When Edward Enninful announced his British Vogue departure earlier this year, one big question lingered: Who will his successor be? After a Fashion Week of rampant whispers, Chioma Nnadi announced today that she will be taking the magazine’s helm as head of editorial content — rather than editor-in-chief — starting on October 9. The appointment makes her the first Black woman to edit the publication, and in her Instagram post this morning, the London native said she’s “excited to be coming home.”
“Is there pressure? Yeah, there’s definitely pressure — it’s Vogue,” Nnadi told The Guardian, adding, “When I started out, there was one other Black person working in the building, and we both went to the same college. It wasn’t the same place it is now. Obviously matters of diversity and inclusion should always be on the agenda, but it feels like more of an open conversation now, and that feels to me like progress.”
In 2010, Nnadi started at Vogue as a fashion news writer, working her way up the masthead over the next decade and becoming editor of vogue.com in September 2020. “Chioma is beloved among her colleagues at Vogue, and is an editor and writer with an impeccable reputation — both here and in the fashion industry at large,” Anna Wintour said in a statement about her appointment. Enninful added that he is “thrilled” for her to be joining British Vogue.
Enninful’s exit from the publication in March came as a shock. His six-year run was a successful one marked by impactful covers — his May 2023 issue, for example, featured 19 disabled talents including model Aaron Rose Philip and activist Sinéad Burke — and recurring appearances by Rihanna and Beyoncé. As the publication’s first Black editor, he prioritized Black stories. “I remember in 2017 there was the popular notion that, oh, you know, ‘Black models don’t sell covers.’ I just knew the magazine needed to reflect the world that I was seeing, a world that was diverse in every sense,” he told the Cut last year. But whereas Enninful began his career in styling, Nnadi has always worked in editorial — it will be interesting to see how the magazine’s perspective shifts. Nnadi told The Guardian that British Vogue will have an emphasis on “digital storytelling” with “interactive” elements under her leadership.