A new brand of cool All change as Nnadi conjures up a stylish British Vogue debut

A wardrobe overspilling with secondhand clothing and two fuzzy donkeys are just some of the more unexpected stars of Chioma Nnadi ’s debut British Vogue issue.

- Chloe Mac Donnell

While historically Vogue’s September issues are the biggest, attracting manifold new season advertising from luxury brands, Nnadi’s highly anticipated debut has resulted in the highest print revenue for an April issue. It will land with a hefty thud on subscribers’ doormats today while non-subscribers can buy it on Tuesday.

Last month her predecessor, Edward Enninful , selected 40 celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell, to pose for his final cover leaving Nnadi with a monumental legacy to navigate. For her first cover, trying to out do that would be impossible. So it seems sensibl e that British Vogue’s new head of editorial content has decided to set out her own barometer of cool with a single alt star.

Her cover features the British musician FKA Twigs sitting on top of a London black cab. Instead of being inside a slick studio, Twigs is shot outdoors, in Hackney, glaring rather than grinning at the camera. She wears a lemon coloured silk dress from Loewe (a coup for the Spanish brand headed by the Northern Irish designer Jonathan Anderson ) that features a giant silver pin pierced through its front. Her eyebrows are bleached. Her nails are talon-like. It is more effortless than tightly constructed.

“Fashion’s coming home” states the cover line – a nod to Londonborn Nnadi’s recent return to “home turf” to take up the role after two decades in New York.

Nnadi writes in her cover letter: “FKA T wigs is an artist who represents the ideal of the modern British eccentric . She is a shapeshifter who rejects conformity and takes real joy in clothes.”

Th at joy is a recurring theme theroughout the issue. Nnadi muses on spending hours as a teenager observing students outside Central Saint Martins.