Edward Enninful will receive the Isabella Blow award for fashion creator at 2014’s British Fashion Awards next week. Enninful is one of the most influential stylists in the industry, and is currently the fashion and style director of W magazine. Unapologetically glamorous, sexy and slick, his aesthetic has been applied to everyone from Joan Rivers to Naomi Campbell, who has been working with Enninful for 20 years. “Edward is not only one of my dearest friends and brother,” said the model “but he is also one of the most outstanding people I have ever had the pleasure of working with.”
It could be argued that this award is a long time coming. Enninful, who hails from Notting Hill, has done his time in fashion, and exerted his influence for three decades. He began working as a teenager. He was appointed Fashion Director of i-D magazine at the age of 18, and contributing editor to Italian Vogue seven years later. “His creative journey may have started in London,” said Natalie Massenet, chair of the British Fashion Council “but today his influence spans the entire globe intersecting the worlds of fashion, art and business”.
Enninful cemented his place at the heart of the fashion establishment as a contributing editor to American Vogue for six years from 2005, a position that gave him the ear of Anna Wintour, and a cameo in The September Issue. One of the few black stylists with this level of power, he has pushed minority models in his work. Campbell is something of a muse, and he worked closely with Italian Vogue on their black models only issue in 2008. Collaborating with Prada this year, he themed an installation in the Milan store around the Harlem renaissance.
Enninful’s charm is legendary. He has an ability to make BFFs with models from Campbell and Kate Moss to newer names like Karlie Kloss. Glamour is part of his everyday, as his Instagram – dotted with selfies with Ricardo Tisci and Pat McGrath, and outtakes from shoots with Cara Delevingne and Daria Werbowy – testifies. It’s not just show, either. Backstage at the Pucci show in Milan in September, Enninful was spotted with models Mariacarla Boscano on one arm and Isabeli Fontana on the other – a fashion moment if ever there was one. Enninful collecting his award will no doubt provide another.
