In February, Econ Extra Credit will be screening “Invisible Beauty,” a documentary that focuses on activist Bethan Hardison’s fight to improve working conditions for black fashion models.
Fashion is a fickle business, and sadly, so are the industry’s efforts at diversity.
Activist and model Bethan Hardison saw this happen during her long career, when she founded a successful modeling agency in the ’80s and ’90s and encouraged more labels to feature black models on their runways and in their campaigns, and models of color in their magazine ads.
Fashion historian and brand consultant Shelby Ivey Christie joined host David Brancaccio on “Marketplace Morning Report” to discuss the ongoing discrepancy around diversity and representation in the fashion industry, not just on runways and magazine covers, but in boardrooms and editorial offices as well.
Subscribers to our Econ Extra Credit newsletter had access to a version of this interview earlier this week. For more earlier original content, subscribe to the weekly Econ Extra Credit email newsletter (and other newsletters offered by Marketplace). Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.
David Brancaccio: Things go in and out of fashion, and unfortunately, diversity initiatives seem to be one of them. From your perspective, is it something that can be embraced for a season or two and then fades away?
Shelby Ivy Christie: That’s right. As a fashion costume historian, a lot of my work is geared towards examining fashion through the lenses of race, class, and culture and studying how all of these intersect with fashion. When I look at the current state of diversity and fashion, it seems to be very trend-focused. You know, 2020 saw all of the black squares go up that show solidarity. And a lot of DEI roles are being removed from organizations. The runways are going back to very thin bodies. You don’t see a lot of plus-size variation on the runways. The fashion world is going back to a very white, thin, blonde, blue-eyed archetype. And then even beyond the runways, into boardrooms and organizations, we still don’t see diversity. We see creative directors posting their teams. They’ll do a congratulatory post at the end of a great show, and it’s an entirely white team. So it exists at both ends. It exists in magazines and it exists in the runways and it exists in the visual artifacts of fashion, but it exists in boardrooms and organizations and the fashion industry. We’re not seeing diversity.
Brancaccio: Your answer includes an important reminder that diversity includes race, size, characteristics, etc. So, just as there are different ways of thinking about diversity in every industry, there are different ways of thinking about diversity in the fashion industry.
Christy: Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. Diversity spans a lot of different things. You mentioned featurism earlier. Hair texture. Colorism is another challenge in fashion, right? Is there representation for darker skin tones, kinky hair textures, and then like you said, who has a say in what the visual output is on the runway, what is ultimately driving the trends? I think there’s a little bit more diversity now in the body types of female models. There’s not enough. But on the male side, we still see a YSL-like, very thin cigarette approach and way of looking at fashion. Diversity can be very polarizing within fashion. It may emerge in womenswear, but not in menswear. And now it’s moving away from gender. So how do we account for diversity even in a fluid space?
Brancaccio: Is your feeling about the current state of the industry reflected in what you saw during fashion week, for example, reinforcing the views you just shared?
Christie: Ethnically and racially diverse designers promote diversity. Theofilio’s Edvin Thompson is a Jamaican immigrant and head of design for Lure. [Raul Lopez]who was formerly with Hood by Air. In my opinion, when it comes to diversity, a lot of these designers are driving change and innovation. But traditional white companies with white creative directors and heads of design don’t really drive diversity. It’s not always a diverse group of people that drives progress. It needs to be industry-wide and something that everyone values. Marc Jacobs might be doing a relatively good job. But outside of that, I feel like it’s people of color, designers of color that are really driving diversity.
Brancaccio: This month, we’re encouraging audiences to watch “Invisible Beauty,” an autobiographical documentary about Bethan Hardison. The film explores how people accept the belief that putting a black model on a magazine cover means she won’t sell. Of course, this belief has been disproved time and time again.
Christie: Yeah, it’s shocking to hear that after 40, 50, 60 years, these issues are still around. Even this comment implies that white people are the norm and everything else is something else, right? So I think these attitudes are still very prevalent in the industry. Usher just got on the cover of Vogue and there was a white woman next to him. Same with LeBron James’ cover. Even when a black person is there, there has to be a white person there to counter it, even if they can’t add anything to the context or the discourse. You know, these things still happen.
(Cover photo: Campbell Addy/Vogue)
Brancaccio: Yes, it’s the January 17th issue of Vogue. Here it is. There are attractive young people in football outfits. There’s Usher with one of the young football players on his shoulders, and there’s a big football. And then there’s this white model, I don’t know where she’s from, who’s dressed in flashy clothes, but I’m not really sure why she’s there.
Christy: I don’t mean to disparage the model. She is beautiful and talented. But in the context of celebrating Usher’s Super Bowl performance, he is a legend, an icon. You know, he is a talented person who has been producing amazing work for 30 years. Why is this person in this image? Why do we need a white agent for credibility or acceptability or behind-the-scenes discussions about saleability or profitability when we have black and colored talent? Also, as I mentioned earlier, LeBron James was on a similar cover, and there was a lot of criticism that he looked like King Kong. There was also a white female celebrity next to him. Again, the question is, why can’t these talents exist alone? They are top-tier talents, award-winning talents, generational talents.
Brancaccio: I get from your answer that, while you may not be able to prove it, you suspect that someone in the fashion industry, someone making the choices at Vogue, thought, “Well, we have to put a white person on the cover.”
Christy: Yeah, and it goes even deeper than that. So sometimes it’s a nuance of not only having to answer to the Vogue editorial staff, but also to the sales team and the publishers, what brands are in that photo, what are they wearing, and so on. It could be advertising related, it could be brand related. What ads are in the book. And you might service those brands as well. It depends on what they’re wearing. How are the brands styling that? And if they’re spending a lot of advertising money somewhere, they want to have a say. I don’t know if that’s the case with this photo, but that’s within the industry, right? If you advertise, the brand might have a say in other content because their product is in that photo. So they might have a say. It also matters who’s at the table. It matters who’s in the room, and whether there are decision makers from the brand side as well.
Invisible Beauty is available to stream with subscription on Hulu and is also available to purchase or rent on Prime Video, Apple TV+ and YouTube.
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