Is Diversity in Fashion a Myth?

Following Leomie Anderson's rant on ill-prepared make-up artists at fashion week and the mournful departure of Ajak Deng from the industry, talks of diversity in fashion show no signs of gaining any weight in importance. It seems that talks of diversity in fashion remain on the lips of the 'minority' directly affected or in a some desolate and insignificant corner column of magazine when there is nothing 'better' to report on.

Image on the left from: instagram.com/makubahkurome

Image below from: Twitter

The industry has been booming with new exciting designers, a new age of super models, social media and technological advances and significamt growth and development regarding sustainability in fashion. It seems an already massive and vastly lucrative industry that provided over 26.5 million people in 2000 with jobs is still expanding. The industry has seen incredible growth since 2000 but blacks, orientals, latinos and moguliods (I do hope i'm not offending anyone) still hold mainly lower ranking careers that show little or no promise of advancement.

In all sub-careers in fashion, discrimination and a lack of diversity presents itself. On the runway, most of the models struting down it are caucasian. Models of colour are a rare sight. So rare that the few that show up on the catwalk spark social media frenzies, everyone gets excited to see some 'melanin magic' or #asianpersuasion in our favourite shows. It's a little distrubing, such a reaction should not exist. Nobody gets excited to see Kendall Jenner on billboards because she is a white model killing it, people get excited because she is Kendall Jenner killing it.

It seems like discrimination is ingrained in the system. Everything from makeup artists and hair stylists coming to a show unprepared for the various skin tones and hair textures to the lack of people of colour in power positions at major or even any fashion firm not based in Africa or not centered around black issues.

Appropriation of culture shows that the industry is indifferent or maybe unaware of its insensitivity towards the matters of people of colour. Anyone remember the Gigi Hadid Vogue Italia cover where she sported the candy coloured afros, tanned skin and some noticeably larger set of lips? Or that time Miranda Kerr covered Vogue in Japanese hairstyles and 'trendy' Japanese traditional clothing? What about that time when Karlie Kloss wore a Native American headdress and Tarzan-esque lingerie for a Victoria Secret fashion show? Apologies have been made for these mistakes but one wonders how these mistakes were even made in the first palce. Where there no black models availiable or could the Miranda Kerr idea not be saved for a celebrity of Asian decent? And was there even a need for the Native American headdress to compliment the jungle piece Karlie wore? It all seems like insults made out of ignorance. Can an entire industry even be thar ignorant or is this just blatant disrespect?

It is time for a change. Appropriation of culture and lack of diversity in fashion ARE issues that need to be dealt with.

Black models do matter.