The biggest trend in fashion this season? Racism.
Last month, Gucci caused an outrage when an image of a “blackface” turtleneck — a black balaclava with big red lips outlining the model’s mouth — went viral on Instagram, prompting prominent African-American celebrities, including 50 Cent and Spike Lee, to boycott the brand.
Barely two weeks later, Burberry made headlines when it sent a hoodie with a noose around the neck down the runway. When a model walking in the show reported that the noose left her “extremely triggered” — not just because of the suicide connotations, but also lynching — Burberry allegedly brushed it off with, “It’s fashion.”
That’s not all: Back in December, Prada peddled monkey accessories that looked like golliwogs, racist minstrel dolls popular in the late 19th century. And in November, Dolce & Gabbana released a series of video ads featuring an Asian model struggling to eat pizza and spaghetti with chopsticks — and mispronouncing the Italian label’s name in an exaggerated Chinese accent.
“The fashion industry has a huge problem with racism … going back to the foundation of these brands,” Tansy Hoskins, author of “Stitched Up,” tells The Post. For example, she says, in the 1940s, Chanel and Dior famously cooperated with Nazi and Vichy governments, respectively.
Still, she’s somewhat shocked by the recent scandals.
“A few years ago, the [racism in fashion] conversation was around cultural appropriation” — think models in Native American headdresses — she says. Now, “it’s more overt. It does feel more extreme.”
All these brands have since apologized — some with more humility than others. Prada and Gucci have implemented diversity councils and education programs to prevent further missteps, and Burberry plans to as well. Yet the frequency of such mishaps begs the question: With fashion companies more global than ever before, how does this keep happening?
For one, the rise of social media — and call-out culture — makes it more difficult for brands to brush off these kinds of scandals.
“Before, you had to be in the right place — in New York or in the fashion industry at a show — to see these images,” says historian Jonathan Square, who specializes in fashion and visual culture of the African Diaspora. “But now someone on their sofa in Omaha can take an Instagram screenshot and share it with their network, and it will go viral.”
“I’d like to think that it’s ignorance,” says Kimberly Jenkins, who teaches fashion history and theory at Parsons and who works specifically with issues of fashion, race and justice. Jenkins was tapped by Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri to give its Milan team diversity training in the aftermath of the blackface blunder.
“It’s a lot of ignorance and people not growing up in a space where there’s a whole lot of diversity,” Jenkins says of the experience, adding that while Italy is a nation full of immigrants, the fashion houses there tend to be uniformly white.
“[The people at Gucci] don’t understand the meaning behind these images and how damaging they are,” she says, adding during her time in Milan for the diversity training she saw multiple blackface figurines in restaurants and cafes.
“Italy is less well-versed in the visual language of racism” than the US is, says Square. “In an American context, our knee-jerk reaction is to associate blackface with Jim Crow racism, [while] . . . Italy had no direct involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and never instituted plantation economies supported by racialized slavery.” Still, he stresses that blackface and minstrelsy was a global phenomenon.
Marketing exec Aliza Licht says that it’s not just a lack of diversity, or understanding of diversity, that leads to such clueless products. Rather, she says many of these design teams are staffed by yes-men who won’t challenge a designer if he or she comes up with something questionable.
“A lot of times, especially in fashion, there is a reluctance to push back,” she says. “Everyone around the creative director is like, ‘Fabulous, I love it.’ And it will be 3 in the morning and the show’s a day from now, and it’s like, ‘We just need to get this done!’ ”
Yet in the case of Gucci and Prada, the offending products had gone through a long chain of command, landing in stores without anyone waving a red flag.
“I was a little shocked that nowhere along the design process someone didn’t say, ‘I don’t know about that,’ ” says Square. “Whether on an executive level, or the photographer, or the model, or the stylist or the web editor — it made it all the way to the Web site.”
Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, in a letter to the company obtained by the industry website Fashionista, stated that the offending sweater, available in a variety of hues, was inspired by performance artist Leigh Bowery, whose signature look involved crazy makeup and plastic lips.
Without having people of color — or people steeped in the history of racist imagery — involved in the process, Jenkins says, “Everyone just saw Leigh Bowery, without thinking what happens when one of the colors it will be produced in happens to be black.
“Then you won’t look like Leigh Bowery, but a golliwog or minstrel,” she adds.
The same kind of race-blinders allowed Katy Perry to release a shoe, available in black or white, with a stylized face on it. The singer, in an apology letter, stated that the design was “a nod to modern art and surrealism,” but in black it reminded certain consumers of minstrelsy.
Some fashion critics don’t buy that explanation, wondering if such controversial products are deliberate provocations, designed to drive publicity and clicks — or even to outright offend.
“I think very often the customer base for companies like Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana doesn’t care,” says Hoskins. “The shoppers are not really known for progressive politics. People can kick up as much of a fuss as they want, but it drives more publicity for the brand.”
Yet Square says that many of these brands — especially Gucci — have very vocal, very glamorous black fans.
“It’s very embedded in African-American street culture,” says Square. Dapper Dan, who brought Gucci to Harlem by designing outrageous garments with the logo, now has his own atelier financed by the fashion label. Rappers such as Gucci Mane and 2 Chainz tout the company in their songs. “I think that’s why [the blackface sweater] felt like such a slap in the face — almost like they don’t respect a customer base who has been giving them free PR for years and made them relevant.”
And that’s precisely why certain brands are publicly trying to atone. Gucci met with Dapper Dan in Harlem within a week of the sweater nabbing headlines, while Prada has enlisted black filmmaker Ava DuVernay and artist Theaster Gates to head a diversity council for the label.
Jenkins thinks that any international brand that wants to survive will need to do the same.
“It behooves these brands to cater to their expanding consumer base by letting them see themselves through the models they use and the culture they lift up,” she says. “Gucci is open to this already; Prada is open to this. But there’s a lot of brands who don’t want to have these conversations. I hope that this year will show that they need to be.”
https://nypost.com/2019/03/04/why-racist-imagery-keeps-bubbling-up-in-the-fashion-world/
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