I must live in my ivory tower but i think fashion is (or was) one of the most diverse industries before the woke movement. Woke and political correctness kind of killed it all… because now eveeybody is washed out and even less diverse.
I can't take people who say "diversity" ruined fashion seriously lol... they wouldn't have been in this mess if they had incrementally been more "diverse" in the first place. Now it just feels like a giant over-correction "We were ALWAYS diverse 😤"
Those two comments really touched me personally because I worked in fashion in the 2000’s and much like
@Creative i had that impression that fashion was a very diverse industry.
Before joining it, I bought magazines, saw black models, was exposed to a lot of US TV programs and there were black figures, my grandmother was seamstress at a fashion house and so, fashion as an industry, open to the music industry looked like a very diverse world.
But when I joined in, I realized that it was more complex than that.
There was more diversity in the US or in the UK than in Paris but Paris was embracing diversity only from the US.
In Paris, it was very obvious because when you wanted to look at diversity, it was almost empty. Ok the Americans in Paris embraced diversity beyond models. You had Karl, Azzedine, JPG and others… But I realized that it wasn’t a designer issue. There were gatekeepers.
I also have to admit that fashion wasn’t seen as the glamorous industry it has become in the 2010’s. When someone’s child wanted to work in fashion, it was met with a lot of stigmas and seen as not serious. So the industry was a minorities thing. So in a way it was normal to be a minority in minorities. Fashion was about people who either were very passionate or had enough money to support that dream.
What
@blueorchid said however is right because when fashion became really mainstream around 2006/2008, it was the moment to be more inclusive. The models were the face of that issue but it was true. Italy became a strong creative and commercial force in the 2000’s and their implicit racism became an implicit norm by the simple form of following.
So, things were easier when it was black Americans coming to Europe. I think about Lawrence Steele, Edward Buchanan or even Eric Wright (who was Karl’s number 2 for years) but the talents who were there didn’t have much opportunities.
I hate the woke movement but it’s the price fashion pays for being in it bubble. And the crazy thing about diversity was that what became a question around models (whether they sells more or not) became an undercover narrative for all talents.
And what I think is sad about Diversity post « Woke » movement was that it became politic and it went to some extremes.
