The Race on Diversity
and how far the finish line really is...
I’ve just seen this years shortlist for the Model of the Year award for the Fashion Awards and my first thought is a welcome one: gone are the days when the conversation around diversity was a quiet whisper, uttered swiftly in the casting directors ear: “two Asian, one black” or something to that effect. That would be a total of 3, if lucky 4 “diverse” models in a lineup of 25-30 models (I miss those smaller shows!!).
Fashion has been one of the few industries that has moved quickly in reflecting global culture shifts when it comes to diversity and inclusion. This is the silver lining of getting older, witnessing culture change and in this case the evolution of inclusivity and how much better and more beautiful our runway shows, campaigns and editorials are for it. The models of our current generation transcend single nationalities and monochrome skin tones, they are rich in tonalities, body shapes and showcase a range of nuances. Andrè Leon Talley would be glad, the famine of beauty is well and truly over. We’ve come leaps and bounds since the days of tokenism and yet we still have a long way to go.
One of the issues that gets brought up over and over, although visually we see more diversity on covers, runways and campaigns, the people at the top, who make the decisions are still very much white. Part of the reason we have more diversity, particularly in editorials and covers is because of trailblazing figures such as Edward Enninfull, one of the very few black men in a position of power within the industry. Although the number of non white creatives has grown, it hasn’t matched the pace at which we’ve seen a rise in diversity within models.
Models are the faces of our industry and they represent us to the outside world, we see them in shows, across our cities on billboards, on the covers of magazines and everywhere in-between. Although we have, not just more black models, but a range of skin tones and ethnicities, the battle is not won just yet. Some designers still need some convincing.
One mentioned to me that diversity is all good and well but the buyer still needs to see themselves reflected in the collection, and so there’s a limit to the number of non white models we can use. And at this point I had two thoughts: firstly wow, secondly surely if a brand were to become more diverse and inclusive, then perhaps the number of non white consumers would increase.
According to a recent BOF article the number of non white ethnic consumers accounted for 20% of the spend within the luxury industry in 2019 and is set to rise to 25-30% by 2025.
Luxury brands can no longer afford to not pay attention, because after all money is the universal language, even in fashion.
Our younger generations transcend the notion of borders and understand that passports are merely bureaucratic pieces of paper that serve little purpose but to primarily keep certain groups of power at the top. Being of mixed nationalities has never been as normal as it is today. Our world is changing, albeit too slowly, right in front of our eyes, and I for one can’t wait for a few more grey hairs if I get to see where this change will take us.