It's 2019, And There's Still Plenty Of Racism In Fashion

It's 2019, And There's Still Plenty Of Racism In Fashion




By Tiffany Lashai Curtis


Racism in the style industry isn’t surprising, given the industry’s longtime struggle with diversity, nevertheless what is surprising is that brands haven’t seemed to learn from racist mistakes.


From putting white models in cornrows for a Africa-themed runway show, or appropriating Native peoples’ long-established clothing for an entire collection, it seems like you can’t go a solitary season without hearing about another ignorant misstep. Yet it’s only recently that brands themselves have had to answer for these missteps. Thanks in part to social media, if a brand right now releases a racist campaign, product, or design, they often face consequences: rightful consumer outrage, threats of boycotts, and even an executive stepping down.


We’re only a couple of months into the year and already a few style brands and major figures in the industry have used racist imagery in a myriad of ways, ranging from their designs to residence decor choices to window displays. It seems that and each week, people have called out a new instance of racism, and especially anti-Black racism, from the minds of revered style houses and esteemed style folks.


While some brands have admitted that they should’ve known better, others have been noticeably silent, plead ignorance on the matter, or proposed little tangible follow-up on their mistakes. In 2019, it’s all also clear that people from all creative disciplines need to educate themselves on experiences outdoors of their own. It remains to be seen how exactly the style industry will take note.


January 13: Prada


In December 2018, Prada was criticized for sambo-inspired keychains window displays that they released and later removed from stores. According to the Washington Post, the brand also donated all the proceeds from their blackface designs to a New York-based racial justice agency right after Center for Constitutional Rights personnel attorney Chinyere Ezie proposed they do so.


Yet in an interview with WWD published on January 13, 2019, the brand’s head designer Miuccia Prada remained defiant.


“I more and more think anything one does today can cause offense,” she mentioned, later adding, “People want respect because right now there really is talk of cultural appropriation, although this is the structure of style, as it has routinely been the basis of art, of everything.”


January 23: Balmain


On January 23, Balmain closed out Couture Week in Paris with a runway show that featured Black models done up in ebony-colored makeup. Other models were covered in white makeup; as Fashionista reports, lead makeup artist Val Garland referenced the hashtag #statuesque on an Instagram of model Ysaunny Brito, yet did not fancy further.


Social media users and style industry watchdogs like Diet Prada raised questions over the choice of makeup used in the show, which some people likened to blackface.


According to Fashionista, Olivier Rousteing, who is the creative director of the French style home, planned no hints about the intention of this decision in the show notes, merely saying that designing the collection gave him "the immense luxury of stepping back for a minute — a chance to clear my mind, dream and revel in a moment of unfettered creativity." He doesn’t appear to have ever addressed the controversy. MTV News has reached out for comment.


February 6: Gucci


In early February, the Italian style home produced a sweater that evoked blackface. The black, balaclava-style sweater featured a cutout surrounded by red, cartoonish lips, which called to mind images of picaninnies, golliwogs, and sambo; it was listed at the retail price of $890.


Any time images of the sweater made their way across the world wide web, backlash ensued. On February 6, the powers-that-be at the style residence issued a swift apology through the Twitter right after boycott threats caught fire, and stated that the sweater had been removed from its online store and retail shops.


"Gucci deeply apologizes for the offense caused by the wool balaclava jumper," the brand said.


"We imagine diversity to be a fundamental value to be totally upheld, respected, and at the forefront of every decision we make. We are completely devoted to increasing diversity while in our agency and turning this incident into a powerful learning moment for the Gucci team and beyond."


Although, Black celebrities and consumers alike were not immediately forgiving, expressing outrage and calling for a boycott of the brand.


On Instagram, rapper T.I. Wrote, “APOLOGY NOT ACCEPTED!!!! We ain’t going for this ‘oops my bad I didn’t mean to be racist and disrespectful towards your people.” He also encouraged people of color to stop purchasing and supporting the brand, which has been a staple in the hip-hop community, and stressed the buying power of people of color, which is more than $1 trillion dollars per year, according to a 2018 Nielsen report.


Filmmaker Spike Lee stressed the required for Gucci to employ more Black people: “I, Spike Lee Of Sound Mind And Body Will No Longer Wear Prada Or Gucci Up until They Hire Some Black Designers To Be In Da Room As soon as It Happens,” he wrote on Instagram. The brand was also “cancelled” by rapper Soulja Boy.


On February 10, renowned Harlem style designer and tailor Dapper Dan expressed his frustrations with the blackface sweater: “Another style residence has gotten it outrageously wrong,” he mentioned in a statement he posted to Twitter. “There is no excuse nor apology that can erase this sort of insult.”


Dapper Dan has a longstanding history of with Gucci; he made a name for himself in the 1980s by creating custom designs with logos from luxury brands, including Gucci, and once had his designs pilfered by Gucci, before starting a joint collection with the brand in 2017. On February 15, he as well as an audience of “experts in inclusivity and accountability” met with Gucci reps to discuss necessitates, according to Fashionista.


As a result, the brand reported a “Multicultural Design Scholarship Program” to hire five new designers from around the world, and compiled a new role titled Global Director for Diversity and Inclusion categorize in attempt concentrate on recruitment practices and other diversity initiatives.


Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele has since taken “full accountability” for the incident.


February 7: Grace Coddington


On February 7, photographer Brian Ferry Instagrammed an editorial spread that featured shots of Vogue advocate and former creative director-at-large Grace Coddington in her house for Les Echos Série Limitée, a French publication. Although the decor detail that drew most people’s eyes was the number of mammy jars sitting on a kitchen shelf just beyond Coddington in one of the photos.


“I’m not surprised that Grace Coddington can’t be trusted yet I continue to be surprised that photographers will casually publish this stuff,” mentioned Aminatou Sow, a podcaster and digital strategist.


After the shoot drew ire from social media users, Ferry took down the images and replaced them with other images of Coddington, sans mammy jars. "I am re-posting the photographs of Grace Coddington and her apartment from yesterday. I've deleted a few shots soon following the mammy cookie jars in the kitchen were brought to my attention. I'm truly sorry for my oversight, and I'm grateful for the call-in about this. I'm embarrassed that I didn't notice or call them out myself earlier, and I'm devoted to doing better in the future,” he mentioned on Instagram.


However Ferry’s explanation was swiftly criticized; a number of commenters called him a hypocrite for not removing the entirety of the shoot from his Instagram profile. One commenter wrote, “You can't *both* bow to self-righteous censors AND honor the person whose decor is ostensibly so upsetting. Either they so angry you once you realized what they were naturally a truthful mistake on your part) that you disavow the full series, or you leave them all up as a rather more truthful depiction of your subject.”


At this time, Les Echos Série Limitée hasn’t published the spread or addressed the incident. At publish time, Coddington did not respond to MTV News’s request for comment.


February 9: Vogue Brazil


On the week of February 9, a now-deleted photo of Vogue Brazil’s then-fashion director Donna Meirelles at her 50th birthday party surfaced on journalist Fabio Bernado’s Instagram. The image featured Meirelles in a throne-like chair, flanked by two Black models in all-white outfits, and the celebration — which took place in Bahia, where like much of the rest of Brazil, the majority of the population is Black — appeared to evoke Brazil’s slavery era.


Stephanie Ribeiro, who writes the #BlackGirlMagic column for the Brazilian edition of Marie Claire responded to the photographs in a Instagram post, “The black girls were used as objects to make an exotic scene,” she wrote.


“It’s reminiscent of colonialism and romanticizes those times. She was recreating the image where whites are superior and blacks are dehumanized.”


In an interview with The New York Times, Ana Lucia Aruajo, a history professor at Howard University, mentioned the photographs were “tone deaf.” As she explained, the Black models were dressed as baianas, and their costumes define the customary dress of girls from Bahia, yet aren’t necessarily racist. She added, although, that context matters, and referenced Brazil’s long history of racism white supremacy. “This keeps it up and continues to be a central supply in Brazilian society and this event will lead us to pay much more attention to how black ladies are depicted and commodified in Brazilian culture,” she said.


Renowned Black Brazilian singer Elza Soares expressed her anger through the Instagram, and talked of “wounds that have not healed,” in reference to her experiences as a descendent of slaves and the injustices faced by Black Brazilians.


According to Fox News, immediately after criticism made its way across social media, Meirelles wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that the chair was an artifact from the Afro-Brazilian candomblé religion, and that the models’ outfits were customary attire.


She also apologized if she had caused “any different impressions” and resigned from her position on February 13.


Vogue Brazil issued a statement soon after Meirelles’s announcement, saying, “Vogue Brasil profoundly regrets what happened and hopes that the debate that has been generated serves as a learning experience.”


The magazine promised to prepare design a panel of scholars and activists to support them combat inequality in the corporation, although the move has been met with skepticism.


“They should just hire black people to work at Vogue Brasil, not design a forum for black activists to act like babysitters telling them whether something is racist or not,” Ribeiro wrote.


February 11: Katy Perry


Katy Perry’s style label came under fire in early February immediately after images of two footwear styles, released last summer, resurfaced online. As critics noted, the designs looked suspiciously like blackface.


Quartz reports the two shoe styles – one a flat mule, and the other a block-heeled sandal — featured googly blue eyes, and also bright red lips that are the stuff of Jim Crow legend. Both designs were stylized on a black leather backdrop.


Social media criticism was swift, with one Twitter user noting that data on the history of blackface is with little effort obtainable. Another came to Perry’s defense and called the criticism against her a “character assassination.”


In a statement derived by the New York Times, the singer apologized by saying, that she “was saddened any time it was brought to my attention that it was being compared to painful images reminiscent of blackface. Our intention was never to inflict any pain. We have immediately removed them from [the website]."


February 17: Burberry


On February 17, Burberry sent a noose hoodie down the runway throughout London Style Week as segment of its Fall/Winter 2019 collection. In what the brand later mentioned was a try to adhere to a “nautical” theme, the hoodie featured ties at the neck that blatantly resembled a noose, which has long been a visceral symbol of both lynching and suicide.


Model Liz Kennedy, who walked in the show, called out the offense on Instagram, stating that "Suicide isn't style. It isn't glamorous nor edgy.” She added, "Let’s do not consider the horrifying history of lynching either. There really are hundreds of ways to tie a rope and so they chose to tie it like a noose totally ignoring the fact that it was hanging around a neck." She also made claims that, if she was at the venue, her concerns about the hoodie were dismissed by unnamed corporation employees.


Right after online fallout ensued, Burberry’s Chief Executive Officer Marco Gobbetti issued a statement to CNN:


“We are deeply sorry for the distress caused by one of the items that featured in our A/W 2019 runway collection. Though the design was inspired by the marine theme that ran while in the collection, it was insensitive and we made a mistake."


The brand’s creative director Ricardo Tisci issued a apology of his own. ”I am so deeply sorry for the distress that has been caused as a result of one of the pieces in my show on Sunday,” he mentioned, according to Harper’s Bazaar. Burberry plans to remove the piece from the collection.


We can all take action to stop racism. Visit race.Mtv.Com for more.









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