might wonder how much space for “real” there is in a high fashion magazine, anyway. Enninful’s catchphrase on set is said to be “rich, rich, rich and chic, chic, chic”. He laughs when I mention it, and explains it came from working for Anna Wintour at American Vogue.

“When you’re shooting for Vogue, you know your audience is a rich woman, so you have to — as Anna said to me once — ‘lift it up’,” he says, laughing again. “I had gone in with the idea of shooting in a car park with cars on fire . . . Anna was, like, ‘No: rich, rich, rich.’ ”

He describes his famously froideur-ish former boss and erstwhile champion as “very fair, very loyal but straight to the point”. He also names the stylist Simon Foxton, i-D’s Terry and Trish Jones, the former editor of Italian Vogue Franca Sozzani, who died last year, and Condé Nast International’s chief executive, Jonathan Newhouse, as supporters of his. “I got here through hard work, but also because a lot of people believed — that’s what I try to do for the next generation, give them that same belief.”

I mention the reluctance of some high-profile brands and publications to diversify for fear of losing money. Until Jourdan Dunn in February 2015, British Vogue hadn’t featured a solo black model on its cover since Naomi Campbell in 2002. Will that change under his tenure?

“The idea of ethnic not selling is a myth,” he says. “The answer is behind the scenes: more black editors, black writers, interns to be able to project and push things along.”

Enninful received an OBE for his services to diversity last October. He was accompanied to Buckingham Palace by his family and Campbell, who stars in Pirelli’s 2018 calendar as the Queen of Hearts’s headsman in a corset and a pair of clinging vinyl trousers. On set, shooting in north London, she describes the project to me as “historic”.

The new editor of Vogue may be changing the industry from backstage, as he pins and tucks the cast into their Wonderland garb off-camera, but he’s about to assume a front-of-house role. His readers can’t wait to meet him.
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