Some people are surprised to learn that, in 2014, the fashion industry is still severely lacking in diversity. Although we have seen great strides in terms of the traditional ideals of beauty and how different women are represented in media, things aren’t as fashion forward as they should be. In short, there are very few black models working the high fashion runways, and even fewer models of other ethnic backgrounds. This is not by chance or by accident, and people are starting to study the actual statistics concerning the issue of race on the runway, with somewhat alarming results.
Even more compelling than the numbers are the personal testimonies from the models themselves. Worse than being painfully aware that they are having a more difficult time booking shows than their counterparts is the blatant racism that many models of color have encountered.
Jourdan Dunn has been speaking out about these issues for quite some time. Last year she gave an interview to The Guardian and explained some of her tweets that went viral. There was this one, for example, which she sent out after being dropped from a show for her size: “I’m normally told I’m cancelled because I’m ‘coloured’ so being cancelled because of my boobs is a minor.” Dunn went on to say that she has an especially difficult time getting booked in Paris, and that many people in the industry still hold the belief that black models do not sell magazines, so there’s no point in giving them covers.
The stunning Chanel Iman (who we recently saw looking fierce alongside Dunn in a couple of Beyoncé’ videos and in her Sports Illustrated spread) shares similarly troubling stories: “A few times I got excused by designers who told me ‘we already found one black girl. We don’t need you anymore.'” And more recently, rising star Anais Mali also spoke out and co-signed Dunn’s statements about Paris being a huge culprit in this issue:
None of the modeling agencies in Paris wanted to take me. I just kept hearing, ‘This is Paris; black girls don’t work here.’ France is very racist, you don’t see a lot of powerful black people in France—it’s starting but it’s slow-moving… In Milan, you don’t really see black girls on the runway; it’s sad. You hear things like, ‘We already have Jourdan [Dunn], one black girl is enough.’ I’m getting good work, I’m happy, but I want to see more black girls.
So do we! And as more models speak out about these troubling trends — this seeming acceptance of high fashion racism — we hope that the visibility of models of color increases greatly. After all, equality is always in fashion.
