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“Is This Man the Next Anna Wintour?”
Edward Enninful, the new editor in chief of British Vogue, is supremely confident in both his aesthetic beliefs and in his worldview. In short order, he has upended a century-old publication, transforming its masthead to be more reflective of the global audience it seeks to serve and crafting some of the most memorable, inspiring and diverse fashion covers of the past year. His work exudes authenticity. He’s made inclusiveness look organic and effortless. And he’s made fashion look glorious.
Yet Enninful, on this day in the middle of Paris Fashion Week, is flummoxed over a coat. Not just any coat, Enninful tells me, but his coat. It’s caramel-colored, a gift from Riccardo Tisci, the recently appointed creative director of Burberry. The color has thrown Enninful thoroughly off balance. He prefers the strict camouflage of black and white: Black suit. White shirt. Black-framed eyeglasses. It’s his uniform.
The Burberry coat is a classic and looks splendid on Enninful, but he clearly does not feel fine in it. He’s chatting up his colleagues, killing time before the start of the umpteenth show of the day, and he’s clutching the coat around his torso with his shoulders hunched forward as if he’s attempting to vanish within its tailored confines. Most people would not have such strong feelings about a simple piece of outerwear, but Enninful has spent his entire adult life considering the way clothes not only make us look but also the way they make us feel. And the coat makes Enninful feel exposed at a time when he is in the spotlight as never before.
Enninful began his fashion career as a model, an instrument for telling fashion stories. Later, when he became a stylist, he selected the costumes for such narratives. As a fashion director for glossy publications, he was able to write the visual story itself. Now that he’s in charge of British Vogue, he has the power to determine whose stories are told at all.
“I always feel that the strongest stories resonate with the times we live in. So my stories will always be a bit social — they’ll have an edge,” Enninful tells me. “This is a time when the world is so divisive. So many walls are up. It’s so important that British Vogue just says, you know, it’s okay. It’s okay to show beauty.” It’s okay to highlight differences. “Diversity does work,” he adds with emphasis. “It’s okay.”
Edward Enninful, British Vogue’s editor in chief, outside the Miu Miu show during Paris Fashion Week in October. For many in the industry, his appointment came as a welcome surprise. (Jonas Gustavsson/MCV Photo for The Washington Post )
Enninful, 46, took the helm of the highly regarded British glossy in August 2017, marking a litany of firsts. Enninful is the first man to run the 102-year-old fashion magazine and its first black editor in chief. But those would be mere footnotes in his biography were it not for the singular perspective he brings to his work. He wants to celebrate art and creativity, of course. But he wants to do so in a way that feels both real and aspirational. He has been unabashed and vocal about the historical lack of diversity in British Vogue’s pages and on its staff, and he’s determined to remedy that specifically and within the fashion industry at large. “There’s such a buzz about him. Normally that subsides after the first couple of issues. You know people get over it and move on and look for the next thing. But I think they just find it so pleasing, and it’s working in every direction,” says veteran fashion editor Grace Coddington. “I love what he’s doing. I really do. … For me that’s the way magazines should look.”
Enninful’s take on globalism and his expansive view of culture have gotten him noticed. In the suddenly vigorous guessing game of who will one day succeed Anna Wintour, fashion’s most famous and powerful editor, Enninful is now top of mind. The corporate lords of Condé Nast, Vogue’s owner, have been adamant in batting away speculation that Wintour, 69, is stepping down or even slowing down anytime soon. “She is integral to the future of our company’s transformation and has agreed to work with me indefinitely in her role as [Vogue magazine] editor-in-chief and artistic director of Conde Nast,” said chief executive Bob Sauerberg in a statement this summer. Still.
The idea of Enninful as the next Anna Wintour — that is, the next editor to wield outsize influence within the fashion industry and to become iconic outside of it — does not require a move to New York and an office at One World Trade Center. That perch would give him a bigger audience and greater financial might. But he already has extraordinary influence. If Wintour is the producer of studio-financed, big-tent blockbusters, Enninful is the critically acclaimed indie filmmaker whose work punches you in the gut. It is rich and dynamic. It may rile you up or soothe you. It will make you think.
People also tend to forget that Wintour was not an omnipotent devil-clad-in-Prada when she climbed to the top of the American Vogue masthead 30 years ago. She grew into that role, and the kind of power she amassed reflected a fashion world that was becoming more corporate, more enamored with celebrities, more hierarchal.
American Vogue remains an advertising behemoth, but it has not been immune to the economic travails of magazines. The next Anna Wintour will rise out of an industry that is now more diffuse and deflated. It is a borderless business, one in which celebrities are just as likely to rise from social media and Nollywood as network television and Hollywood. The role of kingmaker is less important when a young designer can sell direct-to-consumer, broker a lucrative sneaker deal or court the affections of myriad influencers.
Enninful is well positioned for this new landscape. He has an extraordinary, artful eye that makes his work stand out amid the visual chaos. He regularly engages with his more than 855,000 followers on Instagram. He has his eyes set on Africa as a place to expand his readership and is traveling to Ghana this fall to advocate for arts education there. He’s well connected within fashion’s establishment and in the world of entertainment. He knows Oprah, for heaven’s sake. And he’s laser-focused on arguably fashion’s most pressing social issue of the day: diversity.
British Vogue’s December 2017 cover featuring Adwoa Aboah, and the September 2018 cover featuring Rihanna. (Courtesy of Condé Nast Britain)
For his inaugural issue of British Vogue, Enninful chose Adwoa Aboah as the December 2017 cover star. The biracial, British-Ghanaian model and activist has a honey-colored complexion, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, the neck of a gazelle and a buzz cut. She is not especially long-limbed or lithe; she exudes solidity. On the cover, she wears a Marc Jacobs minidress in shades of pale pink and brown with a matching turban by the British milliner Stephen Jones. Her eyelids glitter with metallic turquoise shadow, and her lips shimmer in red. Aboah looks as though she has stepped from the 1970s by way of the 1940s. Her style borrows inspiration from the African diaspora while it revels in a slick disco glamour.
The image is a striking mix of references brought together by Enninful and photographed by Steven Meisel. It confidently rebuffs street style and informality. It is unapologetically high fashion — knowing, assured, refined. And yet it also says: All are welcome.
It was received with lusty applause in the British press, on social media and in the broader fashion world. The heightened enthusiasm was a reaction to the industry’s especially bleak record on inclusivity. When British Vogue’s outgoing editor, Alexandra Shulman, posed for a portrait with 54 members of her staff, the entire group was white. During Shulman’s 25-year tenure, there was a 12-year period when no black model appeared alone on the cover of the magazine. Until this year, no African American photographer had ever shot an American Vogue cover in its 125-year history. For more than 100 years, no black man or woman had ever served as editor in chief of any Condé Nast publication, until 2012 when Keija Minor became editor of Brides. A black woman has never won a Council of Fashion Designers of America award for menswear, womenswear or accessories. And in 2013, the international runways were so disproportionately white that Bethann Hardison, a former model agency owner and activist, with support from Iman and Naomi Campbell, published an online list of design houses whose actions they characterized as “racist” due to the lack of people of color in their fall shows.
“I always feel that the strongest stories resonate with the times we live in. So my stories will always be a bit social — they’ll have an edge.”
Edward Enninful
In an industry that draws inspiration from the global melting pot, few people of color have had authorship over the tales being unspooled, how beauty is defined, where status is conferred and the way in which femininity is depicted. One might argue that in 2018, Enninful’s emphasis on diversity — which also includes size, ethnicity and culture — is inevitable, obvious or easy. Indeed, many international editions of Vogue have bloomed: China, Mexico and Latin America, Arabia. But the truth is that no other editor at one of fashion’s leading legacy publications has treated multiculturalism as a fundamental operating principle.
Enninful impresses readers and reassures his peers by nimbly incorporating diversity without democratizing fashion; he has not diluted it, over-explained it or given it a stronger connection to the gritty streets. In Enninful’s hands, fashion remains as rarefied and fanciful as ever. Inclusive, he says, does not mean down-market. He offers the same tempting fantasy that has for generations attracted fabulists, social swans, mid-country dreamers and creative entrepreneurs. He simply acknowledged that black and brown kids have been dreaming, too. What did their starry-eyed visions look like?
“Usually when a new editor takes over, there’s a shakedown period when an editor finds their voice,” says Jonathan Newhouse, the trim, rather bookish-looking chairman of Condé Nast International who hired Enninful. “In Edward’s case, he produced a masterful, standout product from the beginning.”
Enninful’s May cover showcased nine up-and-coming models that included women of color, plus-size and hijab-wearing. They were dressed in shades of khaki, taupe, olive and brown and staring out at the viewer: confident, perhaps a bit defiant. A few critics cried reverse discrimination: ivory-complexioned redheads and blue-eyed blondes had gone missing. But again, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
Enninful with longtime friend Naomi Campbell after he became an officer of the Order of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace in October 2016. (Philip Toscano /WPA Pool/Getty Images)
June brought the model and actress Cara Delevingne. Ariana Grande was photographed for July. In August, Enninful styled Oprah Winfrey in an ivory Stella McCartney gown with a ruffled neckline matched with diamond and emerald medallion drop earrings. “For me, it’s a joy to be able to grab Oprah Winfrey and turn her into an empress dripping in the best gowns, dripping in diamonds,” Enninful says. A woman who had been photographed thousands of times was revealed anew.
By fall, it seemed that Enninful had created a ripple effect. Traditionally the most advertisement-packed issue of the year, the September fashion magazines have long been stubbornly homogenous. But this year, major magazines featured women of color on the cover. Beyoncé was the September star of American Vogue in a history-making photograph by Tyler Mitchell, who is African American. Other cover girls that month included models Slick Woods and Naomi Campbell, and actresses Tracee Ellis Ross, Lupita Nyong’o, Ruth Negga, Tiffany Haddish and Zendaya.
But Enninful led the way with Rihanna wearing a dramatic floral headdress, with the hand-drawn eyebrows of a silent movie siren and lips glimmering like lacquered blackberries. It marked the first time a black woman had ever appeared on a British Vogue September issue.
When Enninful was plotting that cover, he considered the season’s trends. And then he began to build a character, drawing from different historical periods, like the 1960s when daring women shaved off their eyebrows and penciled in exaggerated new ones. “I remember sending [Rihanna] this book that I had that dealt with African tribesmen,” he says. “It was just so left field, but that’s what makes a picture, when you take all those inspirations and influences and meld them together to create something that’s quite new to the eye. That’s when I feel I’ve really succeeded.”
Enninful’s work echoes with the influence of Diana Vreeland, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton. He is precise — free but intentional. His work is lush. He creates a visual shorthand for our fantasies and fears. He plays with the tension between high culture and low, between the privileged and disenfranchised, between the Western world and elsewhere. And the results are profoundly, otherworldly beautiful.
“He has a vision and a talent for telling a story,” Newhouse says of Enninful, whom he has known for 20 years. “Vogue is kind of a magic act. How do you describe the difference between a beautiful image and an ordinary image? It’s hard to put in words; you can’t put it in a business plan. But success depends on that.”
Enninful after the Fendi fashion show during Milan Fashion Week in September. (Jonas Gustavsson/MCV Photo for The Washington Post)
Enninful, whom colleagues call genial, even-tempered and just plain nice, has the sort of British accent that sounds, to American ears, unfailingly polite, yet delightfully conspiratorial.
He describes himself as European, African and British — in that order. “If I wasn’t all those things I don’t think I’d be able to do what I do or see the world the way I do,” Enninful says. “I see it from the perspective of ‘the other.’ Maybe that’s the strength of my work.”
Enninful was born in Ghana but raised in London’s Ladbroke Grove neighborhood, which sits alongside the more famous Notting Hill, with all of its cinematic glamour. When Enninful was growing up, Ladbroke Grove was populated by recent arrivals from Africa and the Caribbean, as well as those of Chinese descent, working-class whites and gays.
His mother was a seamstress, and his father was in the Ghanaian army and worked with the United Nations. “There was a lot of us. Six of us. And we were like a tribe and kind of didn’t need anybody else,” he recalls. “At home, I lived in Africa: the food, the clothes, the people who came to visit my parents. And then I’d go to school. I’d be in England. So there was always that diversity, [but] I didn’t even know what it was called. It’s always been part of me and my family and my upbringing.”
His family wanted him to become a lawyer; they expected something intellectual from him. But Enninful loved art and design. He and his mother would “sketch clothes together. Design things,” he says. “She had a lot of African wives [as clients], so every day the women would come into the house in their headscarves and all these colors. She’d have me zip them into these peplum dresses. I remember that so well, and then later she’d tell me how to make clothes.”
“We didn’t have much money and I was very much into fashion,” he says. “So I’d go to the secondhand market and buy the clothes for two pounds or whatever, back in the day, and re-create clothes for myself — clothes I could face the world in. Like your armor.”
Enninful was a tallish, lanky 16-year-old when he was discovered on the Underground on his way to school by Simon Foxton, a stylist who told him that he had a particular, distinguishing model’s “it,” which in this case was full lips, hooded eyes, flawless ebony skin and a bone structure of angles and planes that catch the light just so. His parents grudgingly let him model while he was in school.
British Vogue’s August 2018 cover featuring Oprah Winfrey. (Courtesy of Condé Nast Britain)
He realized that his artsy leanings could translate into a career thanks to people such as Foxton, whom he began assisting on shoots for i-D magazine, a London-based chronicler of youth culture. His parents gave him a month to work at i-D — after which he was expected to focus on school. When he was offered a full-time job as the magazine’s fashion director, he was 18. He left school — to his parents’ horror — and stayed at the magazine for two decades. (He eventually earned his degree from Goldsmiths, University of London.)
“I decided that my destiny really was to work in magazines and just to say something, not in the traditional way of, you know, being a lawyer or doctor, but just to say something through art and beauty,” he says. “I was very young. But I knew I had a voice.”
Enninful’s signature visual language is rooted in those formative years in the 1980s, drawing from what has been referred to as the Buffalo era. Codified by the late stylist Ray Petri, it was defined by rebelliousness and self-expression, a do-it-yourself attitude and a mash-up of cultures and ethnicities. Visually, it meant boys in skirts, girls cast as boys and multiracial kids. The Pan-African Boho style of Soul II Soul exemplified it, as did Culture Club’s Boy George bedecked in a treasure chest of flamboyant jewelry by the artist Judy Blame. The movement’s soundtrack was Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.”
Enninful’s work also bears the marks of ’90s American grunge with its emphasis on youthful realism and human imperfections. And one can see the hand of a teenage Enninful who rummaged through secondhand bins and witnessed the kaleidoscope of colors and patterns paraded through his childhood home by women whose roots were in Africa rather than Europe.
“[Enninful] has a vision and a talent for telling a story.”
Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International
Any rough edges are smoothed over by a high-minded, intellectual, respectful sense of fashion history. “I used to spend all my money on books I couldn’t afford just so I could learn about the people who had been before — all the great editors, the great designers. You have to study. [Styling] is not just going to a party and thinking you’re fabulous because you know how to put outfits together,” he says, likening styling more to acting or singing. “You have to study your craft.”
He turned fashion into social commentary as a contributing editor at Vogue Italia in the early 2000s. One of his most memorable fashion shoots boldly commented on the modern obsession with plastic surgery and our inability to accept human imperfection. The 2005 feature depicted bandaged models in various states of recuperation and reinvention. There were blackened and bruised eyes, bloody bits of gauze and magnificent designer frocks. It was a jarring juxtaposition of superficial confidence and deeply rooted insecurity, of self-creation and self-destruction. Enninful didn’t mock fashion’s doyennes; he exposed their truth.
In 2008, he was instrumental in shaping Vogue Italia’s groundbreaking Black Issue. A response to the fashion industry’s near whitewashing of the runways in New York, Milan and Paris, the project exclusively featured black models in all of its fashion spreads. It celebrated blackness while underscoring the ways in which it’s sidelined and categorized as “other.”
During the early 2000s, Enninful also was contributing to American Vogue. His first story, in 2005, was photographed in a laundromat. He followed up with one shot in a supermarket. “I wanted to bring this element of reality to American Vogue,” he says. He also learned how to balance art and commerce.
“I was very young going into Vogue, in my early 30s, and I learned that fashion is a business,” he says. “It’s not just telling all these fanciful stories.”
“I was doing all these Italian Vogue stories — 60 pages of head shots and a little scrap [of clothing], and you get to Anna and you have 12 outfits, and you have to create a story around these 12 outfits, and you find that it’s not just 12 outfits on a rack [at the magazine] but it’s units in a store.”
He moved on from American Vogue to become fashion director of W magazine. There, he once styled Rihanna as a post-apocalyptic warrior princess in a feather coat, armloads of tribal bracelets, skeleton medallions and a king’s ransom of jewels. In another story, model Linda Evangelista became a cyborg matron. Naomi Campbell was a chic Michelle Obama doppelganger.
“We shared the same set of values. We’re both European,” says W editor in chief Stefano Tonchi, who was born in Italy. “We lived the ’80s in the same place with the same ideas, the same set of images, the same music, the same clothes. We believe in diversity. We both live it as gay men to start with — and with the people we work with.”
Enninful spent about five years at W before stepping into his current position. He was not the obvious choice. He was not a woman; he was not white. And while he was well connected, he had not come from posh circumstances. But Enninful is well liked in an industry known for its prickly characters and unapproachable personalities. The announcement was met with surprise and delight.
“In this business, he’s somebody who is always positive, who’s always looking for solutions,” Tonchi says. “Most of the time, we spend our life pushing the stone up the hill. It’s nice to have someone helping you push it.”
British Vogue’s May 2018 cover. (Courtesy of Condé Nast Britain)
Enninful works from a modest office on the fifth floor of Vogue House, a 1958 dun-colored brick and stone building whose exterior is neither as elegant nor as stylish as its name would imply.
The interior is functional. Its open floor plan is filled with unremarkable workstations and old magazines. Odd bits of fashion paraphernalia are pushed into corners, including an Edward doll commissioned by Harvey Nichols that consists of a large bespectacled brown head atop a Giacometti-like body dressed in a black suit. It has been turned to face the wall. Enninful’s own office is a glass box dominated by a large desk, which he occasionally thumps for emphasis when talking, and stacks of fashion and art books.
We meet there in early September, after a long holiday and before he heads into the circus of international runway shows. He’s finishing up a morning staff meeting. There are some 40 people on his team, as well as regular contributors including filmmaker Steve McQueen, makeup artist Pat McGrath and Campbell. He’s hired stylist Julia Sarr-Jamois as a fashion editor at large, Alice Casely-Hayford as digital editor and Donna Wallace as fashion and accessories editor. They are all women of color. There are some dozen other editors, interns and assistants whose ethnicities read like roll call at the United Nations. And beginning this year, the magazine also has a new publisher after 26 years: Vanessa Kingori, who is of Afro-Caribbean descent.
Alexandra Shulman, who preceded Enninful, was the longest-tenured editor in chief in the magazine’s history, and she cast it as a champion of British designers and as a thoughtful read with a bohemian take on glamour. Indeed, Shulman’s own style was more muddy Wellingtons than high-gloss Manolos. When she was asked about the all-white group portrait of her staff, she told the Guardian newspaper that when nonwhite candidates applied to work for her, “they almost always did in fact get the job. But relatively few came up through the pipeline, for whatever reason, so that might account for why there weren’t more.” Enninful has begun reaching out to local schools, cultivating the talent pool in digital media and trying, with his very presence, to change the presumptions about who is welcome at Vogue House.
There was a perception that one had to be wealthy, connected or of a certain class to work at British Vogue. Indeed, both of Shulman’s parents once worked at the magazine. “So many people thought it wouldn’t be possible for them to work at Vogue. Now they’re not scared to pick up the phone, to pick up their CV because they know, ‘Oh my God, we can!’ They know that the possibility is there,” Enninful says. “All these magazines are putting these incredible women of color on the cover, and I hope it’s not just a fad. The only way we can really stop it from being a fad is to get the people working behind the scenes [more diverse].”
“And the way to get there is … getting the kids coming in here to see what’s possible, to see what can be done no matter what background you’re from. To see me, from my background,” he goes on. “If I’m here and I can do this, there is no reason why these kids can’t do it.”
Enninful delights in how his team is also diversifying the front row of fashion shows. The mythical front row. In the alchemy of fashion show seating charts, it’s a designation reserved for those who are gatekeepers, decision-makers, newsmakers. It is not a diverse place.
In 2013, Enninful remarked on this fact in especially blunt terms. As the fashion director of W magazine, he was in Paris for haute couture shows, a civilized realm of one-of-a-kind gowns and made-to-order daywear presented to admiring clients and industry professionals. Enninful arrived at one of the day’s shows to find his counterparts at other magazines all seated in the front row. Enninful had been seated in the second. He was not pleased. And he did not take his designated seat.
This wasn’t a matter of wanting an unobstructed sightline to the runway. It was not ego. And while it may have been a minor detail, it was not a petty one. So he tweeted: “If all my (white) counterparts are seated in the front row, why should I be expected to take 2nd row? racism? xoxo.”
It was the sort of remark that might have bubbled up privately over dinner but had never been stated publicly by someone of Enninful’s stature, in part because so few editors of his stature are black. “At that moment, I thought, ‘I’ve been here working all these years, for 20 years. Same as this editor and same as that editor.’ And there’s just a level of respect, really,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind every fashion director in second row. But if you’re putting me behind my contemporaries, then that means that is a problem that we need to address. My parents [said] when these things happen, stand up. So I stood up … for myself — and for the future, really.”
The matter was resolved privately to Enninful’s satisfaction. “I’d do it again,” he says. “I was taught certain things that were right and wrong. It’s that simple. And you know, at the time, I had to right a wrong.”
Enninful took the helm of British Vogue in August 2017. (Tom Hoops/for The Washington Post)
In Enninful’s quest to halt the inertia of tradition — to make a century-old product modern — there have been bumps along the way. He severed ties with longtime editors and criticized the former editor in chief’s failure to be inclusive by making plain his determination to be so. He hurt feelings and nicked egos. And there is concern among close readers that the magazine is publishing fewer long-form feature stories, a concern Enninful says is overblown. “British Vogue always had a history of great journalism, and I guess because I come from the visual [side] people assume that maybe I can’t read,” he says. “I studied English literature at university. I used to write all the things for i-D.” British Vogue, he says, has published substantive features on abortion in Northern Ireland and racial tension in London, among others, and will continue to do so.
Based on the numbers, the changes Enninful has made have been positively received. While overall circulation for British lifestyle glossies is down, British Vogue had a 1.1 percent uptick in circulation over last year. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, its circulation as of August 2018 was about 192,000. (In comparison, American Vogue’s circulation is about 1.2 million, while Vogue Italia has a circulation of about 114,000.)
“The reaction of readers and business partners, they feel [British Vogue] is relevant,” Newhouse says. “Our revenues are up by 8 percent, for a magazine that’s more than 100 years old. That’s not just a feeling; it’s transforming into real revenue and profit.”
British Vogue may never be an advertising colossus like its American counterpart. But Enninful has nonetheless become a leader by the example he has set. He’s turning a legacy brand into a next-generation fashion bible, not by reinventing the product but by reflecting its audience. To see Adwoa and then Vittoria, Halima, Adut, Faretta, Paloma, Radhika, Yoon, Fran and Selena on the cover of a fashion institution, one that regularly featured Princess Diana, is, well, something.
“I realize: Oh my God, this might be normal to me, but for Vogue, it’s a different thing. Seeing this on i-D or W is different from seeing it on the cover of British Vogue with its incredible history,” Enninful says. “It feels more real. It seems more substantial.”
Diversity is becoming part of the magazine’s legacy. It’s being written into its future history. Which matters because Vogue “stands for tradition,” as Enninful points out. “It’s not going to evaporate in a year or two.”
By: Robin Ghivan, The Washington Post Magazine
Thomas Moorehead – First African America Rolls Royce Dealership Owner in the World!
Thomas Moorehead thought he had it all planned out: graduate from college, earn a master’s and doctorate degree and establish a career in education. He went on to accomplish three out of the four, by receiving his undergraduate degree from Grambling State University, his graduate degree from the University of Michigan, and teaching graduate students at the School of Social Work. However, one thing that he didn’t anticipate was to leave his PhD program to pursue a career in the automotive industry. This decision went on to become a risk worth taking, as he became the world’s first African American Rolls Royce Dealer in 2014, and now, a few years later, the first African American Lamborghini and McLaren Dealer in the United States.
After Moorehead spent two years working under his fraternity brother James Bradley (of Bradley Automotive Group), who offered to teach him everything he knew about the automative industry, Moorehead received training in General Motors’ Minority Dealer Development program and became an owner of a few Isuzu, Buick, and BMW dealerships. By 2002, Moorehead established Sterling Motors. As president and CEO, he has helped the company become the largest and leading luxury car retailer in Delaware, Southern Pennsylvania and the Washington Metropolitan area.
“Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take a step forward. If you want to get in this business, you have to be willing to start at the bottom and work your way to the top…”
On top of being a successful businessman, Moorehead uses his platform to give back to the community and invest in the next generation. Along with his wife Joyce, Moorehead has provided over $400,000 in scholarships and emergency relief to high school students through their foundation for higher education, donated $100,000 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and contributed annually to Historically Black Colleges and Universities such as Grambling University, Bethune Cookman and Howard University.
“This is really what it’s all about, bringing other people up and giving something back.”
We couldn’t agree more! Thank you Mr. Moorehead for paying it forward and inspiring present and future African American entrepreneurs.
How Professionals of Color Say They Counter Bias at Work
By Christine Hauser
December 12, 2018
The New York Times
An African-American man in a suit was handed car keys by someone who thought he was a parking attendant. A black lawyer was patted down by guards at a courthouse, even though his white colleagues entered without a search. An African-American politician was told she did not look like a legislator.
Such encounters are the plight of many people of color in the United States, highlighted in October when flight attendants questioned the credentials of a black doctor while she was trying to treat a passenger in distress.
When the physician, Fatima Cody Stanford, later explained that she always carries her medical license to help disarm skeptics in situations like the one she had experienced, other professionals said they, too, had developed strategies to brace themselves for people who will doubt them.
Those in professional fields historically dominated by white people, including law, medicine and politics, say that the pressure to be prepared for these moments can feel particularly acute. It affects how they dress, what they carry in their wallets and how they behave.
In interviews, about a dozen people described their efforts to ward off bias at work because they supposedly do not, as Dr. Stanford put it, “look the part.”
‘People think I’m the help’
Ramon Ray, 46, a New Jersey entrepreneur, always dresses in a suit or a sweater. But he has still been asked by strangers to park a car, or been handed luggage or a coat to hang up. The bias, Mr. Ray said, was an assumption that he was “the help.”
He is also aware of the racist assumption that black men are menacing. It has prompted him to modify his behavior in ways that include keeping his distance from white female strangers, especially in isolated places like parking lots.
‘We have to normalize our presence in the field’
Black, Hispanic and Latino people make up a low proportion of medical school graduates in the United States. Several doctors described their experiences with implicit bias, or unconscious assumptions about race.
Dr. Ashley Denmark, 34, has overheard patients say they have not seen a doctor, even though she just examined them.
“I will go back, and round again, and say: ‘Hey, you didn’t remember seeing me? My notes are in the chart,’” Dr. Denmark said.
“It plays to a bigger problem that we have to normalize our presence in the field,” she added.
Dr. Mallory Whitley, 33, emphasizes to patients that she is their doctor. “I have been handed a tray before and asked if I am there to take their order,” she said. “If a nurse walks in — say, a white male — that is their doctor all of a sudden.”
She is also aware of how she delivers her orders. “I tend to not speak a certain way at work,” she said, “to make sure in other people’s eyes I am less menacing or less aggressive.”
It isn’t just black professionals. Hispanic and Latino people, Asian-Americans and people of other races have also reported encounters with bias.
Dr. Gricelda Gomez, 31, who is Latina, said she was helping herself to a supply of scrubs recently when an unfamiliar white nurse challenged her, assuming she was not a doctor and snatching her badge away after she did not provide her name.
“The default is never ‘you are the physician,’” Dr. Gomez said.
Such assumptions that she is less qualified than other professionals are rarely overt, she added. “This is the tricky thing about bias and talking about it,” she said. “It is not macroscopic anymore. It is all underlying.”
After the encounter with the nurse, she stopped wearing the badge that identifies her as a doctor on her hip and started displaying it more prominently.
“I pin it right in the middle of the V-neck,” she said.
Dr. Gomez, who also recalled being accused by a colleague of playing the “minority card” to get into Harvard Medical School, said she worked twice as hard to be perceived as competent as her white colleagues.
“The default is ‘Oh, she is Latina — she squeezed by because she is a minority,’” she said.
Avoiding casual Fridays
Anthony Denmark, 33, a lawyer in South Carolina, said he avoided wearing informal clothing on his firm’s casual Fridays.
Mr. Denmark, who is married to Dr. Denmark, has been patted down at courthouses where white colleagues walked in without a search, he said. In his car, he hangs work badges from the rearview mirror so he will always have identification within reach.
“At times I have had to show my license to my own clients before they believed that I was the attorney working on their case,” he said.
Kyle Strickland, an analyst at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said, “I want to be able to say people should not have to wear a suit to fit in.”
“But at the end of the day,” he added, “you are still a person of color in America, because we have not necessarily confronted the issue of race head-on.”
‘You don’t want to be the black legislator causing trouble’
In 2016, a black Ohio state legislator, Emilia Strong Sykes, 32, asked why she had been singled out for a search entering the Statehouse. “Well, you don’t look like a legislator,” she recalled the guard saying. After a pause, he said she looked “too young.”
Ms. Sykes braces for such encounters. She dresses conservatively, keeping her badge visible and unfailingly displaying her legislative pin. “I am very mindful of it,” she said. “You don’t want to be the black legislator causing trouble.”
She has also instructed her aide to greet visitors at her office entrance, so there is no question that the black woman they encounter sitting at the representative’s desk is, in fact, the legislator herself.
“There is something that triggers those thoughts that ‘she is not supposed to be there,’” Ms. Sykes said.
‘A stereotype in their mind’
Rahmah Abdulaleem, 43, a Muslim lawyer, said her evolving head scarf choices reflected her efforts to pre-empt bias. When she was starting her career in Georgia, she would wear a dark scarf, making the Islamic covering less jarring for clients or colleagues. As she became more established, she started to wear colors.
“It was for them to be comfortable,” she said. “Then I finally got to the point where: ‘This is not me. I am not happy.’”
But she still recalls clearly how a colleague told her, almost 20 years ago, that she needed to “tone it down so people will feel comfortable.”
“And that sticks with me,” Ms. Abdulaleem said. “I make sure that I am not the loud black woman. I want to be respected for what is coming out of my mouth, and not falling into a stereotype in their mind.”
Chicks Chat Career with… Alicya Sinclair
Alicya Sinclair. Award winning designer, founder and director of Sinclair London. A luxury fashion house designing bespoke wear for women. Their mission statement is; “We’re not here to change the world, we only dress the women who do.” Sinclair London are known for bringing Saville Row to women’s wardrobes. We at Those London Chicks are pleased as punch that Alicya has taken the time out of running her business to speak with us.
We at Those London Chicks LOVE a success story like yours. We like to inspire by telling the story of women like you. Had you always known you wanted to get into this field or had you other ambitions as a child?
I’ve been quite lucky that since the age of nine I’ve always knew I wanted to be in fashion. It all started with a friend from school, we started designing clothes and our first company was called AK Clothing. For a short while I wanted to be a gymnast, but that’s didn’t last long.
What has been your journey…university, collage?
I never wanted to go to university. At the time I was looking, most fashion universities focused more on design rather than the making and production of actual garments. I wanted to leave school at 16 and go and do an apprenticeship but my parents wanted me to stay on school. So, I did my A-Levels and then after college I did a pre-bespoke tailoring course at Newham College. From there I completed my training on Savile Row at the Savile Row Academy at Maurice Sedwells. Some of the best years in my career. After graduating – still knowing I wanted to own my own business, I thought it was wise to go and work at a fashion house to gain the experience. I needed get to know the industry, build contacts etc. So, I became a studio assistant and a cutter for a couture company, which at the time was based on Beauchamp place in Knightsbridge.
Saville Row, not synonymous with women’s wear generally. How did that become a way forward for you?
Your absolutely right! Savile Row has always been synonymous with men’s tailoring. In women’s wear there is more creativity with designing garments and I have always loved the aspect of bespoke and couture. At that time in 2013 there were very few female tailors on the row learning the craft, so it was daring for a female to launch a tailoring company, let alone become a tailor for a Savile Row house. So, me being the type of person I am, I said to my professor, “I could launch a women’s only tailoring house”. Which had never been done before. He thought I was bonkers but said it would be successful as it was something new and fresh!
“When I face fearful moments I do take some time to sit and think about it…”
Did you ever feel like giving up on your dream?
Oh many times! I would say especially when I came to a crossroads in my business and I was unsure of the next business move. It was quite challenging. I think when you try to do everything yourself and don’t share the journey with others it can be lonely when it comes to making sound business decisions. At that time, I knew it was time to start building a strong team. With individuals who had an extensive range of experience and who believed in my brand. My business mentor is a great calming influence. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience as he is a fashion investor himself. So he knows how the industry works. The ups and downs that the industry faces. So support systems like that really do keep you going when things become challenging.
In terms of your business you come across as fearless. Were you at all nervous starting Sinclair London, if so, how did you overcome the fear and do it anyway?
Haha! I would love to say I am fearless. I was 24 when I started the company and at that time I was very fearless. I wanted a business, I started it and didn’t look back. I think if I had started the company now 4/5 years on, I probably would be a little more couscous in the decisions I made. I think the trick is when you want to do something that can be life changing, is not to think about it too much and hold on to faith and leap! We are all humans and sometimes we can talk ourselves out of situations or career choices because we think about it too much. Then the fear factor kicks in.When I face fearful moments I do take some time to sit and think about it. I always only share with those who believe in what I do and ones that will give you sound advice as they can also be the ones who propel you forward into doing what you want!
Who or what are your inspirations and why?
In terms of the “Who” my mother is a huge inspiration. She is a very strong woman and I have seen her mentor other business women who now have very successful careers. Fashion houses – got to love Ralph and Russo. I met Tamara when they were based in Mortlake before moving to Mayfair and she is so humble and open. I absolutely love the brand they both have now built into a 9 figure amount.
Do you consider yourself primarily as a creative or a business woman?
Ohhh interesting question. When I started I would definitely say creative as I was always designing and making. I think now, as I expand the business and my team grows I have heavier responsibilities than I would before which require a more forceful approach in business. I now can’t sit at my desk and design as much or sit at my machine and sew. It’s my job now to make sure I am always driving in new business, new customers, sales are increasing, the brand is heading in the right direction. Our marketing message is on point, make sure salaries are paid – there is a lot to juggle. So I would say now…. a business women. The transition has been a real journey and I feel like I have grown and developed as an individual and I am sure I will continue to do so.
Tell us about how you work. Do you have a S/S and A/W or is it a purely bespoke service?
When I started I focused on bespoke only. Making one off pieces for clients. Two years later I launched into ready to wear with financial help from a good friend of mine which was very kind of him. This allowed me to create a full collection which I got into 4 stores. But like all businesses you have to be thinking ahead which I never did at the beginning. So I went from S/S and A/W to simply “named” collections which I could launch as and when I felt like it. Not necessarily because the industry dictated it. The fashion calendar is changing so many designers are launching when it suits them and when they feel is the right time. So many brands now launch new pieces every two weeks to keep up with the demand of the consumer.
What is the best piece of career advice you’ve been given that has struck a chord with you?
“Hire people that are more experienced than yourself! “ And I couldn’t agree more. I think my generation are so stuck on wanting success fast and having a youthful company which I totally understand. Training the next generation is the future; we bring fresh ideas, a new take on things. We are more fearless than the generation before. But nothing is as good as experience. I have been in the industry for 12 years and hiring a skilled team that have double the amount of years on you is great because there is always something that I can learn from them.
What are your short, mid and long-term goals for Sinclair London?
Short term goals are to make sure all the foundations are set. There are 2 roles in which I need to add and making sure we have the right systems in place. Expand our market share by expanding our product range.
Mid term goals 6 months plus – drive business forward by gaining more business through collaborations and partnerships. Which will allow us to invest more into our marketing.
Long term – Open our first flagship store in the UK and begin to expand overseas in the US and Europe first.
As a ‘boss’ what would you say is your management style and has it evolved?
One of my favorite books is “The Rockefeller Habits” by Verne Harnish. It’s a brilliant book and talks about the priorities and systems all businesses need to have to create a highly successful company. I have used this book as an inspiration to create a management style that works for me. So every Monday at 8:30am I have a management leadership conference call with my operations team which consists of 5 of us where we look at what the main goals are the that quarter and then we break it down month by month then week by week. Following I have a production meeting with my girls to talk about what clients we are making for and then financial calls with my account. I have designed an internal system where I post updates of what’s happening internally and externally in the business where the whole team can read in their leisure. I personally think it’s really important to keep your team engaged and inspired about what’s to come. So a few good systems we have in place and I am sure more will develop as time goes on.
Finally, what advice would you give to a young designer hoping to break into the industry?
I would say firstly build your support network and develop relationships. From mentors, entrepreneurs, investors and network as much as you can. Everywhere you go try and build those strong relationships as you never know when you will need to call upon them.
Find someone who you like the route they have taken in the industry and reach out to them for guidance – people are always willing to help you if you are genuine.
Develop a plan on the type of designer you want to be and why. Where you want to take the business. One thing I learnt from my mentor is developing a time plan which funny enough started out on a napkin which I still have today.
And most importantly – Listen. Be humble, don’t think you know it all. Take constructive criticism gracefully and learn about the industry. Self education is the best power tool. I think if you want to be successful in business you have to have a genuine interest in it. Learn what makes other brands successful, how they do it and why.
Thank you Alicya
Thank you Karen
Interviewed by Karen Bryson
Michael B Jordan – GQ ‘Man of the Year’
With the mega-success of Black Panther, Michael B. Jordan has suddenly become one of the world’s biggest leading men. Quite an achievement, sure, but the aspiring mogul is aiming way, way higher than mere movie star.
We take it for granted now that the Wakanda salute is as recognizable as a peace sign, but Hollywood executives were never sure Black Panther would do what it has. That’s because the industry had never seen anything like it before: a Marvel movie with a predominantly black cast, a story rooted in Afro-centric mythology, a film with a full-blown Kendrick Lamar album for a soundtrack. And Jordan was different, too, cast to play against type as Killmonger, a hotheaded Malcolm X–like antihero who had his hair in strategically emulatable twists.
By 14, Jordan had landed on The Wire, playing Wallace, a baby-faced drug dealer with cornrows and a heart so good that David Simon, the show’s creator, knew killing him off would be the most emotional gut punch the series could deliver in its first season.
“Everybody liked me too much,” Jordan recalls with a cocky smile. Nobody expected the death, and everyone was destroyed, Jordan remembers: the cast, the crew, the audience. Devastating, yes, but actually a fairly good indication of how he’s become a film star. He was so likable, he had to get a bullet in the chest. And in the roles he took next—Vince Howard on Friday Night Lights; Alex, a love interest with a heartbreaking backstory, on Parenthood; Oscar Grant, an innocent Oakland man gunned down in an act of police brutality, in Fruitvale Station; even a blind patient with a mysterious illness on a single episode of House—Jordan showed a talent for worming his way into hearts and building a little nest there so that viewers couldn’t bear to watch him die or suffer the tiniest bit. That remains a superpower of his, he suggests, “just making people feel.”
When he was 19, Jordan moved to Los Angeles. Eventually, the whole family did, too. Very early on, he resolved that he wouldn’t just accept the stereotypical roles on offer to young black actors. Before he got Fruitvale, it was a struggle: He was frequently offered auditions for parts that felt at best like variations on Wallace and at worst like stereotypical “thug” roles.
For the foreseeable future, he’ll have little time to enjoy it, though. The promotional tour for Creed II looms large on his calendar. It’s a movie he’s proud of and a project he’s worked hard for. Reprising his role as Adonis “Donnie” Johnson, Jordan endured a grueling training schedule to get his body to new levels of objectification-bait for the film. “I wanted to be bigger than I was in the first Creed. More shredded than I was in Black Panther. I just wanted to see evolution,” he explains. “When I look at Creed now, I’m like, ‘I look like a kid.’ I look like a 20-year-old punk.”
This story originally appeared in the December 2018/January 2019 issue with the title “Is This Your King?”
Note: Michael B. Jordan shares this years title of Men of the Year with fellow Actors Jonah Hill, named ‘Director of the Year, and the break out star of, the highly successful movie, “Crazy Rich Asians”, Henry Golding, who was named ‘Star of the Year’! GQ also introduced their first ‘Woman of the Year’, the incomprable Serena Williams. As GQ has previously done, they each have their own separate cover for this issue.
“Becoming Michelle Obama”
MICHELLE OBAMA – OUR FOREVER FIRST LADY
First Lady Michelle Obama graces the December 2018 Cover of Elle Magazine, as she takes off on a national tour to talk to America, and to promote her new book simply entitled, “Becoming Michelle Obama”. If the Robin Roberts interview was any indication, it seems like it will be an incredible read.
I’m still dreaming about that Michelle Obama/Kamala Harris run for 2020, but would settle for a Joe Biden/Michelle Obama ticket as well.
I just can’t get enough of our girl Chelle, from the south side of Chicago.
“NOW THAT’S FIRST LADY STYLE!”
Hump
Now That's Style! 