Stories of race discrimination, body shaming, sexual harassment, unfair working conditions and exploitation are rife in the fashion industry.
So far quite often these stories involved models and runway show castings, but the worldwide protests against racism that followed the killing of George Floyd, an African American, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, prompted many to reveal unfair conditions, bullying and racism in the fashion publishing industry.
Last week Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of US Vogue, offered some kind of formal mea culpa in a memo, stating that she took full responsibility for "mistakes" made during her 32-year tenure at the magazine. Wintour apologised for publishing material deemed intolerant, not giving space to black people at Vogue and not doing enough to promote black staff and designers at the fashion magazine.
"I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. We have made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes," she wrote, adding "it can't be easy to be a black employee at Vogue, and there are too few of you."
Further accidents connected with racism in the publishing industry were recorded in the last few days: the editor-in-chief of the Condé Nast title Bon Appétit, Adam Rapoport, resigned after photos of Rapoport and his wife dressed as stereotypes of Puerto Ricans at a Halloween party in 2003 resurfaced. The food magazine was also accused of mistreating employees of colour.
Condé Nast's head of lifestyle video programming, Matt Duckor, was forced to resign when staffers stated that the company didn't feature people of colour in videos and did not pay them for appearances; Christene Barberich, the editor of the lifestyle website Refinery29, also stepped down after members of the staff stated they had experienced racist discrimination at the company.
Among the brave people who came forward and denounced racist incidents there are Shelby Ivey Christie, former digital marketing and sales planner at Vogue and parent media organization Condé Nast in 2016 and now a fashion critic and fashion and costume historian herself, and Zara Rahim, Vogue's former director of communications.
Both recounted their experiences on social media: Christie who supports black designers and black contributions to the fashion landscape, and hopes one day to organise an exhibition focused on black designers, stated on Twitter that her time at Vogue and Condé Nast "was the most challenging + miserable time" of her career, explaining "The bullying + testing from white counterparts, the completely thankless work, the terrible base pay + the racism was exhausting." Her experiences include a white male executive arriving to a meeting with the digital business team wearing a chicken suit, gold chains and baggy pants and rapping to start the meeting. Even when the incident was reported, the man wasn't fired.
Christie also highlighted how black employees at the publishing house were overqualified, underpaid and overworked (she was assigned additional territories spanning the West Coast to Italy, and ended up working up to 20 hours a day). Rahim, who worked for the organization in 2017, had similar experiences and tweeted "The trauma I carry from Conde is something I have a hard time talking about. I was the only woman of color in a leadership role."
Last week, African American former member of Vogue's staff and colleague of Anna Wintour, André Leon Talley stated about her memo on SiriusXM's Sandyland that the statement comes as Samira Nasr was named US Bazaar's new editor-in-chief, the first black editor-in-chief in the magazine's 153-year-old history, an appointment that will have an impact on Wintour, adding "I want to say one thing: Dame Anna Wintour is a colonial broad, she’s a colonial dame, she comes from British, she’s part of an environment of colonialism. She is entitled and I do not think she will ever let anything get in the way of her white privilege."
It sounds oxymoronic that an industry constantly running after the next trend, was so behind when it came to racism, but it is exactly like that: US Vogue's first black cover star was model Beverly Johnson in 1974, and in 2018 Tyler Mitchell became the first black photographer to shoot the cover for the September issue of Vogue that featured Beyoncé.
Italian Vogue entered history instead when the late editor Franca Sozzani unveiled the Black Issue in 2008, that featured Liya Kebede, Sessilee Lopez, Jourdan Dunn, and Naomi Campbell on a series of covers, plus about 100 pages of black models, shot by Steven Meisel. A year later Sozzani celebrated Barbie's 50th anniversary with a supplement starring a black Barbie on the cover and mainly black Barbies in the photoshoots featured in its pages.
British Vogue has currently got a minority editor, Edward Enninful, who has been opening up the magazines to a wider and more diverse group of people.
Yet things may not change so soon at US Vogue: Condé Nast's CEO, Roger Lynch recently stated indeed that Wintour will not be stepping down her role. But, at the same time, the publisher and the magazine will have to come to terms with other issues: the global Coronavirus pandemic had a devastating impact on the industry as many fashion weeks were cancelled, while the Met Gala was postponed, shoots had to be reinvented, with models photographing themselves in lockdown, directed remotely by photographers and stylists, while magazine advertising revenues are constantly going down.
Besides, COVID-19 dramatically suspended our collective lives, made us reconsider our needs and reminded even the most impenitent fashionistas that health is more valuable than your next frock; lockdown has also redefined the job of influencers who turned from indefatigable socialising fashion addicted world globetrotters into stay-at-home bakers (in some cases like Italy's Chiara Ferragni sponsored by food companies rather than fashion houses...). More recently the world has been shaken by the brutal killing of George Floyd and, last week, of another African American, Rayshard Brooks, killed by a white police officer in Atlanta. As the US enter the fourth week of unrest while the number of Coronavirus cases is still on the rise in some countries, it is clear that the fashion industry as we knew it is a dated concept and the end is definitely near, not just for Anna Wintour, but for an entire system that supported rather than prevented discrimination.
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