Wow, I was amazed after reading the WWD article, "Little Diversity in Fashion: African-Americans Bemoan Their Absence in Industry," how few black models there were in Fashion Week. Of the 101 shows and presentations posted on Style.com, 31 appear to have no black models. But it's true--it's almost as if you get so used to the standard pale-skin model, that it's like a mannequin walking down the runway, rather than people who play a part in society. I mean, to say nothing of the leggy, stick-thin, 16-year-old bodies, which definitely don't represent how the majority of women look, why should the fashion industry get away with discrimination as well? Well, they shouldn't.
[image: Getty]
Last Friday, a panel discussion, "The Lack of the Black Image in Fashion Today," was held at the Bryant Park Hotel to address the low representation of black models in fashion, with former and present models including Naomi Campbell, Iman, Liya Kebede and Bethann Hardison in attendance. An agreement was made to set up a meeting with the Council of Fashion of Designers of America to address the issue after an Oct. 15 public discussion at the New York Public Library.
I was shocked at how many black models have been rejected by modeling agencies and magazines. According to the WWD, "Hardison, who has modeled, run her own modeling agency and handled casting over the years, said, 'In the United States of America, this is the one industry that still has the freedom to refer to people by their color and reject them in their work.'" Naomi Campbell had quite a feat breaking into the fashion industry with designers threatening to pull their advertising if they didn't use her as a model. Why all the controversy, shouldn't we be past this already? African-American women make up a large part of the spending in fashion--more than $20 billion on apparel alone, each year. The fashion industry needs to get away from its mindless "branding" and uniformity of all, or mostly white models, and start focusing on the beauty of diversity and women of all colors.
Hardison said it best, "Everything is about branding now. When something is so commerce-driven, creativity is gone."
From: Gallery: Celebrity gym bunnies