We Don’t Want To Be A Trend

For the longest people of colour, people considered as ethnic minorities black people have been thee designers party trick. Which has been displayed in high fashion runway shows, editorial and campaigns. Up until 2015 there has a been a lack of consideration and attention shown to the under representation of black models, designers, creatives in the fashion industry.

In 2015, Miss Naomi Campbell, Iman and Bethan Anderson took a loud and public stance to call for diversity, and hold fashion designers and there institutional and conscious bias/racism.

Everyone is using [black] culture as inspiration, ‘but I now want to see whether it’s going last or whether they’ll move onto something else.’ – Naomi Campbell

I do believe this is one of many steps as a tiny part of the creative industry and as a collective need to do to raise awareness to bring forward change. Since Miss Campbell and her two influential colleagues made a stance the statistics in black models being represented and use fairly/more in high fashion has improved.

I am hopeful that with more people of colour who are influential in the creative arts as a whole speaking up in a professional, articulate and elegant way fashion as a industry will begin to look like what its suppose to represent. Diversity, Uniqueness and Beauty, that covers all races all sizes all orientations.

‘Designers get really big and really rich off of [black] culture, and then you don’t see a motherf*cker that looks anything like us in the front row half the time,’ – Nicki Minaj.

By Kamahl Sami Miller