The dilemma with the ongoing battle of racial inequality within the fashion industry.

Mayra Celeste
8 min readMar 16, 2021

Why this problem still has not been obliterated yet, and continues to give trouble.

As we are approaching the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, we are still observing the continous battle of racial inequality within the fashion industry. You would think it is getting better, but is it really?

A large amount of designers within this particular industry still continue to provide vague excuses when it comes to hiring models of color. Those explanations consist of “We’ve already got a black girl,” “It’s not our creative vision,” “Our customer isn’t ready yet.” These are the excuses we hear time and time again to explain the lack of models of color in the fashion industry,” says Olivia Pinnock, a freelance fashion journalist in her thorough article, where you can read here.

If the fashion scene wants to appear inclusive as they advertise in their world. Why are we still seeing the contrary to what their words say?

Photo by Flaunter on Unsplash

The fashion world has opted to craft this immaculate illusion of acceptance, but at the exact time there is not much inclusivity at the end of the day when one takes a deeper look underneath the surface.

I had an extensive conversation with fashion journalism student Saskia Müller, who is based in the U.K. She has an elaborate point of view in her opinion about the matter, “The discrimination and unfair treatment of black models has always existed and I’m sick of it. If I, a white woman, am sick of the lack of opportunities and discrimination against POC [People of Colour], I dread to think how fed up POC are. If black models do get through the casting stage, which sadly it isn’t always likely, then they have to deal with make-up artists and stylists who aren’t trained to work with black hair or darker skin tones.”

Here is the crux of the situation. Once models of color do get past the initial auditions and move foward to the next stage. The entire workforce is not equipped to handle the different types of skin tones and hair textures. This is all due to the fact that the fashion industry lacks the diversity it declares it has.

“There isn’t enough opportunities for POC in the creative industries, especially the fashion industry. There needs to be more opportunities created for people from BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic] backgrounds to enter the industry as designers, photographers, stylists, models and creatives directors. Diversity needs to go deeper. We want to see within the actual companies, in the offices too. Are you going to give diverse staff a seat at the table to advise and be part of the projects that you do, ” said Müller in regards to her thoughts in the lack of opportunities people of color within the fashion scene.

We hear so many discussions where designers and magazines talk about how they have passed new milestones time and time again with how integrated they have become over this past quarter of this new century in comparison to its predecessor, the 20th century. There is no denying there have been changes within this industry, but are these changes enough?

“The fashion industry has been called out for cultural appropriation, racist advertising, and its blatant lack of diversity across campaigns, catwalks and behind the lens for years now. Over the years, there have been numerous, prominent, examples of racially insensitive, or sometimes outright offensive, themes and imagery in fashion, filtering all the way through to final collections, and it’s truly disgusting,” Müller said, while also including a couple interesting incidents a few years back that was a great deal at the time of its occurence. “In 2018, H&M’s campaign showcasing a black boy wearing its ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ jumper caused controversy, while Gucci was forced to apologise in 2019 for releasing a balaclava design that resembled blackface.”

Remember a while ago the controversy at the backlash on Vogue’s cover of the Vice President Kamala Harris. This repercussion was due to the low quality of the cover that was ultimately chosen to display her.

Kamala Harris. Photo taken by Adam Schultz

Although, it was understandable that particular cover was chosen to bring Ms. Harris in a friendlier light. This is the Vice President of the United States, she is also supposed to be seen as a influential woman. After all, she is the second most powerful person in the United States right after the president himself, Joe Biden.

This controversial rebuttal was done due to the low quality covers trying to undermine the power and influence that people of color have.

A positive instance, but also a little concerning was the Vogue cover for next month’s issue with singer and actress Selena Gomez. Her Vogue cover was taken by photographer Nadine Ijewere.

Selena Gomez. Image provided by Flickr.

The blatant fact that it took this long for a black female photographer to shoot a Vogue cover for the first time is a little lackluster and leaves a lot to be desired in regards to the to the so-called “inclusivity” within the fashion industry.

“Diversity is important, but it is not nearly enough. There was an incident I read online a few months ago where a black model was turned away from a cover shoot because “there was no hair and makeup team trained to do a black model’s hair”. This incident shows that hiring black models is not enough if the infrastructure in the industry is not built to accommodate them. This incident alone shows the need for a full infrastructural overhaul in every aspect of the fashion industry,” said Müller in response to the inclusivity within this industry.

I had a small conversation with former fashion model, Joe Anthony Najera, who was signed to the Neal Hamil Agency in the Houston area back in the mid 90s to early 00s. His experience as a Latino model speaks volumes as far as the treatment towards models of color.

His entrance into the fashion scene into modeling was because he participated in a contest since they were searching for Latin models. He won second place in the competition and it was televised in Telemundo and featured in the La Voz newspaper.

“I did many modeling jobs through and for the Neal Hamil Agency. Majority of my gigs were runway. They needed a Latin model to be incorporated into the mix. I modeled for Cotton Club Men, JC Penney, and so forth. I did plenty of fundraisers. The agency was mostly Caucasian, but at that time they were looking for Latin models due to the incoming wave of Latin singers switching over to American pop music,” said Najera in response to his experience working within the fashion scene in that particular decade.

While the conversation continued there was a specific point where Najera mentioned an exclusion while working as a model of color.

“The only part where I felt excluded were when they held parties after the shoots. I just wasn’t invited. They did need my Latin look for the shoot, but not for the business side,” said Najera while continuing with his experience.

This type of treatment alludes to the crafted fantasy that the fashion industry uses models of color only to produce that trendy curated image, but not directly awknowledging their models when they are also part of the finished results.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Let’s not forget that Anna Wintour had to give a major apology for not realizing the race-related ongoing issues within Vogue’s system.

There is a lot to be done regarding the progressive movement when it comes to giving people of color more opportunities within the fashion industry. The Council of Fashion Desginers in America is a group that helps spread awareness within the fashion industry.

In Salamishah Tillet’s article about ending racism in the fashion industry, she mentions a solid point, “But can these distinct groups work together to reshape the American fashion world, or will the ideological and strategic differences that this singular moment has exposed diffuse their long-term effectiveness? It may seem like an inter-industry problem, but because of fashion’s position as a cultural touchstone, the answer has broad repercussions.”

We are faced with the harsh reality when it comes to clean up the chaotic mess. If we are to truly eviscerate the racial inequality from within the fashion industry from the inside out. We must learn from where exactly these practices initially occured and fully comprehend to go from there.

“For decades, European standards of beauty — think light eyes, fair skin, and straight hair — have heavily influenced the images fashion brands use to promote their products. From magazine spreads to billboards, the face of fashion has a history of being exclusively white with no room for diversity in front of the camera or behind the scenes. As a result, women of colour are rarely represented on the catwalk or in fashion campaigns, often reproducing racist ideologies in plain sight,” said Müller while also adding this essential solid point, “This is where inclusivity becomes extremely important — real change goes a lot deeper than just having black people in an advertisement campaign. Models might represent a company image; and it’s important to see models of colour in these campaigns. But, they don’t have any input nor control over what that company actually produces.”

In order to dismantle piece by piece this hierarchy that has been established from probably even perhaps the beginning of time. We have to work together as a whole to achieve this feat.

“But in fashion, envisioning a path forward is particularly complicated. The veneration of whiteness and wealth isn’t merely incidental to the global fashion business, but central to its vision and embedded in its practices, from who gets hired to how things get marketed,” said Amanda Mull, a staff writer at The Atlantic, in her extensive piece in how the issue with diversity in the fashion industry. As we know it stems from a bottomless undertow that has been in effect since these past several centuries. You can read her article here.

Not to mention the entirety of the fashion scene has to acknowledge the injustices made within it, which is of course the first step.

Otherwise, it will unfortunately take even longer to accomplish the end to exclusivity with cherry picking in this industry.

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Mayra Celeste

Journalism major attending UH. I aspire to write fashion journalism. Fashion and arts enthusiast.