The victim as cody fisher. You are watching bbc news. Now, the Arts InterviewsEdward Enninful. As Editor In Chief of British Vogue since 2017, Edward Enninful has challenged convention not least by increasing the number of black and older women in the magazine. Hes reached the summit of International Fashion and media while battling depression, Alcohol Problems and a sickle cell condition. Its a long way from his childhood in ghana, which his family fled during the political turmoil of the mid 1980s, landing in south london at the height of social unrest in the capital. Black, working class, gay and a former asylum seeker, hes now tipped by many as anna wintour� S Replacement when she eventually retires from American Vogue. Hello, amol. Hello, very good to see you. How are you doing . Im good, thank you for having me. I wanted to find out who he really is and how he wants to change our culture. Edward enninful, thank you so much for speaking to me, thank you for speaking to bbc news. I want to start by talking a little bit about where your book starts, which is with your family, because you were born into a remarkable ghanaian family, the fifth of six children. First of all, tell me a bit about your dad a Military Major who you describe as a sporadic presence around the house. What was he like . I mean, major crosby enninful. He was very strict, very sort of old School African military, you know . Ruled the house with an iron fist and we were all scared of him growing up you know, youd be outside, sort of playing and its like there comes your dad and then you have to run in the house and clean your feet and wash your hands. Yeah, he wasjust old school military. The disciplinarian type. Yeah. What about your mum what was she like . My mum was very creative i mean, i think thats where i got my creativity from. She was always making clothes, always making people laugh, always sort of in a world of her own. So they were quite a good contrast, id say and she set up this company of seamstresses and a lot of people wont necessarily know what that actually involves, but it was there that you discovered your interest in garments, in creativity, and you came to understand the interests of fashionable women. I remember all these incredible women of all shapes and sizes and colours, you know . My grandmother, my aunts, my cousins, and all of them laughing, and so i always associated fashion with fun and joy and seeing a woman sort of try on a dress and just come alive. So i remember going to my aunts salon, dolly dots, and seeing Ebony Magazine and jet and time and i was transported. I didnt know i would end up sort of doing what im doing now but i knew there was a world out there that i wanted to be a part of and it was glamorous and it was bright and all these incredible women you know, ive always been so obsessed with sort of strong women. And as so often with immigrant stories, it was political upheaval that actually created the circumstances in which the enninfuls would move to london and initially south london, a place called vauxhall. It must have been an incredible psychological challenge for your father. I think he had to swallow his pride because he was such a proud man, to go from being sort of this military person to, yeah, essentially seeking asylum. And we were all sort of crammed into my aunts two bedroom flat in vauxhall. But we were just kids. We thought this was like paradise, really. And we were all Sharing Rooms and now that i look back, oh, my god, it was quite quite a hard time. You know, we had no money. But when youre young, you dont see those things, you know . Everythings an adventure. Youve mentioned a couple of times youre interested in strong women. Theres also a line in the book where you say that, at school, women were my special weakness. Now, most people would use that phrase in a sexual sense and i dont think you were using it in that sense. What did you mean by that phrase . I realised from a young age that i didnt see women in a sexual way, but i loved when they were outspoken, i loved when they dressed for themselves, i loved. I loved everything about them. And i guess we will get into talking about being gay later but at that time, i knew i had a strong affiliation. I didnt. I never hang out with boys. I always hung out with the girls. And i was never bullied, because if you wanted to get to know the girls, you have to get to know me, so. Laughs you were the like ideal wingman, werent you . Basically, without knowing what a wingman was perfect. You moved to Ladbroke Grove, which is the area just north of notting hill. What was it like back then as a young man, and especially as a young black man . I mean, Ladbroke Grove is a very interesting area, notting hill generally. Its one of the few areas where you can have sort of the wealthiest of the wealthiest aristocrats next to rastafarians next to sort of immigrants, so i loved the energy. I loved the fact that, oh, my god, i really belonged. I started feeling like i belonged in england when we hit Ladbroke Grove. But i. There was. I remember the front line Ladbroke Grove itself was always the front line and the police were there every day, so you had to be so careful you know, we were stopped so many times, my brothers and i. Its remarkable how much the course of history, whether its global or personal, can swing on Chance Meetings and for you, it was when you were on the london underground, when a bloke called simon handed you a card. Laughs and i remember getting on the train and sort of heading to college and simon was staring at me and he was. I remember bald, wearing denim and, you know, i was quite sheltered. I6. Yeah, and at baker street, he got off and gave me his card and he said, my name is simon foxton. Im a stylist i didnt know what a stylist was but, call me. Id love to use you in a shoot. I remember getting home and poor mum. Mum, i want to do this she wasnt having it. Shes like, the Fashion Industry is full of weird people i didnt know what she meant by weird at the time but as you do when youre young, i sort of forced her, and eventually she called simon. So she called him, not you . Well, she did. She wanted to vet him and make sure that he was. Basically wow. African mother. And sort of, yes, then i started sort of shooting with simon and nick knight as a model, and then i became a model with an agency while i was at college and really, that was my entry into fashion. And a few weeks later, you were doing a shoot with the great nick knight, a photographer who you are still loyal to today hes shot covers for you. And you worked for i d magazine. You were Fashion Director at the age ofjust 18. I d magazine was legendary. Why did i d magazine have such an outsized influence on the culture back in that era . Because were talking, what . Late � 80s, early � 90s . Because terryjones, who set up i d, was the art director for British Vogue. And he looked around the streets and saw so many incredible people from different races, you know . Different ages, not being reflected in sort of the big magazines at the time. So he decided to set up a magazine to document Youth Culture a magazine run by young people for young people and so thats why i d was so influential. You came of age in fashion in a sense at the same time as people like Naomi Campbell and kate moss, who people watching now will be aware of as two icons in fashion. Icons. I just want to ask you about what makes them successful. Lets start with kate moss. You knew her in the early days. I met kate when i was 16 and she was 14 and we went to a casting, and i remember she walked in and she literally charmed the whole room. The energy as well as the beauty. Shes uniquely herself. And naomis always been the same. She was always outspoken. Naomi always thought she was going to be a star from when she was a baby and she is a star but, you know, they really are who they are authentic. You also were defining your own sexuality and being open about it. You had a girlfriend who was another model and then, simon foxton took you to more gay bars, like heaven. You describe this in the book very beautifully, if i may say where you talk about how, just as i had found myself in fashion, which is what i wanted to do in the world, now i was discovering more intimate terrain. I felt free and scared and excited. But how did coming from a ghanaian family complicate coming out . My friends said apparently, when i was a teenager, we had this conversation i didnt even remember. And i was, like, you know, i hear its a european thing. And he was like, you know, no, maybe its who you are. And i remember being very shy about it. But when we started going out and seeing people like myself, slowly ijust realised, oh, my god, i have found a tribe. How did your dad take it . My dad funny enough, everyone thinks that should have been a problem. Ijust literally, i was like, this is who i am. He had already kicked me out back then it was already strained at that point. Strained and it was strained because he wanted you to study law. I remember getting to goldsmiths and realising it wasnt for me, realising i loved what i was doing, sort of Assisting Simon and modelling and hanging around the i d offices, so i pretended to my father i was going to. I was going to university when i was actually hanging out. And i remember one day, literally, i couldnt sort of hide it any more and i told him that i wanted to be in the Fashion Industry and i was no longer going to go to goldsmiths, and out the window came my stuff. He threw all my stuff out. I picked it up and a cousin of mine and ijust moved in with another friend and never went back home. So. Laughs the interesting thing about that day, talking about sort of fate and. I remember picking up my stuff and going into i d magazine, where i started sort of talking to terryjones and beth summers, the Fashion Director, and i told them what had happened, that id been kicked out, and that same day, beth summers really told me she was leaving and i was taking over. Timing is everything you write in the book about this era and the parties the drugs, the alcohol, the intense kind of. You write about it reaching a point where you were soul sick and on a path of self destruction. What was that . What happened, do you think . Yeah, i mean, you know, i was in london in my 20s, you know, i had a greatjob, you know, making bits of money, out all the time. Thats what we did at i d, you know . Your teens and your 20s, you go out. You dont need any sleep, you know, you drink, you party and then you come back to work and i did that for so long, and then, when i hit the age of 30 i decided, you know what . If i was going to put my life into focus, if i was going to sort of find any kind of success notjust in work, but within myself as a human being that i needed to. To be clean. You spent 14 years on the Alcoholics Anonymous programme. Yes. Basically, i literally had stopped six months before. I literally woke up one day after a party and decided, you know, this is it. Somebody stole my passport, im done. So i was on a plane to new york six months later and a friend approached me on the plane, and i said, i havent drank for six months, and she said, do you know about aa . And i was, like, no, what is that . And she said, when you get off the plane, find a meeting and i think youre going to like it. So i did that, but i was already six months clean, and i found fellowship. I found everybody was sort of even, you know . It didnt matter whether you were the head of a company or someone, you know, who slept on the streets. Itjust levelled everybody. And so, i learntjust really about, you know, being with people, being able to be myself, but also, being able to respect people. When you went to really dark places, how bad did it get before you came clean . I mean, it got very bad because you imagine here i was, you know, i lost one home, which was africa, you know, came to england, then i lost a second home when i was kicked out. And then, i went into the gay scene, thinking id found my tribe and again, so many rejections. So for me, i was always looking for a home. I was always looking for. Belonging. Yes yes, belonging. Youve had four eye operations. For someone who depends for their career on their eye, in media and in fashion, that must be pretty scary. I mean, i never had good eyesight anyway. I always had sort of io glasses and i had, yeah, four retinal detachments, four surgeries. Each time meant three weeks staring at the ground in a dark room and not lifting up your head and, yes, it was very sort of very psychologically intense. But what i also learnt from that you dont need Perfect Vision to create. You dont need 20 20 vision to see images. So thats the irony even though i have bad eyesight, im still able to create images that people seem to. That resonate with people. Do you fear losing your eyesight . Is that something you have to. . I mean, thats my biggest fear, cos i need my eyes to do what i do. So having been through that and survived. Your career was flourishing in the early noughties, but you hadnt had much to do with American Vogue. And then in 2005, you finally get the call to go and see someone called anna wintour, who a lot of people will have heard of, and you went out to new york. American vogue is very different from the rest of vogue. When you describe in the book your time at American Vogue, you say of it that it was hard not to feel creatively stifled in those years. What did you mean by that . Because id come from the world of i d where i could be as creative as i wanted, and before i got to American Vogue, id been at italian vogue, where wed create different 30 page stories based around Plastic Surgery, based around, you know, black models, and then i went to American Vogue where there were specific models you had to use and it was quite a strict framework, which i was not used to. But im really glad i went through that, because that really sort of enabled me to understand the business side of fashion, that fashion wasnt just about fantasy, but it was a business. You say in your book you became known as the guy who shoots black girls. Yes, ive always been about different women of all shapes and sizes and race and religion and age. Ive always been like that. So when i got to American Vogue, i guess it was very they had their, you know, like i said, they had their box, but i think i was also brought in to break that box because if i wanted black models i got them. If i wanted this model, i got her. How did that make you reflect on the public difficulties conde nast had a few years ago where some employees said it was a place hostile to diversity . I think that public reckoning was notjust conde nast, it was every company. Not only just the Fashion Industry. The brilliant thing for me was seeing people address, finally when people talk about unconscious biases, when people talk about treatment in the workplace, that it is true. So a lot of Companies Made all these pledges to minorities and i think conde nast, yes, there were problems there but it reflected the wider world. There is obviously endless speculation about how long anna wintour, who is now 72, will carry on and a lot of rumours online, possibly baseless, that she will step down soon. Dont listen to rumours. But this is a hypothetical if asked to go and be the editor of American Vogue to replace anna wintour, that would be a huge honour, wouldnt it . I dont know. People love to speculate about mine and annas relationship but what i can tell you is that i am happy doing what im doing right now working with British Vogue and overseeing the european vogues. It would still be a pretty good job, wouldnt it . Im very happy right now but you never know what the future holds. I am always open. To opportunities. To discussions about it. Ok. Have you had talks about it . Laughs stop it you dont speak for the whole Fashion Industry, youre not a corporate spokesman. But one critique of the Fashion Industry broadly has been that it has, for too long, promoted a very narrow conception of beauty. If you like, a eurocentric or western one. For years, there was a very narrow ideal of what a Fashion Model should be or what a fashion magazine, who should be in a fashion magazine. I love beauty in all its shapes and, you know, all its colours and i want those people reflected in the magazine. Itjust did not make sense to me business wise or culturally not to reflect the world we lived in. Let me put to you one other critique of the industry. There is a growing amount of concern about the impact of fashion on the environment, that it costs the earth, basically. The Charity 0xfam says that fast fashion produces more Carbon Emissions per minute than driving a car Around The World six times, and according to mckinsey, the consultancy, just one industry, fashion, accounts for 4 of global greenhouse emissions, as much as france, germany and the uk combined. That is an extraordinary impact, often on items that are wasted or disposed of. Are you concerned that fashion is costing too much for the earth . At the moment, the biggest conversation in fashion right now is about sustainability and how, what we can do to save the planet. For me, if you look to one of my issues, i had taylor swift on the cover and my motto is, buy better, buy less. Lets not buy things every day tha