Life After Vogue: Why I Want To Reinvent Fashion Magazines (Edward Enninful)

28:40So, you know, all those things that I've learned in my career, you know, kind of what I want to apply now, really. And to be clear, it's beyond a website because you're doing something which is pretty crazy, dare I say it, pretty radical, which is you're coming out in print. Yeah. Four times, so it's a quarterly thing. Yeah, quarterly. And issue one is going to have no adverts. No ads. Are you mad? Are you mad? But you know... Listen, I know a little bit. Okay, go on. I'm going to push back on what you're saying. No, not say what you're saying. I know a little bit because I used to spend time thinking about these budgets in a very different world, which is the collapsing world of British newspapers.

29:18advertising and reader revenue are two different ways of getting money through advertising it's two different types of advertising display advertising and circulation advertising and display advertising has been the main source of income in the fashion industry and for big magazines for a very long time and the costs of print are huge right if you think about when i remember thinking sitting there so this is me 10 years ago for our listeners to know i was editor of The Independent, I'd be sat there at 10 past 10 at night, and I'd be saying to some sub-editor, that picture caption on page 28, it busts, i.e.

29:51it goes over the line, and you need to track it back or whatever. And I'm thinking, this is so that this sub-editor can send an electronic copy of this thing to a printer, and the printer is going to get expensive paper and ink and all this machinery, and they're going to put it on an actual bit of paper. Then they're going to wrap it up. Then they're going to put it in a van, and that van is going to be driven by a human being to shops all around the country with all the fuel and all of that's attached, then hopefully someone's going to go into a newsagent, the newsagent's going to take its cut.

30:24And if you put it online, you cut out that entire distribution model, which is why free, pretty much frictionless global distribution is the most exciting thing in the world of journalism. And there's Edward Enninful saying that he's going to come out four times a year in print on expensive glossy paper. So my question to you once again is, are you mad? First of all, I am not... So the business model we're creating doesn't rely on print. It doesn't rely on print to survive. That's a nice marketing tool almost for you. Yeah, I mean, there's that old thing of, you know, pay for play. You give me a page, a page of advertising, you get credit.

31:05Basically, the main heart of the company is the platform where we sort of engage clients, where we're going to be having podcasts. Events are so important right now. We work with clients as partners. So going back to your question, the reason why the first issue has no ads, I didn't really approach anybody because I thought the model of the pay-for-play model, which is the ad page for advertising, for me, that's something of the past. what I can offer clients is a package. So we work on what is that package? Is that an event? Is that a curated event? Is that a curated influencer event? Instead of featuring that one dress in the magazine, is it something that's more?

31:58Can we give you a podcast? Can we give you space on the website? And selling that way, we've realised it's so incredible it's so profitable because right now clients want something more than just paid pages so Julia Roberts is on the front Julia Roberts on the front why Julia Roberts just to be really clear you're an editor right you're a fashion you're a stylist you're a fashion but I want to say something for this new venture I'm not the editor I've created a company so I have Sarah Harris who's the editor or director a whole editorial team. I'm not the editor. I don't style anymore. You must have been involved in the choice of Julia Roberts.

32:42Yes, I'm very involved in sort of the choice of covers and what should go in the magazine. But it's ultimately, I am not hands-on like I was at British Vogue. Why Julia Roberts? I love Julia Roberts. I mean, you know, when I was at British Vogue, she was one of my, what do I call it, bucket lists. And I could never get her until the penultimate issue. I thought, I really want Julia Roberts, approached her and the timing was perfect so I shot a cover with her and I remember just loving what she stood for she's a real human being she lives in San Francisco with her kids you know she doesn't have a nanny she goes shopping on her own she's she's outspoken she's ageless where I'm concerned and we really clicked and I remember when we finished shooting the cover as she was walking out said to her julia if i ever do anything you will be the first cover and i think she thought yeah yeah whatever says that to everyone yeah and then when the first issue came i called her and i said it's time i mean yeah i mean it was with julia it's definitely a pinch me moment because i remember arriving from ghana and sort of loving her in flat liners you know all those incredible movies i mean she the biggest movie star in the world so i'm gonna this i think what you're saying You used the word influencers a moment ago, and I think this is a really interesting thing, which gets us into what you want to do with a publication.

34:02Not a publication, with the website and the platform. Julia Roberts was one of the most famous women in the world in the 1980s and 90s, before the internet really, where basically Hollywood movie stars were these sort of gods that you had to go to a big screen on a big cinema to watch, and millions of people did it. When I saw in the kind of publicity blurb that you had Julie Roberts. And I don't want this to be misinterpreted. I was surprised because in my very cliched, stereotypical way, I know her to be one of the most famous people in the world, but I think of her as someone from my childhood.

34:42And presumably when I look at your brilliant new publication, I'll see that she's actually a very contemporary, a very topical figure. And it's very, very important not to, especially perhaps with women who've been iconically beautiful, not to kind of write them off. But I wonder whether or not Julia Roberts speaks to, a bit like all this Oasis stuff, speaks to a moment when millions of people had to come together to go somewhere to see these famous people. She speaks almost to an era before influencers. That's true. I hope what I've said isn't offensive. That's true. But what I do love about her is that she's also...

35:16When I talk about inclusivity, people always automatically go to race. They think it's always about colour. But my work at British Vogue, my work has always been about women who I call ageless. And it was very important to me that the first cover was a woman of a certain age. It's the age where women are seen as invisible when they hit their 50s or 60s. And I felt like And talking of inclusivity, that is the kind of woman I wanted to target for the first issue, sort of the invisible woman. And Julia does represent, yes, all that, the fame, the biggest movie star in the world. But at the same time, she's also a woman of a great age, a beautiful age.

36:04And I thought, let's start with that. Can I say, I'm so glad you said that because I feel, I sort of self-censor a bit and I'm a bit concerned to talk about what seems to be the pretty obvious discrimination against women in their 50s. Yes. Sometimes described in popular languages, post-menopausal women, as if that's what defines them. And as a 42-year-old bloke, I feel quite self-conscious talking about that. Do you think that that is still a huge cultural problem? Have you seen it in fashion? Oh, it's huge. What's the issue? What's the thing you're worried about? That women become invisible?

36:35Yeah, they become invisible because, you know, there's such an emphasis on youth, isn't there? There's such an emphasis on being young, especially now, you know, with all these beauty procedures, you know, get your lips down, get the BBL. There's such an emphasis on sort of youth. And what I love about Julia, she hasn't had any work done. She's a woman, a naturally effervescent, beautiful woman and i feel like yes she does represent a generation of women who kind of feel unseen i see i see these incredible women i've always seen them i've always championed them i think women get so beautiful the older they get the wisdom they have the way they navigate the world i just find them so beautiful and even you I said, going back to British folk, I had Dame Judi Dench on the cover.

37:28It's not a f**k. She was the oldest ever. Oldest ever. I've had so many women in their 50s. And I think you are seeing, I see these women. I always will. And I think the world will come around to sort of giving them their dues. But like I said, there's too much emphasis on youth. And going back to what you said about no ads, I wanted to create a magazine about creativity, where you just get lost in the beauty of images. You know, how I started, I wanted to get lost in creativity and that's the first issue is a gift to that. And, you know, I'm not going to say there won't be pages later down the line, but for now, this is really what's important to me, the idea of going back to creativity, away from the commerce of it all, away from you can't do this.

38:18You know, again, I sat there and I thought, if I'm going to bring out a magazine, it will have to disrupt in a way. So we are living in a very specific cultural moment. Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world. There is a anti-DEI, anti-woke backlash. I've noticed a really popular meme and theme, which is about the idea that woke values have hijacked objective beauty. And what I mean by that is there are a huge number of people. These are people who I don't follow, by the way. Twitter X sends them to me, which say, here's a picture of a woman who's thin around the waist, has big breasts, has maybe a Eurocentric disposition.

38:59And here's a fatter woman. And one is more beautiful than another, objectively. And that's just true. It's the way it's always been true throughout human history. And human history suggests that we've preferred women to look a certain way, whatever you define that as. Do you feel like there is a kind of attempt, a kind of political, cultural attempt right now to assert that beauty is actually quite narrowly defined? I mean, you know, I feel like that's always been the case, you know. But also, look at other parts of the world. Look in Africa. That standard is different. The beauty standard is different.

39:33You know, it's not Eurocentric. So we are in Europe. And yes, people always will say that's beautiful. But, you know, my whole career, I've just seen beauty in all its shapes and forms. and it's not woke to think that somebody curvy is beautiful. It's not woke to think that somebody from another country is beautiful. You know, it's so ingrained in me that for me, that's life. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I don't really pay much attention to what is beautiful. If I did, I wouldn't have done the work I've done in my career. I wouldn't have shown the light on all those sort of invisible women.

40:11What did you make of the Sydney Sweeney moment a few weeks ago? I know Sydney, actually. What did you make of that? What did you make of that? I mean, she's having a great moment. She's sort of the it girl in Hollywood. I thought it was a great idea that sort of this denim company we hadn't heard of in a while had her. And then I read all the messaging and I'm like, okay. We're talking about jeans and jeans. Well, jeans became a kind of jeans, as in jeans, the trousers became a kind of synonym for jeans, G-E-N-E-S, as if she, as this all-American next-door girl, represented a kind of, they suggested it was almost a racially superior ideal of beauty.

40:50And then someone said she's a registered Republican. But did you find that, did you feel uncomfortable at the politicization of that? I just feel like we're living in safe times. Everybody wants to be very safe. Everyone's being super careful. You can read into what anybody says, whatever way you want. I think we're living in that time. So people are really, really super, super careful. I thought people really read into it probably deeper than I would have. But then also on the other hand, I guess if you have a blonde woman sitting there talking about her genes, it will trigger some people. So I feel like, you know, yeah, the population is quite divided really, isn't it?

41:28Yeah, and sort of polarised in a way that sort of... And polarised. In a way that feels sort of, it feels uncomfortable. And everybody's looking for something to hang on to, whether good or bad, right? Something to align with. Do you mean in the culture wars? Do you mean in that sense that everything is becoming politics? Exactly. But the industry in itself has to sort of figure out, you know, where we stand, what we stand for. It's an industry in flux, the fashion industry right now. Because like you said before, there was a tiny, you know, you had to read magazines to get what was going on. You had to sort of, you know, who's the designer who was in or out?

42:04Now the kids, they're just like, my friend's got a drop, Piccadilly, I'm going to be there. Even the way of selling is different now in the fashion industry. You don't need to go to the designer store like we used to. No, you just go to where your friends are going. Palace, Supreme, all these incredible people just, here's the drop, come and buy it. So the whole system is sort of looking at itself and trying to figure a way forward, I think. In that context, can I put to you, not criticisms of you, but two criticisms of the fashion industry. One is about fast fashion. And one is that the impact of the fashion costs the earth base, basically.

42:39And that one of although there's huge amounts of effort going into things like recycling and reducing carbon footprints, basically, fashion as an industry for decades, if not longer, has incentivized mass production of things that exist for a few moments, and then they're gone. and that fashion is basically doing terrible, terrible things to our planet. Do you think there's something in that? I mean, you know, I know that, you know, the fashion industry is a great polluter, but it's not the only industry. And I feel like at the moment, the fashion industry is sort of getting it from all angles.

43:20But we also have to realise that this is also the industry where stories can be told, where narratives can be told, where you can use fashion to sort of, like I said, put a spotlight on people of a certain age, people from different backgrounds. So I feel like that side, more than anything, yes, it is a polluter, but also that side, now we have to sort of speed up the side that is positive and does bring a positivity into the world and is inclusive, all those things that slowly people seem to be forgetting. You know, it's not just clothes at the end of the day. It's what you stand for. That's one of the things.

44:00I feel like we need to sort of do that more. Yeah, fast fashion. Okay, fast fashion's here. Yes, it's a big polluter. But a lot of young people will also argue that they can't afford the prices. So how do we, what do we do as an industry to sort of create things that maybe young people can buy or access? And I think that's the conversation now. That was going to be my second criticism, which is that a lot of fashion is basically just completely unaffordable. Growing up, we had what you call diffusion lines, right? Diffusion lines. You grew up working class, but is there something to the criticism of the industry which says fashion basically is a way of selling very, very, very expensive things to a lot of people who can't afford it and that luxury just costs too much?

44:46I mean, you know, luxury has always been for the elite, hasn't it? Luxury has always been for the elite. But now that, you know, fashion is sort of an even playground, people are now questioning that. I believe that, yes, there are ways in which companies can sort of think of a new generation. How do we get the audiences who buy Palace or who buy Supreme? And I feel like that's an ongoing conversation that the industry is having with itself. How do we reach this elusive Gen X? How many rooms have you been where people are trying to capture Gen X? I think it's an ongoing conversation. And yeah, there needs to be solutions or we're going to lose a whole new generation.

45:23What does success look like for EE72? Success for EE72, I mean, it's having a great community of people, of like-minded people, being able to maybe bring new ideas to the fore, being able to bring new ideas versus old ideas, whether it's radical versus non-radical. I want to bring thinkers onto the website. I want people to, you know, different points of views of people. for me the word I love right now is pluralism just hearing different voices and you've been very generous for your time I want to end on a couple of just thoughts about you when we last met which was the first time we met you were editor of British Vogue and I tried very very very hard and I think possibly successfully to avoid two words which I thought were just needlessly awkward and those two words were Anna Wintour you're no longer the editor of British Vogue I just want to ask you about kind of your departure from there and what you've done since.

46:26Were you sort of surprised at the fact that it ended? And are you glad that it ended? Because here we are now, you're launching something new. When my book came out, I came on your show. And I thought I'd said all I need to say. I sort of changed an industry where diversity was concerned. Six years in, looking at every magazine, September covers, you had women of colour. Everywhere I looked, I felt my work was done. And to be honest with you, when I took the job, I gave myself five years and I did six. I lasted six. And I remember I sat with Anna Wintour and Roger and I was like, I'm done. And they were really so wonderful.

47:01They said, can you give us, you know, a year? Let's bring in a successor. This is, you know, brought in Chilma. So it was my decision to leave. But I just loved all these stories like, oh, my God, we were, Anna and I, we're fighting. Anna and I, we text each other all the time. You're going to see us together. but it was, she was very, actually very supportive because I was leaving a secure place to go into a world that was probably, and you know, and I remember clearly sitting in Paris with her other wrists and she's like, you know, rather than stepping out into this, why don't we just sort of, you work with me, still help with Europe and let's, you know, let's bring in a new person.

47:37Doesn't that make you incredibly, I'm going to not swear, but angry, pissed off at journalists because I'm afraid to tell you, and you know this better than I do, maybe you don't read this stuff, that is not how your departure was written up. Your departure was written up as Edward Enninful was going to be the successor to Anna Wintour. Anna Wintour crushes all of her successors, won't allow it, and therefore he was forced out. Not at all. I mean, yeah, I'm sure you can speak to Anna about it. But the funny thing is, you know, look, I've been in that position for six years and I really sort of stopped reading everything and I would never take anything personally.

48:10There were so many times I could have spoken, but I thought the only time I'm going to speak is when I have something to speak about, which is now. Save it for radical with a more margin. We're honoured. Final thought on that quickly, which is she's announced a successor. I mean, two questions about that. What do you know of her successor and what that might mean for the fact? I mean, Chloe, she's head of digital. I mean, all the sort of lead, don't forget the past, the last two years I was head of Europe. So all the women we put into place were sort of digital natives. So she's a digital native, which is really where the company I think wants to go.

48:42And I knew, you know, I knew it was going to be her because all the other editors we put into place had that kind of background so i wasn't surprised it's a big moment anna winter stepping down though isn't it i mean has she good for good for her you know good for her but i mean she's still going to be there she's still going to be sort of advising and people be reporting into her and but you know time comes when you have to sort of look at your life and decide what you want isn't it do you feel excited for this new chapter here's this boy I'm so excited. If I may say, we're nearly 40 years since a fifth of six boys turns up in Vauxhall at his aunt's house from a military barracks in Ghana, finds out he's gay, is black working class gay in a time of 1980s London.

49:24You've had an extraordinary 40 years, but do you feel like you're about to embark on a, you've had an extraordinary 50 plus years, but do you feel that you're about to embark on a whole new chapter? I feel like my whole career has been leading up to this. I feel like this moment is really what I've been waiting for my whole life, to be able to create something new, something for generations to come, for all the little Edwards in their room. Like if I can do it, they can do it too, to be able to have a voice away from a masthead, to be able to do sort of not have to answer to anybody, be able to do what I want.

49:58I mean, I am so excited for what's to come and be able to sort of work even closer with people from my generation and a new generation. Edward Ennifel, it's a pleasure to have you on Radical. Always a pleasure to see you.

50:15The last time I met Edward Ennifel, when I interviewed him for BBC a couple of years ago, he was the editor of British Vogue and he had a book coming out. And I had a really frank and honest conversation with him at the time, but I just felt that there was something about the fact that he was the editor of British Vogue, which meant that he just had to slightly maybe self-censor. So he couldn't be completely honest about what he thought about a range of different issues. That Edward Eddinfall has gone. He's no longer the editor of British Vogue. And what we've got today, what I think you just heard, is Edward Eddinfall uncensored and unleashed.

50:50First of all, it was so interesting to me as a close follower of these things that the reporting around his departure of British Vogue was, in his view, pretty misleading. And I've got to say, I looked at some of that reporting. I read it. In fact, I read it in preparation for the interview that we just did. And it suggests that he'd been forced out because he wanted to replace Anna Wintour. Everyone always wanted to replace Anna Wintour. He'd been talked of as a potential successor. And he said, no, no, no, that's complete nonsense. Actually, it was a mutually agreed thing. And it was all sort of very kind and lovedy.

51:17And he went on his own terms and of his own accord. That was an interesting little kind of a scoopet, I think you might call it, about his departure from a very, very prestigious job. But then what about his opinions? He was really opinionated about a range of different things in a way that, frankly, I was a bit surprised by how opinionated he was. First of all, he really does believe that older women are getting not so much airbrushed, but written out of culture. And it's a very interesting thing, isn't it? That he's putting Julia Roberts on the front. He's got Oprah Winfrey. In the past, he's put Dame Judi Dench on the front of Vogue.

51:49He believes that older women are too often invisible. Now, that's not particularly controversial or rare opinion. But when you've got someone of his, frankly, his stature saying it and doing something about it, actually prepared to be radical, to put women over the age of 50 on the front of magazines and publications, I think that's pretty interesting. I thought he was very outspoken about the dangers of returning to a European ideal of beauty. And this is a hugely controversial subject. You can find lots of articles, people online, whether right or left, saying that actually most humans do find particular types of women more attractive.

52:22I think some of that debate is often rather reductive. He certainly says we've got a problem in the fashion industry, which is that we have a particular ideal, which is fair skinned, light haired, bright eyed. That's dominating the fashion pages too much. And he wants to challenge that again. He wants to be radical as he has been in the past. And that's where I thought, in a way, he was most interesting. There is at the moment with President Trump and perhaps in this country as well, a kind of pushback on DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. There is a kind of broad sense that, as Piers Morgan might put it, the woke worm is turning.

52:58Edward Endifel actually made a counter argument to that, which is that he thinks the diversity revolution is incomplete. I think he might accept that in some instances it might have overreached. But he thinks actually that there's still work to be done to make people who have long been excluded feel included. And when I asked him about his model of leadership, what he wants to do to change fashion, he alighted, first of all, I think, on that idea of being more inclusive. And it's just interesting, refreshing, perhaps, to some of you to hear someone push back on the pushback against DEI and say, actually, diversity is not a bad word.

53:30We need to embrace it and be radical in trying to spread it.

53:38so loads of you have been getting in touch about our last episode with ash sarkar about the whole future of the left and about identity politics lorraine says i used to teach conflict resolution and would say to students that difference is the basis of all conflict because humans find it difficult to accept and feel comfortable with our differences i agree with ash sarkar that the left appealing to minorities is a losing proposition and why populism is more successful by appealing to simpler desires to identify with people like ourselves. Thank you very much indeed for that, Lorraine. Just to remind you, Ash's book is called Minority Rule and her argument was that the minority that people on the left should be most concerned about, again, is the economic minority of the super rich rather than lots of different ethnic minorities.

54:24She was arguing that basically identity politics has been a kind of, you know, bad detour for the left. And it should go back to its primary concern, which is a building a workable democratic majority and be focusing on economic issues, particularly the plight of the poor. Sarah says, Hi, I was quite literally stopped in my tracks when I heard your most recent guest Ash Sarkar make the claim that America has a more open and substantially more meritocratic electoral system than the UK. Her sentence, and this gives us people like, could and should have ended surely with Trump. Given that we know financial power is critical in securing political power in the US, her claim of their system as a basis of freedom seemed odd to say the least.

55:06She appears to confuse charisma and rhetoric with talent and integrity, a confusion whose consequences we have just experienced with the outcome of Mandelson's denouement. This is Peter Mandelson, former ambassador to Washington, and which we witness every day in the chaos wreaked by Trump and his allies. As a left of centre voter who shares Ash's concerns about the negative effects of identity politics, I was hoping for a reasoned argument for Marxism rather than an ungrounded diatribe about dumb politicians. Ironically, in contrast, James Orr, whose politics are generally opposite to mine, made a far more grown up and reasoned case.

55:43Well, Sarah, I mean, I hear what you're saying about James Orr making a reasoned and grown up case. He was very articulate and eloquent in our previous podcast. I would say in partial defence of Ash. I know you didn't like what she was saying about Keir Starmer and his Labour Party being led. I think she said something like, it's the dumbest people that she's ever come across or the dumbest people that could lead a political party. I do think there were times where she was being pretty eloquent, and I'm not going to say persuasive, but pretty eloquent about what Marx could teach us about the left.

56:12But anyway, sounds like you're unconvinced. I'm not giving you so thoughtful about politics, Sarah. I'm not going to try and persuade you because everyone can go back and listen to that episode and make up their own mind. listen thank you so much for all your messages it's worth saying that we have had loads and loads and loads on social media to me directly or to the team and please do keep sending them in we love getting your messages it shows that this is a real community we're building it's all about this connection with you that's the thing i cherish most thank you for all of those messages we do read every single one to tell us what you think about the ideas that we discussed on the to tell us what you think about the ideas that we discussed on the podcast or to suggest your own ideas or indeed your own future guest ideas, please do WhatsApp us.

56:52So 03301239480. Or you can email us on radical at bbc.co.uk, which I do think is the coolest email address in the history of this great institution. That is it for this episode. By the way, on political thinking this week, Nick is talking to the Labour MP Lucy Powell, who Keir Starmer sacked in his recent reshuffle and who is now running to be the Labour Party's deputy leader. We're taking on the vested interests in service of the many, but yes, some of the mistakes that we've made or some of the unforced errors have given a sense that we're not on the side of ordinary people. I'll speak to you next week.

57:34Goodbye.

57:43If journalism is the first draft of history, What happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.