Fashion history will take note when, on June 22, 2024, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London opens the first-ever exhibition dedicated to the life and career of a model. Simply titled Naomi, the show will chart Naomi Campbell’s imprint on the fashion industry and its cultural progress over the last three-and-a-half decades in stories told through imagery and design inseparably linked to the 53-year-old British supermodel.
As one of her closest friends since the early 1990s, Edward Enninful has accompanied her on the ride. Together, they have broken glass ceilings and continuously pushed for progress in an industry that looked a lot different prior to their arrival. Their shared legacy is best illustrated in the covers they’ve shot together, from their work for i-D Magazine in the 1990s to the seismic Black Issue they created for Italian Vogue in 1998, and the March 2022 cover of British Vogue featuring Campbell and her firstborn daughter. When Enninful joined British Vogue as editor-in-chief in August 2017 - a position he left in February this year following a revolutionary seven-year tenure - he made Campbell a contributing editor. She graced his final cover alongside 39 fellow industry frontrunners. As she stars on the cover of Australian Vogue, the super-editor speaks to the supermodel about her career and their interwoven milestones. Anders Christian Madsen
EDWARD ENNINFUL: “Omi, how does it feel to be on the cover of Australian Vogue?”
“My first Australian cover was with Marion Hume [in 1997], whose job got compromised over it. So, imagine how far Australian has come. I’ve known and worked with Christine Centenera for a number of years, and she knows how hard I had to fight to have Aboriginal models on my Australian TV show, . In that sense, I feel like the Diversity Coalition - and the work that Bethann Hardison, I man and I continue to do - has had some effect, because there have definitely been changes in the industry.”
