A Visible Man
A Memoir
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4.6 • 14 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From one of our culture's most important changemakers, a memoir of breaking barriers.
When Edward Enninful became the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue, few in the world of fashion wanted to confront how it failed to represent the world we live in. But Edward, a champion of inclusion throughout his life, rapidly changed that.
Now, whether it’s putting first responders, octogenarians or civil rights activists on the cover of Vogue, or championing designers and photographers of colour, Edward Enninful has cemented his status as one of his world’s most important changemakers.
A Visible Man traces an astonishing journey into one of the world’s most exclusive industries. Edward candidly shares how as a Black, gay, working-class refugee, he found in fashion not only a home, but the freedom to share with people the world as he saw it. Written with style, grace, and heart, A Visible Man shines a spotlight on the career of one of the greatest creative minds of our times. It is the story of a visionary who changed not only an industry, but how we understand beauty.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Enninful, British Vogue's editor-in-chief, makes a dazzling debut with this chronicle of his remarkable path to becoming a world-renowned style visionary. Born in Ghana in 1972, Enninful fell in love with fashion early on, devouring his dressmaker mother's sketchbooks and reveling in "glamour and women and their style." After his family escaped to London following a political coup in 1981, Enninful weathered Britain's racist, repressive attitudes and harsh working-class life by finding solace in fashion. In nimble prose that moves at a brisk clip, he recounts his dizzying rise from model to stylist, to writer, and at age 18, fashion director of i-D magazine, where he brought in diverse models, making it his mission to shake up an outdated fashion industry in which, he writes, the conversation of diversity never made it outside "the occasional special issue." Determined to vanquish "the stupid, tired adage that Black girls on covers don't sell magazines," Enninful dreamed up Vogue Italia's "Black Issue" in 2008 before going on to become British Vogue's first Black editor-in-chief in 2017. Readers will relish Enninful's glamorous ascent as much as they will his willingness to detail the "ceaseless struggle"—"rejections, aggressions both macro- and micro-, overnight flights"—it took to build a "bolder, more inclusive" industry. Fashion mavens and forward thinkers alike will be mesmerized.
