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16th Jul 2020

British Vogue editor Edward Enninful racially profiled while entering office

Jade Hayden

“The first thing that some people will judge you on is the colour of your skin.”

British Vogue editor Edward Enninful was racially profiled while entering his workplace this week.

Enninful, who has been editor-in-chief of the magazine since 2017, said that while entering his office yesterday he was instructed by a security guard to “use the loading bay.”

He said that Condé Nast, who own British Vogue, dismissed the security guard, but that “change needs to happen now.”

“Today I was racially profiled by a security guard whilst entering my work place,” he wrote on Instagram.

“As I entered, I was instructed to use the loading bay. Just because our timelines and weekends are returning to normal, we cannot let the world return to how it was.”

“It just goes to show that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved in the course of your life: the first thing that some people will judge you on is the colour of your skin.”

Enninful took over the role of editor-in-chief on British Vogue three years ago. In 2016, he was awarded an OBE for his contribution to diversity in the fashion industry, an achievement he promised to take with him in his new role.

“My Vogue is about being inclusive,” he said at the time.

“It is about diversity – showing different women, different body shapes, different races, different classes [and] tackling gender.”

Enninful recently became the first person of colour to be awarded 2020’s PPA Consumer Editor of the Year.

“It would be disingenuous of me not to point out that I am the first black person to ever win this award – the first black person in 40 years,” he wrote on Instagram after receiving the award.

“Diversity is making its way into our commissioning and on to our pages. But what about inside our workplaces?”