Much has been said about Edward Enninful taking the helm as British Vogue’ s new editor-in-chief. He’s assembled his dream team, creating a masthead that reads like a collection of who’s who in the industry. He's hired supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss and filmmaker Steve McQueen as contributing editors, enlisted makeup extraordinaire Pat McGrath as beauty editor-at-large, and brought on Grace Coddington as a contributor. Change has come, as his friend (and now coworker) Campbell noted when she shaded the previously all-white staff of the magazine under longtime editor-in-chief Alexandra Schulman's direction — and it's paying off. Sales for the magazine are higher than ever.
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“We could sit here and do the most incredible magazine, with the most beautiful clothes, but everybody who I’ve employed thinks there is a deeper meaning,” the EIC tells the Evening Standard. “I want to change the face of fashion to make it more inclusive. When we say diversity it’s not just race. We’re looking at religion, age, size.”
For 2019, Enninful has his eye on continuing to normalize the marginalized. “If you’re a child living in a village in Devon you might not know what a trans person or a Black person looks like, and so to see them in a magazine is so powerful and can give you empathy,” he continued. “Growing up and seeing images that looked like me and my friends made me think I could get into this industry.”
Enninful is also hopeful about what the new royals represent. “Meghan is an example of how far we’ve all come.” On the subject of which new duchess has the best style, Meghan Markle or Kate Middleton, the Ghanaian immigrant remained diplomatic, only saying: “They are different, it’s all fun and games. I’d love them both to be on the cover of Vogue.” He's not the only one.