In 2017, British Vogue “had languished creatively and tonally, speaking almost exclusively to an upper-middle-to-upper-class pocket of Britishness,” he writes. “The magazine felt to me like it was drifting ever further from the beating heart of the country — to say nothing of the world at large. I didn’t think it reflected the Britain I knew and felt a part of.”
This Britain is one that celebrates the diversity of its people, something Enninful has worked to highlight not only at British Vogue but throughout his three decades in fashion, an industry he describes as “borderless.” He acknowledges that when he got to Vogue he stopped rebelling against commercial fashion, accepting that he was now a part of it. Still, his commitment to inclusivity, to portraying a world that is real and welcoming to those who’ve previously been excluded, has never waned. “I became known to the staff as ‘the guy who shoots Black girls,’” he writes, “which was pretty reductive, but fine by me if it at least meant more women of color in the pages.”
The industry insights are intriguing, but some of the most memorable and endearing passages in this book consist of Enninful’s more personal disclosures. There’s the time he “wanted to make a show of domesticity” for Maxwell, but his skills in the kitchen were so nonexistent that he “ordered in some homey-looking fare from a local restaurant and passed it off as my own”; and there’s the wardrobe malfunction at Buckingham Palace the day he became a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He writes poignantly about his close relationship with his mother, his adoration of his siblings and his tense relationship with his father, who “told us all that if he found out we were gay he’d slit our throats,” and who kicked Edward out of the house when he learned he’d been skipping school to go to showroom appointments and photo shoots. The memoir truly shines in its most intimate revelations of Enninful’s sobriety and depression, of what it felt like to soar professionally while struggling personally — and of how he learned to lean on those who love him most.
“A Visible Man” is about a life in the media and fashion worlds, but it is also about a man of many identities finding his voice in a world that has not always wanted to hear it. Enninful is making that world a more beautiful and welcoming place than he found it.
Tariro Mzezewa, a former national correspondent at The Times, is a reporter who writes about culture and style.
A VISIBLE MAN: A Memoir | By Edward Enninful | Illustrated | 270 pp. | Penguin Press | $30
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/books/review/edward-enninful-a-visible-man.html
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