Hey guys,
A couple of things are abuzz in the fashion industry and if you guessed about weight then for a split second you're wrong. But try again tomorrow and I'm sure you'll find something!
This time around things get dicey with America's favorite past time, race. Yep, I said it, the big scary pink elephant in the room -- the r word --- RACE.
Two incidents have sprouted up in pertaining to basically in lay man's terms: Does the fashion industry really live in a secluded bubble speckled with glitter and the souls of emaciated models?
No, maybe?
Most recently Paris based Mongolian designer Paris-based Tsolmandakh Munkhuu has won a prestigious fashion award, while others see it as blackface plain and simple.
Munkhuu, painted her models head to toe in black-black (not brown, but black the color of a black ink pen) and their clothes were also black as well.
This calls to mind an earlier Viktor & Rolf show, where the models were painted in black with matching black clothes.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is *not* blackface. It's not even close. Blackface, harking back to America's ugly minstrel days (embarassing!) were racially charged caricatures of African American people. This would feature over the top caricatures of physical attributes as well as gross exagerrations. In a nutshell it was very ugly and many people have tried to forget that it ever happened, but like most things in American culture, it's going to rear it's ugly head again and again.
However, painting a model black and I mean just painting them black as if they were to be painted, say purple, is not indicative of racism. In fact, the Black Madonna a famous piece of work, is *black*. Does that make her African American? No.
In my humble opinion, in these two cases the designers were simply trying to do something artsy-fartsy. NOW, if you want to point out some maybe squrimish real racist antics in the fashion industry peruse any fashion glossy and count how many times you spot a non-white model being featured. It'll be on one hand.
On the other hand of this already convoluted attempt at being edgy, some genuis over at Interview magazine, decided to ante up the WTH factor and use a plethora of Black models in a very perplexing photoshoot. The interweb is a buzz with what exactly does it mean? The real issue at hand here is not the usage of black models in this shoot (because for once they are getting some work) but why on Earth is this immediately seen as racist?
The spread which features Canadian model Daria Werbowy casts her as "getting lost," but amidst what? There are plenty ways to read this editorial and yes, all of them do point back to race and how we see it through a fahsion lens.
