Didn't Alaia treat Naomi Campbell "like a daughter" througout his career?
Yes he did. He also treated others black models good. He had Farida Khelfa as his Director of Couture when she retired from modeling, he championed some black people in the industry when they needed his support (someone like Jenke Ahmed Tailly), he had a multicultural entourage but my point was that once designers stopped handling castings themselves, they gave that power to someone else who might have been racist.
And in Alaia’s case, his little shows organized after fashion week were non diverse at all. And because fashion was a bubble, it became an habit and people got used to it.
Most Designers don’t discover new models. So most of the times, when a designer had a black girl it was either a veteran he liked (Like Alek Wek with Karl) or a girl that was handpicked by a designer involved in casting and in Paris, it was mostly Alber and Jean Paul who did their own castings.
Things changed when Prada booked Jourdan and when Naomi and Iman talked because suddenly, designers had to take their responsibility.
I think that sometimes, things are more nuanced and some nuances are not maybe understandable when you look at the industry from outside. There’s racism in the industry and sometimes the classicism can led to racism in an unconscious way. But from my experience in the industry, racism is generally not where people expect (top positions). There are a lot of in-between people in fashion that could make life difficult for a person of color or a less privileged person. And it’s only possible because those people have access to a lot of people.