EDWARD ENNINFUL INTERVIEW PART 1

TFS:  You’re very popular on the Fashion Spot. We love your thread!  You do some wonderful work and you’ve been doing this for soooo long.   

EE: (laughs)  For a long time!

TFS: You’ve had quite an amazing career.

EE: Thank you.  I don’t know how, but somehow I managed it! (laughs) 

TSF: And you started very young.  That’s kind of remarkable.  Do you think that could happen now? 

EE: You know, I ask myself this question all the time… and I ask (other) people.  I think that I started at a very different time.  I think that when I started, fashion in England wasn’t as international as it is now.  You know, we had two magazines that we worked for and I was sort of head of one.  We had a thriving music industry where we made money- because we didn’t do advertising back then, we did pop stars/musicians.  So we made money, and then that money was spent on your editorials.  Things were kind of a little more innocent then.  I think if I started now, to be fashion editor of a magazine at 17, it would probably be…

No…it would be very difficult.  Things are a little more commercial and I think it’s a little more cut throat today.  And Conde Nast is such a juggernaut now!  Back then there were British Vogue and American Vogue and a few others. Now there’s every kind of Vogue, in every kind of country.  So it was a very different time. 

TFS: True, true.  I was actually looking at some of your earlier work for I-D.  I’m wondering what you think about your own work.  Has it evolved?  Has it changed as well, along with the market? 

EE: Oh my god!  I think more than anything that’s probably what’s kept me going.  Because when I started off at I-D, things were very avant-garde, you know?  Very based around second-hand clothes, and the markets, and not commercial.  So, with the trajectory of my career, now I work at American Vogue.  It’s almost like going from one extreme to another.   And then there’s Italian Vogue.  But I think somehow I’ve retained a personal kind of voice.  You know, the woman that I always aspire to - it’s always a cool girl…from London...from Portobello!  Somehow in my work, it’s always a girl like Kate Moss.  Like, even when I’m styling it’s like…”Oh - how would that girl wear this or that…?”