At Fashion Week, Color Pops And Models Call For Diversity
Color continued to be a big deal on the New York runways during Fashion Week this week, but almost all the color was represented by the clothes being showcased in the new collections and not the models wearing them.
That lack of diversity has been a perennial problem in the fashion industry — at home and abroad — for at least the past 15 years. And while there may be an Asian or Hispanic girl from time to time (in this industry, everyone is a "girl"), discernibly black girls get token representation if they get it at all.
Twenty-two-year-old Chanel Iman Robinson was named in homage to two of her mother's fashion idols (she doesn't use her last name). She's one of the few in-demand black girls, but even she loses jobs when designers have filled their "black quota."
Chanel Iman told The Sunday Times Magazine in February that sometimes when she goes for casting calls for runway shows, she doesn't get to stay. "A few times I got excused by designers who told me, 'We already found one black girl. We don't need you anymore.' I felt very discouraged," she confessed in the U.K. publication. "When someone tells you, 'We don't want you because we already have one of your kind,' it's really sad."
Race
Black Models Celebrated As Runway Revolutionaries