Former British Vogue Editor: ‘I Never Wanted Anna Wintour’s Job’

Edward Enninful has been all those in his life, ending his time at the helm of British Vogue with a final cover shoot that brought a dazzling array of stars together in one place. Now he can add chief creative officer to his résumé, thanks to the business he recently co-founded with his sister Akua. EE72 bills itself as a media and entertainment company with a digital platform and 72 Magazine, a quarterly print publication whose first issue is out this weekend.

It’s a big moment, even for a man who has seen a lot in his 53 years. Born in Ghana, Enninful came to the UK at age 13 after his father claimed political asylum, and was scouted as a model three years later on the London Tube. But his passion — or obsession, as he puts it — was women’s clothing and style, and he rose through the magazine ranks to become editor-in-chief of British Vogue in 2017. In a sign of media’s digital shift, that position no longer exists: His successor and Anna Wintour’s at US Vogue are heads of editorial content.

Enninful joined me at Bloomberg’s London office for a conversation about the past and future of media, championing diversity even if it costs you business, and the present nostalgia for the 1990s.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Edward, you are here at this pivot point in your life, having co-founded EE72. How does it feel to be working for yourself and to be the brand?

It feels great. There’s a huge sense of freedom. It’s amazing not being restricted by a masthead, being able to do what I’ve really wanted to do, but this time for myself. I feel lighter.

The learnings are a lot. It’s still difficult. Things that I didn’t know before — watching budgets. [Laughs] Saying to the team, You can’t spend this much; you can’t do that.

But it’s just so great. The minute I turned 50, I knew I was going to change my life. 1

What’s EE72 going to do? There’s a quarterly magazine and an online platform, but how is it going to make money?

EE72 is a global media and entertainment company. There are three separate arms. The first is online — where community meets with commerce. It’s what we’re calling slow digital, so we don’t have to put thousands of things there every day. Then there’s the second arm, which is the print publication — and the beauty is we don’t depend on advertising to keep the company going.

In fact, your first print magazine doesn’t have any adverts.

There’s not one ad in it. It’s a love letter to creativity, to the imagination, to what got me into the business – not being deterred by, You have to do this. Just freedom.

There’s a third arm, a service arm, where we work with clients — whether it’s in an advisory way, whether it’s creating collections together like I did with Moncler, whether it’s curating like I’m doing at the Tate. 2

The beauty of the first issue is we’re not doing the usual “pay for play.” You give me an ad, give me a page, and I’ll give you a credit. We’re working with clients closely, but more as partners.

So advertising is part of the model in the future.

Advertising is a huge part of the model. But for me to do this, to create a print product, I had to think differently. Coming back to do it the normal way didn’t interest me. 3

When you look at the issue, even though there are no ads, it’s powered by incredible companies. So we don’t have to depend on just ad pages. But you know, in the future, anything is possible.

There are incredibly well-known faces in the first issue. Julia Roberts is on the cover.

Some might say, Julia Roberts, she’s a Hollywood star, she’s a White woman. But Julia Roberts, to me, represents all those incredible women I know — ageless in their 50s, in their 60s — who society deems irrelevant. So much emphasis is placed on youth. I wanted to show a woman in her prime: [at] the height of her beauty, a mother, an outspoken woman. Women like this exist and they make the world go round. 4

Oprah Winfrey and Lila Moss are in it. People who are friends of yours.

Gwyneth. The best of the best.

I imagine you’ve called in quite a lot of favors.

[Phone rings.]

Hang on. Is that on you?

Oh my God! I thought I gave my phone away. Oh my God. Sorry. Sorry.

That’s okay. Who knows who could be calling, given your contacts. I thought it might be Kate Moss.

Well, a possibility. I love Kate.

You’ve said EE72 is about storytelling.

Yes.

The story that you are best known for — the one that you’ve made your hallmark in so many ways — is diversity. Is that still the story?

Very much so. When I was at Vogue it was one thing everybody sort of focused on – diversity being all about color.

But when you look at the work I’ve done my whole career, it’s been about age, socioeconomic backgrounds, religion.

Disability. Size. Sexuality.

All that comes under the umbrella. 5

The reason I’m asking you this is because it’s a hard time for that message. Look at the United States: The Trump administration’s moves against what it regards as “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion policies have led brands to pull back on initiatives and to be more careful on what they do. Is it therefore a harder time to work in the way that you are working?

For me, it’s a little bit sad. It’s almost like you take one step forward, two steps back.

But I’ve been here for over 30 years, advocating for that. And even though sometimes I’m exhausted, we have to keep going.

I’ve still got the energy to fight. But it’s crazy that we have to keep having these conversations. 6

Does this climate narrow the list of clients? Because it has to be a company that is signed up to the world as you see it.

Oh yeah. For me, the beauty of EE72 is we’re not out there to work with just anybody — we’re going to be very selective. It’s not like we’re desperate for everybody’s money. It’ll be companies who have the same ethos or are trying to do great things for the world.

But I think there are fewer of those companies nowadays, because even larger ones in the US are apprehensive, if not afraid, of what the administration could do to them.

Yeah. I’ve always loved the idea of pluralism, where all voices are welcome, all voices are heard – but it is a very difficult time at the moment.

What would you do if a company said: We really want to work with you. We’d love you to feature Melania Trump? 7

I think the answer will be, Not at this moment in time. Melania, she’s not what you call my readership. So right now, probably a no.

But maybe in the future?

In the future, you know, things happen.

Do you accept that there is a tradeoff, that there might be business that you turn down, because of that?

Oh, 100%. Even when I was a freelance stylist, I would turn down things if they didn’t sit with my beliefs. So that won’t change. And I’m not scared.

I’m not a person who has to bow down to money. I came from Africa. I came from a penniless family. I came to England with nothing. So saying no doesn’t really scare me.

I fought my whole career to get to where I am. 8

The UK is your home. It’s a different climate in this country as well. Your father came here seeking asylum following a series of military coups in Ghana. When you see protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, what do you feel? 9

First of all, the UK is a great country. It welcomed my family, gave us opportunities that [we] probably wouldn’t have had in Ghana.

I feel like refugees, immigrants, bring so much to the country. I’ve helped build this country. And there’s this opinion that they’re taking from us. And I don’t think that’s fair.

We have to shine a light on the work that a lot of these immigrants have done for this great country. And I feel like that conversation is getting lost.

What does that do to you? Because in your book, you write about arriving in the UK in the 1980s and seeing White resentment. You thought that period was behind us.

It does make me sad, I have to be honest. I’ve been around, so I’ve seen the cycle — things get better and then they get worse [and then] things get better.

The UK welcomed my family. Had that not happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you today. It was a country that tolerated – tolerance was good. Now the world is just saying, Let’s forget tolerance. 10

Do you think it’s a passing thing, or something fundamental?

It’s going to pass. That too shall pass.

The current UK government wants to change the mechanism through which you came to join your father – the principle of family reunification. What would you say to them?

I’ll say that’s a big mistake, because you’re going to lose people who can really contribute to the country. I think it’ll be such a shame because you don’t know who the next doctors are – the next you and me – the whole new generation that comes from parents of immigrants.

I remember your first British Vogue. You put Adwoa Aboah on the cover and said that she was resetting the image of modern Britain.

Yes. 11

She was the image that you chose for Britain in 2017. Who would it be today, in 2025?

Oh my God, there’s so many.

People I love like Charli XCX, Dua Lipa — whose family is from another country, but is so British. Dua is a great example. Without her family immigrating, we wouldn’t have a Dua Lipa.

What do you miss about being at Vogue?

I miss my team.

I wondered if you missed the convening power. Your last cover shoot, when you had 40 women in one space – Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Iman, Victoria Beckham, Jane Fonda. Can you ever have that kind of convening power again?

Well, I’ll tell you something funny — I knew every single one of those women before British Vogue. So when they showed up, they showed up because it was me. I have friendships with a lot of them. Miley Cyrus said, It takes months to get one of us, but only you can get 40.

How did that day feel, when you looked out and saw everyone there?

That day was surreal. It was one of the few days where I was so emotional I couldn’t actually even work. And the things they said on camera, why they were there, the things they said about me — it was very emotional, to the point I was actually hiding in the next room.

Steven Meisel shot the picture in seven minutes. It was the end of a tenure that I had decided to end. I felt I’d said all I needed to say, and I didn’t really want to repeat myself. 12

But my friends — when you see the first issue of 72 Magazine — they’re all there again.

I still wonder if there’s something special about Vogue.

Oh, Vogue is incredible.

I’ve been featured in it in a very small way, and there’s an aura, how people respond to it.

I mean, Vogue is Vogue is Vogue. It’s an institution, so people will always respond very well – being in Vogue will mean something. 13

Did you think, at the time, Can I really step away from all of this? Am I doing the right thing?

No. People always ask me this. When you are in a position in legacy media – where you have what people view as the ultimate job – when you step away, they can’t quite understand it. I guess the quote-unquote “regular normal person” is like, Why would you leave that job?

But as you know — because you’ve done the same thing, you left an institution and you came to where you are now — things are not always what they seem inside, are they? 14

That’s true. And definitely, as you were speaking, I was relating to it.

[Enninful laughs.] I saw you.

I’m still in a big news organization though, whereas you are doing something much more striking – a startup, your own company. Now that Anna Wintour has finally stepped back, I wonder if you think, Maybe I did leave too soon? 15

No, but I never wanted Anna Wintour’s job.

I spoke to Anna after my book tour. I said my time at Vogue was done, and I was leaving. Anna said to me, Can I help her for a year to onboard somebody new, et cetera. That’s what I did. End of story.

But I like how the press turned it into Anna and I fighting.

You wouldn’t have wanted to be editor-in-chief of US Vogue?

No. I wanted my own thing. I wanted to create something for the next generation. And that’s why I left.

There was no urgency for me to leave. Nobody kicked me out. I could have stayed, but I realized that with where media was going, I wanted to create something that was new, that was agile, that could pivot when it needed to.

And my sister, my husband — we always planned to do this. Walking away from things, letting things go — for me, not a problem. At all. 16

I wonder if Vogue will exist as a print magazine in 10 years’ time, as print revenues are under pressure. Your successor at British Vogue, and now Anna Wintour’s successor, neither of them are editors-in-chief, they’re “heads of editorial content.” They’ve worked in .com and co-hosted the Vogue podcast – that’s the world they’ve come from. 17

They’re digitally savvy, but I guess it’s a new time, a new generation, and people want different things from magazines now. People live online. That’s why my magazine is quarterly, because I feel like that’s all you need to get your message out. Month in, month out — which I’ve done my whole life — it’s quite gruesome, quite brutal. Sometimes you’re making do with stories. So four times a year for me is great.

I feel like, yes, most magazines are heading towards fewer issues. But make each issue collectible, make it the most beautiful — alongside the [digital] platform. So that’s where I’m headed. And I think maybe that’s where a lot of companies are headed.

Do you think Vogue will be quarterly, or something similar?

I can’t speak for Vogue.

I don’t think print is going away. You know, the Kindle came, they said books were disappearing. [Laughs]

There’s a place in New York that just opened, a library dedicated to magazines. So long as people want something that’s tactile, that you can hold, print will exist in some form or another. Maybe not in the form we have known all these years.

Let’s go back in time, to the ’90s.

My God.

Clearly an important decade in your life. You started modeling, this whole new world opened up. You are curating an exhibition at the Tate next year, all about ’90s Britain. What does the ’90s represent culturally? 18

The ’90s was the moment where the creative industry really came to the fore. It was a rejection of everything that had happened before in the ’80s — greed is good, remember?

A new generation were finding themselves. Most of the people in the exhibition probably came from working-class backgrounds, but there was this sense of, We can do it.

Whether it was the artists — Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville; whether it was the photographers like Juergen Teller and David Sims; whether it was the models – Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell – there was this sense of anything is possible.

Was it partly because of wealth? It was a richer time, the economy was growing, and that helped fuel the creative atmosphere?

We wanted to outdo each other creatively, which is such a British thing, right? I want to look better, I want to create better work. Tony Blair embraced it.

Cool Britannia. It helped his image.

It really helped.

It was also a new generation coming into our own. We wanted to create, we wanted to be seen by the world, we wanted to show the best of Britain. That’s what propelled us. 19

There are aspects of the ’90s that weren’t great.

Yes. [Laughs]

In image terms, “heroin chic” was everywhere and so normalized.

Yeah. The whole generation of fashion photographers and editors were obsessed with “reality.” It couldn’t be like the ’80s, where everything was just big and loud and glamorous. So that’s what created heroin chic. 20

And then fast forward to 1996, Tom Ford came along with his famous glamorous collection and killed grunge.

All my generation, who were young in the early ’90s, had [by then] become the world’s most famous photographers and editors. They were like, All right, bye to grunge. So it was just young people growing up.

And the fact that there is this ’90s revival now.

They love the ’90s, this new generation! [Laughs]

Why do they love the ’90s?

When you think about fashion of the time, it was quite timeless, right? Denim, jeans, t-shirts. The music of the time, Oasis.

Oasis are back.

Grunge music. It’s all back. 21

I think for today’s generation, it probably was an innocent era. We didn’t have the internet. We just had a few magazines, a few curators in specific places.

Which also meant you had to be out and about to get anything done, to be seen.

[Enninful laughs.] Boy did we go out. Oh my God. Every night I was out.

Your ’90s are definitely different from my ’90s.

But I was at i-D magazine. I was an 18-year-old editor.

During the day, I had to write the features, write the captions for the cover, shoot with the photographer, style. And at night, we had to go to nightclubs to sell to advertising, agents, music heads, just to keep the magazine going.

I mean, I was obsessed with working, and I loved working. I had no money. I would walk from Ladbroke Grove to Old Street if I had to.

One end of London to the other.

But that was the excitement of the ’90s. All the industries, we cross-pollinated. The whole [Tate] exhibition is really about the intersection, how we all grew up at the same time and knew each other. The designers — Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan — we all hung out. We were all sort of friends.

I look back on what I was wearing in the ’90s….

What were you wearing?

Unfortunately, I was wearing long skirts and Doc Martens.

[Enninful laughs.]

But you know what, Ann Demeulemeester brought that in, the Belgian designer. There was a moment. This is Kate Moss in The Face, all based around long skirts and Birkenstocks. So you weren’t that unfashionable?

I still can’t really bear to look at pictures of myself from the time, but I was having a very staid decade compared to you.

I have to say, the ’90s — as glorious as it was — wasn’t great for diversity.

I was always the only Black editor. Steve McQueen was probably the only Black artist. We were lauded — but for me, I had to bring up more people of color.

As a woman of color yourself, how did it feel in the ’90s?

I think awareness was starting to dawn that you needed more representation, certainly on screen. I feel that awareness came later in your industry.

My formative years were spent in Ghana. I grew up in a country where everybody was Black – the president, doctors, lawyers, name any profession. I’d seen what was possible. So when I came to England and realized I was a minority, that didn’t stop me from wanting to achieve.

Do you think your confidence came from the fact that you hadn’t been a minority your whole life? 22

100%. Maybe that added to my success because I didn’t have what most Black British people had, which was growing up in an all White country. That came later.

The fact that there was so little representation at that time, did it help your career, in that you are the person they’re going to remember?

I’m going to be very honest about this. On one hand, my career, being spotted, being given that role, happened to 1% of the population – Black, White, brown, whatever you want to say. So I know how lucky I was.

What was unfortunate is that I was the only one. The only token, if you want to call it that, the chosen one or whatever. And when people are in that situation, you can go two ways. You can say, Okay, I’m just going to sit here quietly and build a career. Or you could bring everybody up — everybody who was of another race, everybody who was gay. And that’s what I did: collect a family, a group of people. Naomi Campbell who was making strides in fashion, [makeup artist] Pat McGrath, my friend. We became so close.

Fast forward to the present and quite a few of the big brands have new creative directors. Why do you think that is? Has the industry been stuck in a rut? 23

Fashion is cyclical. It moves so fast. So these changes are always a part of the industry. We go from season to season. Short skirts are in, next season, they’re out. Next season they’re back. So that’s the nature of the industry.

But I haven’t seen it like this in all my years.

Is it a sign of weakness?

I mean, it’s a sign that change needs to happen.

The launch of EE72 is at the perfect time. I look forward to what they’re going to do and how they’re going to change an industry in flux.

Because this is the Bloomberg Weekend Interview, can we talk about your weekends? Maybe ’90s weekends compared to today’s weekends?

Oh my God.

They’ve got to be less crazy now?

I love the weekends. In the ’90s, you wouldn’t catch me at home. I would wake up in a friend’s house from a Friday night having gone somewhere. We’d probably go for some kind of breakfast, go to a pub, have a couple of drinks, go out again in the evening, repeat Sunday.

You partied hard, because our weekdays were so long. So the weekend we just got obliterated — drank, danced. My God, so many great clubs at the time.

You look like you miss it.

[Enninful laughs.]

Oh, I miss it so much. But I don’t have the energy. I’m living vicariously on Instagram now. I’m an early riser, so the first thing I do is meditate. I make a few phone calls. Then my husband and I will take the dog out for a walk. Maybe meet someone for lunch.

It sounds very wholesome.

Too wholesome maybe.

What would ’90s Edward make of the 2025 version?

Oh, he would laugh at me. I used to go to clubs in the ’90s and see people my age and go, What are they doing here?

I think of that young excited editor in the ’90s, just wanting to live life and experience so much. I’m exhausted just thinking about it, but I still have that same sort of drive, but the weekends are a little quieter now.

You sound content with what you’ve achieved. Happy with the new beginning.

I’m very happy.

Mishal Husain is Editor at Large for Bloomberg Weekend.