“I’ve Decided To Give Myself Permission To Focus On My Joy”: How Beyoncé Tackled 2020

EDWARD ENNINFULL

IT WAS always going to be special. How could it not be? And yet I’m not sure I could have predicted how having Beyoncé – an icon of music, fashion and culture for more than 20 years – on Vogue’s cover this month would finally come to pass.

As I logged on to my laptop one evening in early autumn to oversee the 12-hour shoot, more than 3,000 miles away in New York, I felt the thrill of the new. It was the culmination of months of preparation.

“It takes enormous patience to rock with me,” Beyoncé Knowles-Carter wryly notes in our interview on the following pages, in a rare and rounded glimpse into her world. But let me tell you this: rocking with Beyoncé is electric.

Our creative discussions began during the early days of lockdown, and an idea quickly took shape. Social justice, a pandemic…