This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. Our guest Edward N. Ennunful is Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue

and European Editorial Director for Condé Nast. In 2020, Time Magazine called him the most

powerful black man in fashion. One of his missions has been making the fashion industry more

inclusive. He's the author of a new memoir called A Visible Man. N. Ennunful spoke with our guest

interviewer, Tanya Mosley, host of the podcast Truth Be Told. Here's Tanya. Black women don't sell

magazines. That's what Edward Ennunful heard from the very beginning of his career in the fashion

industry and for him that just sounded absurd. Growing up in Ghana in the UK, Ennunful watched his

mother, a dressmaker, transform women's lives and he saw how women of color not only influenced

street and high fashion, but served as taste makers, influencing the very pages of the magazines they

were shunned from. This insight is one of the driving forces behind Ennunful's three decades-long

career as a stylist, art director and editor for some of the most popular fashion magazines and

brands in the world. For the last five years, Ennunful has served as Editor-in-Chief of British

folk holding the distinction as the first male, black and gay editor in the magazine's 106-year

history. He's written about his life and career and a new memoir titled A Visible Man.

Edward Ennunful, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Pleasure to have you. So you first got into the fashion industry as a model. 16 years old,

discovered on a train, and from the very start, you felt other. You could see clearly as you write

in this book that you were entering what you called a racist, classist industry. How did that show

up for you in those beginning days as a model? I mean, you know, I remember we built over from Ghana

to London. In Ghana, you know, everybody was black. It was a black country and I came to England

and realized that I was a minority, which in itself was quite strange. So anyway, one day I'm on

the train and I was 16 years old and there was a gentleman staring at me on the train and,

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