London Fashion Week is on. Not much into that kind of thing but The Sunday Times came out with a huge Style issue 20th September and I couldn't help noticing the lack of black models and the scarcity of those of colour. Yeah, alright, on pg. 100 you've got Eva Longoria in a L'Oreal ad and then on pg. 105 there's a Revlon ad with Jessica Alba (thank god for the Americans!) but that's about it. (The tiny pix of Lawrence Fishbourne on pg. 15 and the one on page 80 with Naomi Campbell among a group of models in a story on Christy Turlington don't count.)
So what's up with that? You've got 111 pages of ads and fashion news and nothing - not one ad, not one story features either a black model or a black designer. A story about weekend girls, girls who like to dress up on a Saturday night, again ignores black girls and girls of colour. They don't appear in the editorial photos accompanying the story and they don't appear in the story as a niche fashion clique all on their own either.
Selfridge's has a big two-page spread with more than 21 models -not one is black. Gucci has a big two-page spread with 10 models - again not one black one!
Apparently for the fashion world or for the corner of it that is represented by Style, black people don't exist. Oh, but wait, on page 110, women are invited to figure out how they would look in an afro! Yep, that's right. They've got a line drawing of a head with a big afro and you can go ahead and try it on for size so to speak by filling in your own features. Of course, the very fact that they never stopped to think their readers might already be sporting afros is telling. Guess this is why I usually ignore fashion.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment