A Visible Man
by Edward Enninful
Bloomsbury
This is the story of a Black working class immigrant in Britain where racism and classism was and still is rampant. This is the story of growing up gay in a world that was primed to detest him, particularly when the AIDS crisis was raging.
Rejected by his father at the age of eighteen and suffering from a debilitating illness that flared up for days at a time, this is the story of the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue and the changes he has made in fashion and the culture at large.
Born on a military base in Ghana, his father was in the military and his mother had a dressmaking business. Sitting under his mother’s cutting room table, surrounded by scraps of fabric, he did drawings of ladies in elaborate dresses like his mother did and as her assistant, he learnt how clothing worked on a woman’s body.
At thirteen, living in a council estate in London’s Vauxhall, the awkward refugee kid was more interested in clothes and clubs than the academic studies his parents were expecting him to excel in. Then, after being given a business card on the Tube, he got a job as a model and went from being a dorky immigrant to “interesting and exotic”.
He learnt how to make a fashion image and he knew he wanted to be part of the fashion business, but more than standing in front of the camera, he wanted to know what made the industry tick. He was also sick and tired of people being “othered” and wanted to do something about that.
Turning 50 in 2022, Edward Enninful has written his memoir, which is a story inextricably bound up in his struggle to make fashion respond to the world, and in doing so, to help the world evolve as well. Written with style, grace and heart, it is the story of a visionary who has changed how we understand beauty.
“Fashion is a mirror – sometimes a fun house mirror – of the world at large. The people who have found themselves on the outskirts here have usually found themselves on the outskirts elsewhere. It has been a personal mission of mine to change that. It is a mission that is by no means over.”
Lezly Herbert
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