Port Gaverne in North Cornwall by Nick Knight for British Vogue August 2020 issue.

Photographer Nick Knight pays high compliments to British Vogue’s EIC Edward Enninful, explaining the mutual synergy that gave life to the first project of its kind for British Vogue’s August 2020 issue: the commissioning of 14 special covers that tapped Britain’s greatest artists and photographers from Tim Walker to Nadine Ijewere, David Hockney, Lubaina Himid and ‘yes’ Nick Knight. Expand the list to include Mert Alas, David Sims, Marcus Piggott, Jamie Hawkesworth, Juergen Teller, Alasdair McLellan, Martin Parr, David Bailey and Craig McDean.

In a followup to the magazine’s recent online auction in collaboration with Sharon Wolter Ferguson’s HEWI (Hardly Ever Wore It), this new project also makes British Vogue an engine of change and support for people in need. “The original prints of each depiction of nature – be it an everyday skyline or the memory of a place much missed – will be auctioned off in aid of Covid-19 relief charities later this year.”

British Vogue’s August Issue, Reset, and the 20-page story ‘All Across the Land’, written by British naturalist Helen Macdonald, supports a mission not only of showcasing the beautiful, but also highlighting that our planet is the living, breathing core of our human existence. As such, Edward Enninful’s 2020 mission is to RESET our relationship to nature.

Knight’s Reset cover was not the first publicity release, but it explains some highly-relevant backstory about the project. The debut cover for the project launch belongs to David Hockney.

Nick Knight on the August 2020 British Vogue Backstory

British Vogue October 1945 cover devoted to ‘Peace and Reconstruction’.

In February, 2020 British Vogue published a picture of the cover of Vogue at the end of the Second World War, just of clouds.

The article titled “How British Vogue’s Wartime Editor Audrey Withers Changed Fashion – And Feminism – Forever’ focused on publication of Julie Summers’ critically acclaimed biography of British Vogue editor Audrey Withers.

This cover for the October 1945 issue of British Vogue was devoted to ‘Peace and Reconstruction’.

Seeing this British Vogue cover prompting Knight to ask on social media “why don’t Vogue do covers like that anymore?” Enninful responded: “let’s do it!”, writes the famed British fashion photographer and founder and director of SHOWstudio.com “That’s a brilliant editor ! Hats off to @edward_enninful , incredibly impressed with him,” Knight concluded.

Edward Enninful’s Stylish Intellectual Tapestry

Edward Enninful is a creative after my own heart, and I share Knight’s enthusiasm. Edward understands so deeply how a magazine can reinvent itself with an editorial vision that zigzags through creative, emotional and psychological content, constantly building an intellectual house that resonates.

Unlike some prominent fashion industry names who make light of fashion as a subject not to be taken too seriously (I adore one of them, so I’ll not use her name), Enninful is far more grounded in understanding fashion’s place in creating global cultural identities and tribes.

For better or for worse, fashion also functions in the formation of individual self-identity. It’s here that the pea soup thickens, much like an English fog.

Perhaps because of his own identity as a gay black man intimately familiar with colonial history and the African continent, Edward Enninful is perfectly positioned to understand the pressures and potentials of this moment in global human societies, government policy, and the evolution of so-called western civilization in a social media world.

Selfishly, I would love Edward to commission a series of covers — even digital only — about America in this moment. With all due respect to Anna Wintour, such a creative project cannot birth itself from a human being who is reputed to hate you forever if you speak to her in an elevator.

No — I would love to see this moment in the American experience through the eyes of Edward Enninful, who will not draw tight boundaries around the question of what is permitted. Rather, he knows that clarity often emerges from chaos and the pain America is experiencing at this moment desires the input of more objective minds. If redemption is even possible, the process of finding our value in Trumpian chaos will not be pretty, nor the passage a smooth one.

Still — talk of reinvention is on the lips of many Americans.

Enough inner reflection on this day July 4 when America celebrates its independence from Britain. On with the covers. — but let me say that I am glad we’re remained good friends — Britain and the USA. Feel free to deliver us a kick in our sanctimonious American butts and a message to Chin Up, Edward.

We meant well. Millions of us meant well. I am one of those humbled people ( although never out of control about American greatness). Just to stir the pot further — because I am so irrepressible — let me say, Edward, that you are our North star now. So in some kind of post-colonial, Yankee-angst inversion, let’s all get crackin’, with you in the lead, Edward. Far worse things could happen to our planet, so carry on.

Note that I didn’t call on Prada or Burberry or Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger. I called on you, Edward Enninful. And for all the too myopic or self-absorbed in their own visiosn fashionistas, let’s not worry about them. The haters are plenty, but just carry on, Edward. The torch hasn’t been passed to you in any official capacity, so I will give it to you not so privately.

The Americans on UA flight 93 believed, as they stormed the cockpit on Sept, 11, 2001, on a flight headed to take out the capitol in DC, that they had a vision of a better world. They refused to cower or compromise, and so they took that jetliner down — with everyone perishing in the process. I don’t know; perhaps burning everything to the ground is required.

What I do know it that we have a world that is really hurting and fashion has a place in curing it for our young people. As American Todd Beamer said before leading a group of Americans on UA flight 93 — the fourth plane headed to Washington DC on Sept. 11, 2001 — to crash the cockpit with terrorists in control, plunging the airliner and everyone on it to it’s death “let’s roll.” That’s my mindset on this July 4th, 2020 in America, Edward, “Let’s roll”. Count me in. ~ Anne

David Hockney

Artist David Hockney shares a personal view of East Yorkshire. “This oil painting is of late spring in the village of Kilham,” he says, of the 2006 painting. “Now, I am in Normandy, a paradise of a place for me. I have made 120 iPad paintings of our large garden – it is like having drawing and painting equipment always at the ready, and there is no cleaning up needed. It’s quite fantastic. The other night I got up to pee at about 4am and saw the largest and brightest full moon in a long time. I was thrilled by it and recorded it on the iPad. Photography is useless for this, it pushes everything away, including the moon.”

Helen Macdonald understands this awakening, writing: “The familiar patterns of our lives have been broken, the future is unknownable, and all of us are searching for signs and wonders, for reassurance, for hope, for things that make sense to us when everything seems desolate. We are beginning to view nature through new eyes.”

AOC shares the remainder of the British Vogue August 2020 Reset covers, and we will revisit them individually.