In Paris, Supermodels And Surprise Guests Gathered To Toast Edward Enninful’s Memoir
In the fifth season of Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw and her sexy sidekick Samantha Jones decide to take a train from New York City to San Francisco to kick off Bradshaw’s first book tour. The duo imagined themselves modern day Marlene Dietrichs taking a glamorous, old-fashioned journey. But what they got was stinky, cramped sleeping quarters with bad lighting, and a bar cart serving cheap champagne to poorly-dressed middle aged men going to a bachelor party. Carrie gets to her book signing and the place is packed, though she realises the crowd isn’t there for her. No, they were there to meet Mr Winkle, an author who goes on after her and happens to have four legs and a tail. “You’re opening… for a dog?” Samantha exclaims. The theme: Book tours aren’t what they used to be.
Unless, that is, you’re Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue, whose memoir A Visible Man was published this autumn. The book details Edward’s journey from a childhood surrounded by government unrest in his native Ghana to his remarkable, unlikely, and inspiring triumph as a fashion editor in London. Fun fact: I met Edward in 2001, when I was studying at university and he let me crash at his flat when my spring term finished. I said I’d stay a few nights but ended up spending the whole summer! Twenty-one years ago, I knew what many other people knew then too: Edward had a vision, and he was destined for stardom. It was wonderful to read his book and hear him recount many of the moments I also hold dear from those days. Two words: “Shadow Lounge.” If you know, you know.
Unlike Carrie Bradshaw’s book, A Visible Man has been celebrated in every city of the international fashion shows with starry crowds of well wishers and admirers. (Edward managed to even sneak in a pit stop in Los Angeles along the way.) When the collections wrapped in Paris this week, I joined co-hosts Lauren Santo Domingo and Cynthia Erivo for a finale party for Edward that would have made Samantha Jones squeal with delight. Which I say with all due respect to Gigi Hadid and Diane von Furstenberg, and Donatella Versace, who hosted book parties for Edward in New York and Milan, respectively.
Santo Domingo, or LSD as she’s known in the social media world, comfortably wears two hats: Founder of Moda Operandi, the chic online emporium, and transatlantic hostess extraordinaire. Her homes in New York and Paris routinely play host to chic happenings for the fashion swirl, and this party was predictably fabulous. (In 2019, she and I hosted Edward’s birthday here too.) This year, LSD relied on one of Edward’s favourite Paris-based restaurants, Caviar Kaspia, to cater an intimate and informal meal around her François Catroux-designed Paris house.
The first guest to arrive was Paris Jackson, and the second was her aunt Janet, who arrived on the arm of Christian Louboutin. Soon after, Edward’s friend and the night’s third co-host Erivo arrived fresh from the London set of Wicked, the hit Broadway musical that is being turned into a film. (She plays Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West, opposite Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda the Good Witch. I can’t wait for this.) From then on, every time the front door opened another well-heeled pal waltzed in, including Doja Cat, François-Henri Pinault, Karlie Kloss, Emily Ratajkowski, Alexa Chung, Jared Leto, Pat McGrath, Ashley Graham, Giovanna Battaglia, Grace Coddington, Adut Akech, Pierpaolo Piccoli, Bianca Brandolini, and Adwoa Aboah, who was famously on the cover of Edward’s first issue of British Vogue as editor-in-chief. Riccardo Tisci and Naomi Campbell, as they are wont to do, arrived later in the evening. LSD had a feeling that might happen, so she kept some caviar-filled baked potatoes warm and in the oven for them.
This fashion month was surreal in ways we’re still trying to grapple with. The collections began in New York with an optimism that the fashion world has missed for the past two and a half years. We switched from glee to mourning when the Queen passed on 8 September, forcing the British Fashion Council to re-work many of its plans around London Fashion Week. In Milan, the convergence of celebrity and fashion returned to centre stage (look up #CiaoKim if you need to jog your memory), which was a theme that played out in a complex way in Paris that many of us are still trying to work out. A common thread of joy this season was excitement for Edward and this book. Irina Shayk arrived at the end of our party in Riccardo’s entourage, and when she finally made her way to Edward she teased him: “How many parties have you had for this book?” We all laughed, because the answer is that he had a lot more parties than Carrie Bradshaw. And we’re sad that this was the last one. Fashion weeks have several purposes: To debut new clothes, introduce new models and new designers, and to show the world the power of style. But one of my favourite things to do during fashion month is to celebrate our friends, and it was an honour doing that for Edward.