New York Fashion Week: Diversity Talks But White Faces Walk
Posted by Michelle Moquin on February 17th, 2014
Good morning!
Beverly Johnson calls out lack of diversity in fashion
By Maghan McDowell
Beverly Johnson leads a discussion on diversity in the fashion industry at Macy’s annual Black History Month event in San Francisco. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle
Despite a decade-spanning career in the fashion industry, with cover appearances on more than 500 magazines, Beverly Johnson actually attended her first fashion show three years ago. Disappointed, she’s skipped the biannual fashion shows at New York Fashion Week, and she’s not attending any shows this month.
Fellow former model Bethann Hardison, who was a fixture on runways in the ’70s and ’80s, now says, “I find Fashion Week boring.”
The clothes aren’t the problem. It’s who is – or isn’t – wearing them.
“There are no models of color on the runway – OK, maybe there’s one,” Johnson said during her Feb. 5 stop in San Francisco for Macy’s annual Black History Month event, which focused on the contributions of African American style.
“The lack of acknowledgement is disrespectful,” Johnson said, “particularly when we, as African Americans, participate in the bottom line of these designers and the entire industry.” At the event, Johnson, along with Daily Beast contributing editor Allison Samuels and host Renel Brooks-Moon, discussed the impact of icons ranging from Diana Ross to Beyoncé and Rihanna.
Johnson said that the fashion industry is less diverse now than in 1974, when she became the first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue. These days, people concerned about diversity “have even gone to counting the number of girls of color on the runway.”
She’s referring to those like Hardison, a self-described fashion advocate who is known for name-checking specific designers with all-white runways. Hardison started a series of panel discussions on the increasing lack of runway diversity in 2007, and although it helped to initiate a conversation in the industry (See: Vogue, July 2008), “things got quiet” again, Hardison says. The day before Johnson’s visit to Macy’s, Hardison, on behalf of the Diversity Coalition (a collection of industry insiders), sent an update to the governing bodies of the major international fashion weeks.
The numbers suggest that, despite a Caucasian prevalence on runways – about 80 percent, according to the coalition – there are some notable exceptions: Examples include Puerto Rico’s Joan Smalls (No. 1 on www.models.com), China’s Liu Wen (No. 3), England’s Jourdan Dunn and France’s Anais Mali.
At Calvin Klein, for example, the coalition reported zero non-Caucasian models at the February 2013 show; that number climbed to five in September. Just the month before, in a New York Times article about “fashion’s blind spot,” the label’s creative director, Francisco Costa, had addressed the challenge of having a diverse runway: “There are only a handful of top-level, professionally trained models of color at a particular level out there now.”
“I think it sounds like a really poor excuse,” Johnson said.
“It’s just nonsense, what he said,” Hardison agreed, “but one thing is true: A lot of the houses don’t have enough girls to choose from.”
So are the agencies to blame for not representing enough nonwhite models? San Francisco’s JE Model agency owner Phillip Gums says agencies simply reflect what the market demands. Gums, who is also an African American model, says it’s harder to find work for nonwhite models, noting that the agency’s San Francisco clients do typically request more racial diversity – but not much more.
Although San Francisco modeling agencies do represent African American and Asian models, “we hate to just have them on our wall sitting there” without work, Gums says.
As former Essence editor and fashion journalist Constance White suggests, it’s not just a model issue. “Fashion can do better in terms of diversity at all different levels,” she says, including executive suites and the fashion designers themselves. “Fashion reflects the society as a whole.”
Ultimately, Johnson and Hardison are encouraged that seeing more diversity in fashion is a possibility. Hardison points to the January issue of Vogue, calling its content “beautifully, organically diverse.”
If major designers, magazines and retailers continue to set an example, she said, “It will change what the next guy does. They tend to follow.”
Johnson and White also credited the influence of events like the one at Macy’s. “This emphasis on Black History Month, and celebrating the impact of African American style, from a company with the power of Macy’s, will help,” White says.
“You just have to shine a spotlight where you see there’s an injustice, and somehow the universe will correct it,” Johnson said. “We have to be reminded that we are all one, and that’s the human race.”
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Readers: If you want to see the exact stats of the diversity of models at New York Fashion Week, click here. Is this “Fashion Racism?” Would you call the casting agencies and designers racist for not including more women of color? What are your thoughts? Blog me.
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