“It still riles me when you see ‘tribal trends,’” she says. Not only are such demonstrations ignorant of diversity but they are inaccurate of cosmopolitan millennials’ friendship circles.įor Mdudu, herself a black woman, who has built a successful fashion career despite having no black role models to look up to in the industry, she feels particularly angry at how designers steal cultural symbols to use on white models. Must have almond eyes, must not have slitty eyes to avoid looking untrustworthy.” It goes to show that what goes on in many industry insiders’ private email inboxes is often even worse than what we see on the runways.įurlong also highlighted just how out of touch many brands are with their target demographic, citing casting memos that aimed to reach “trendy, young, urbanites” but which resulted in lineups consisting of purely white models. One particularly uncomfortable casting description, he revealed, read: “Should be Chinese.
Jody Furlong, Founder of The Eye Casting Naomi Mdudu, Editor of The Lifestyle Edit and Anna-Mari Almila, Research Fellow in Sociology of Fashion at London College of Fashion, shared their thoughts in a panel discussion.įurlong, who has helped cast models for fashion campaigns including Adidas, Uniqlo and Hunter, has heard countless excuses for not including models of color in runway lineups and ad campaigns.
#White runway series
In the UK, which has seen a steep rise in the number of hate crimes since the decision to leave the EU and where hundreds of people joined in solidarity with #blacklivesmatter in a march through London, a recent discussion on the matter came by way of The Fashion Debates, a new series of events for industry professionals to discuss the crucial issues around the ethics of our sector.
Sometimes we do that on the runway and sometimes when we come together as an industry and take up important causes.” This moved Maxwell Osborne, one half of the Public School design duo, to pen his open letter, as featured in W Magazine, to call on the fashion industry to stand with #blacklivesmatter, expressing his opinion that, “Fashion is always at its best when it looks outside of itself for inspiration and holds up a mirror to society. Our tendency to pigeonhole black models into certain niches – such as “urban” or “exotic” – has left them underrepresented and underpaid in comparison to their white counterparts. From all-white catwalks, to makeup artists not coming prepared to work with black models, to cultural symbols being ripped off and sold to the masses, we’re more aware than ever of how our complacent behavior offends and excludes others. With the internet and particularly social media giving a voice to experts and amateurs alike, accusations of racism have been heating up in recent years. In fact, the more you talk to people in our profession about this, the more you realize that these statements are tired, unimaginative and backwards things this industry supposedly detests.
“We’ve already got a black girl,” “It’s not our creative vision,” “Our customer isn’t ready yet.” These are the excuses we hear time and time again to explain the lack of models of color in the fashion industry.
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