The preface to Edward Enninful’s autobiography is discouraging. He writes that “the future is my thing” and talks about his “all-consuming addiction to forward motion”. When Rihanna makes a late, dramatic entrance to his wedding, it is, he sees knowingly, “Classic Rih”. Inevitably, he is living his “journey”. This, I thought, is going to be a long slog. Mercifully Enninful, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue and European editorial director for Vogue, relaxes and settles into his remarkable story.
Born in Ghana in 1972, the fifth of six siblings, he describes himself as a “shy, spacey” child, bookish and consumed by his imagination. His mother, whom he adored, worked as a dressmaker and from a young age he would go with her to fittings, helping