Recently the fashion world has been getting regular folk up in arms over a wave of controversial shoots evoking imagery similar to the once highly popular and now highly offensive practice of blackface. Back in the day, performers would sport dark, garish makeup and parody African and African American people. And now it seems to be making a troubling, subversive comeback in the fashion biz.
Dutch model Lara Stone has been hailed as the hot new thing, armed with womanly curves and gap teeth that give her a unique look amongst a wave of anonymous beanpoles. However, she distinguished herself for a different reason posing with darkened skin in the latest issue of French Vogue. Then Tyra Banks painted up her army of aspiring models in a recent episode of America’s Next Top Model in a “bi-racial” challenge – even though the styling and set design clearly invokes stock imagery of the “African” experience with models posing amongst dusty reeds and decked out in colorful prints and earthy beading. Jezebel’s article does a good job deconstructing the outrage.
Black fashionistas have offered up a range of viewpoints. The Daily Beast’s Liza Gates points out that fashion is not about holding hands and placating anyone besides advertisers and fashion victims who pump billions in to the industry each year. Black fashion vets Beth Ann Hardison and Teri Agins aren’t so quick to wave the race flag and instead chalk it up to creativity. The Huffington Post’s Shaena Henry puts the issue in a larger context, noting that African style has been readily deployed on runways around the world yet African-looking women have been left out of the fun.
Is this just another way of appropriating and commodifying what makes the diaspora unique without giving us our props? Is it still just benign creativity when people of color fuel a global skin-bleaching industry that funnels billions into the western world? Does it push the fashion world to further embrace a spectrum of skin tones in its definition of beauty? Or is the visceral revulsion enough of a reason to curb this type of imagery? Fashion is ostensibly about style, art and money and has had an increasingly tenuous relationship with the reality of the average consumer. However, editors are highly influential tastemakers whose perspective informs their readers and in Vogue’s case, consumers around the world.
Obviously, the response to blackface in fashion isn’t so black and white.
