It's been the biggest fashion story of the year and it's had nothing to do with harem pants, the coat versus the cape, or the alluring comeback of the brogue. An industry not known for its crises of confidence has been forced to ask itself some uncomfortable questions. Might there be something nearing apartheid inside the pages of the glossy magazines and on the runways of the international designer collections? Is fashion racist?
The debate - some say long overdue - would not have been kick-started without a woman called Bethann Hardison. The first black saleswoman in the Garment District of New York in the Sixties and a runway model in the Seventies, she spent the Eighties and Nineties as one of the few black women with her own modelling agency (for black and white clients). She's so celebrated in the business that she's known mostly by her first name only, like Naomi and Iman, to each of whom she also happens to be a long-time confidante and mentor.
Over the past 14 months she's held campaign meetings in New York to speak out about a subject that has been largely taboo in the fashion industry. These are protest groups like no other - a cross between a rumbustious church service and the coolest party you have ever been to. Here, the likes of Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Iman, Tyson Beckford and Veronica Webb squeeze into a room with some of the fashion world's biggest players such as André Leon Talley, editor-at-large of American Vogue and designer Vera Wang, as well as casting agents, stylists and representatives from the modelling agencies.
At each meeting, Hardison sits at the front and beckons people she knows to stand up and speak. 'I knew I could make things happen,' she says. 'I knew I could make the rest of the industry feel self-conscious about what was going on.' Over the months her audiences revealed a fashion white-out - design houses that hadn't used a black model for a decade; issue after issue of American Vogue without a single black model on the fashion pages. Casting agents who stipulate 'No ethnics' this season. Magazine editors who say black covers don't sell. Caption writers who get the few black models who are successful mixed up. Designers who, out of a total of 30 models, use only two who are black because, 'If it's more than two it becomes a Black Thing'. Black models paid less than their white counterparts. As Iman said at one of the early groups: 'In any other industry it would be racism and you'd be taken to court for it.'
Hardison had actually sold her agency and stepped out of fashion, preferring, she says, to lie in a hammock in Mexico and dance salsa with pretty skinny Latino boys. (She is, it swiftly transpires, not a typical sixtysomething. She won't tell me her exact age. 'Not even my doctor knows that!' she hoots.) It was Naomi Campbell who persuaded her to come out of retirement to organise the events. 'Every couple of months she'd ring me and say, "There are no black girls out there. You've got to do something!"'
Hardison was in a unique position. She'd retired, which meant she had nothing to gain financially. She knew everyone. She was respected and well liked in a business renowned for being fickle and as ingrained with ego and jealousy as a designer logo on a leather handbag. Eventually she decided to act. She emailed Iman. 'Did you realise that, over the past decade, black models have been reduced to a category? Call me.'
We sit in her small apartment near Bryant Park in New York, a short walk from the Garment District where she started out working for a button company. Paintings, mostly of black women, line the walls; there's a large framed poster from Andy Warhol's American Indian Series. She is, she tells me, exhausted. Something to do with the fact that yesterday she held another campaign meeting, and that she's fasting because it is the month of Ramadan.
What irks her most about the lack of diversity on the catwalks is the fact that 'we'd had it before and it had disappeared'. In the late 70s and early 80s, she recalls, on the back of the black civil-rights movement, catwalks and magazines were often more diverse than they are now; black models were the stars.
'Once you've climbed to the top of the mountain you don't expect to be back at the bottom again. It's like once you've seen Paris it's hard to go back to the farm. We had been there. We had achieved all of this' - she sits up straighter, tilting her chin imperiously and I catch a glimpse of how arresting she must have been as a 20-something woman striding down a runway for Oscar de la Renta or Halston - 'and we'd disappeared'.
Casual observers might wonder why this issue is important, why anyone cares who's wearing a £2,500 coat in a magazine fashion spread or on a catwalk since most of us will never be able to afford it anyway. According to Hardison: 'Fashion should be a reflection of society. I want my industry to be as modern as the next one. And my industry is the least modern of them all. Fashion isn't just about the way a dress moves.' The concern is that a generation of girls, both black and white, will grow up thinking there is only one - white - benchmark for beauty.
It seems astonishing to think that, in two days' time, America may elect its first black president, but the editor of a glossy magazine might still think twice about putting a beautiful black woman on the front cover. Or even, indeed, on the inside pages, thanks to the current fascination with celebrity that means a famous person (usually a white, fake-tanned one) bags the cover slot. Thus the number of new, well-known black or Asian models has shrunk to a handful: Jourdan Dunn, Chanel Iman, Sessilee Lopez, Georgie Badiel. On Forbes magazine's 2007 list of the 15 top-earning models, only one - Liya Kebede - was black.
Trying to work out why fashion seems to have gone backwards on diversity is complex.
Everyone blames everyone else - model agencies blame casting directors, magazine editors blame readers, designers blame model agencies. The reasons range from the aesthetic to the more insidious.
'I don't think in terms of black and white,' stylist Katie Grand tells me. 'I just think about who is going to look best in the clothes.' The fashion designer Katharine Hamnett claims to be baffled by the situation. 'The strange thing is that Caucasian girls actually got the short straw. Very few of them are model material. Black girls and Indian girls have far better faces and far better figures than white girls, period. I remember taking my kids to India and looking out of the bus window and saying, "My God, this is like a model casting". Why white girls remain so popular is a mystery to me, whether it's because consumers are mostly white, or aspire to be white, I don't know.'
In America, where 30 per cent of the population is non-white and where black women spend a colossal $20 billion on fashion and cosmetics, the issue is particularly sensitive. Other American media, including some hit television dramas, reflect a society that is racially mixed, but the fashion industry remains as pale as a partially cooked chicken drumstick. American Vogue, with a readership of two million, has, in particular been criticised for its scarcity of black images.
'We still have reactionary forces in this country,' says Veronica Webb, one of the most successful black American models in the Eighties and the first to land a major cosmetics contract for Revlon. 'And they are part of our power base. It's our national ailment. To be told "no" simply because of your colour means you are screwed ... And it wasn't even so bad for me because I am very mixed - part black, part African, part Latino.'
Nevertheless she recalls being turned down for a job for a leading French design house. 'The photographer, who was a friend, told me the client didn't want their accessories to become status symbols in the black community.'
I repeat this story to other black commentators in the industry and it's so typical they don't even sound surprised. Former model Beverly Bond has set up a group for black teenage girls called 'Black Girls Rock', an attempt to attach a slogan to the protest in the same way that 'Black is Beautiful' did in the Seventies. 'I've been to auditions where they automatically turn away the black girls without even looking at their books. It's racist. Imagine them behaving that way if I went to a job interview. It's amazing how far behind the fashion world is and how they can get away with being so blatant about it.'
She's given up modelling and become a well-known DJ instead. 'In the end black models get disheartened by it. No matter how hot you look, you are never going to be hot enough.'
In July, no doubt partly because of Bethann Hardison's campaign, Italian Vogue published what they called 'a black issue'. Every page of editorial was devoted to black beauty (while the advertising remained almost universally white). It included many of the best black models of the past 30 years, from ground-breakers like Pat Cleveland to Jourdan Dunn, said to be the new Naomi Campbell. (It seems there's little chance of there being room for two very successful black models at the same time.) The result was dazzling, although the website Gawker noted wryly: 'Never has the racism issue looked so stunning.'
For the first time in its history the magazine sold out, helped by a campaign on Facebook by black readers starved of the black image for long enough. The issue made newspaper headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Commentators said it showed, finally, that the black image could sell. Critics noted that the majority of the models were pale-skinned, their hair often slicked back or hidden in a turban. True, black women don't all look the same - and thinking they do is part of the problem - but there were few images of darker skin and natural afro hair.
With a circulation of 145,000, Italian Vogue's readership is edgy and niche. Editor Franca Sozzani can afford to take risks. Rivals may have sat up and taken notice but most probably thought, 'Fabulous publicity. I wish I'd thought of that!' And then carried on as before.
Some felt that it was too little too late. 'There's nothing I like more than to see beautiful black people,' says Rebecca Carroll, author of Sugar in the Raw, about black teenage girls in America, 'but it felt a bit like black history month - "Now we've done it we don't have to worry about it again".' Black stylist and fashion editor Edward Enninful disagrees. He worked on the issue: 'I'd love it if fashion was 50/50 between black and white. But you have to think in terms of baby steps. In the end little drops make an ocean.'
Whenever designers and stylists enter the debate many talk about the cyclical nature of the business and how trends come and go. However, even if this is the case, change is achingly slow. Katie Grand worked on five shows last season and struggled to find the quality of black models she wanted. 'I think the agencies could do more,' she says. 'I saw every girl but there were very few black girls.' At Louis Vuitton, out of a total of 54 models, she used only four that were black.
At the recent collections in September Chanel still had no black models; nor did Yohji Yamamoto, Giorgio Armani, Marni or Jil Sander.
Balenciaga, Gucci, Christian Lacroix and Prada had one each. The vast majority used just two or three (at least, everyone said, it was better than last year) although many were only seen on the runway once. Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, famously fans of a mixed cabine, broke through the 20 per cent ceiling.
One up-and-coming designer, Sophie Theallet, stood out - her whole show was made up of only black models. It was a success but, as she tells me: 'I told nobody beforehand - only my husband and the people closest to me at work. It was too risky. I didn't want anyone telling me it was not a good idea.' And this in a spring/summer collection when, as Bethann Hardison points out, black models traditionally do much better. 'The bright colours against the dark skin ...' she says, rolling her eyes. When she was an agent she used to ring up the design houses and say: 'You know we do wear clothes in winter time?'
you might as well quote bill cosby. i'm not going to sit here and promote this assimilation that you are. i'm not going to stop bieng angry until my problems are atleast heard. it's ****ing bull**** for you to say that we need to just suck it up. get over yourself.
, But I do see a slightest improvement ! Moschino (Arlenis, Chanel, Jou) did a great job. As did Ermano Scervino (Sess, Jou, Chanel
). And some others that I cant think of. D&G (Chanel, Jou, Lakshmi, Ariel
