VANESSA KINGORI

 

What do you do, what are you excited for this year, and what projects are you working on?  

I'm Chief Business Officer of Conde Nast Britain which means overseeing the health and business performance of our ten magazine brands, which includes profit, brand, positioning, marketing, PR, etc.  

What is an opportunity you are grateful for in your career?  

An opportunity I'm grateful for in my career is the vantage point of being able to try to create my own lanes, make personalised roles and never follow the 'given' path.  

Is there anyone who acted as a mentor to you along the way?  

My grandmother and mother have been the biggest mentors in my career as well as in my life. As I have been the first of my kind in my key leadership roles (first woman, first person of colour, youngest person, first working class, etc.), there has not been a prescribed way or a single person whose path I could easily follow. Therefore, I've looked beyond industry and more towards the types of characteristics and traits I want to emulate and bring to the role and this has held me in good stead.  

How do you approach getting dressed every day? 

When getting dressed every day, I focus on how clothes make me feel. If I have a particularly challenging day, I wear clothes that make me feel empowered. If I have a particularly long and gruelling day, I'll wear clothes that are adaptable, comfortable and can transition perhaps from a breakfast meeting through to a day in the office through to an evening out. More than anything, I dress for myself and the way clothes make me feel rather than by trend or based on how clothes might be perceived by others.  

What are you wearing here and what made you choose it?  

I gravitated towards the look because of the colour which felt optimistic and powerful and the dimension and texture. I adore things which have more than one dimension.  

Vanessa Kingori wears the Aster Dress from our Pre-Fall 2023 collection.