In the introduction to A Visible Man, the mid-career autobiography of Edward Enninful, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue, Enninful describes his work: ‘I’ve always answered the question of what it means to create a magazine differently … to push harder, to dream bigger.’ The rest of the book is his attempt to show what pushing harder and dreaming bigger has...
Fashion magazines were supposed to be aspirational, concerned not with reality but a dream. And the dream echoed the culture, which meant that for most of the 20th century it was deemed best to be rich, white, thin and young. In the England of Edward Enninful’s youth, this meant Sloaney blondes with big hair and big shoulder-pads. In America, it was society women with famous surnames and huge clapboard houses on the coast of Maine. Paris Vogue was much the same, just with nipples and cigarettes.