DIFFERENT CLOTH

IN AN INDUSTRY AS GLOBAL AS FASHION, AVOIDING CULTURAL APPROPRIATION CAN BE A TOUGH NEEDLE TO THREAD. BUT THERE'S A SIMPLE WAY TO AVOID IT

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A TOUGH INDUSTRY

If I were to ask you to picture the average runway model, what would I you see? If you're anything like me, odds are it's a young woman. She's white and she's a size 2. Now picture the designer who made the gorgeous dress she's wearing: What do they look like? If they turned out to be white, too I don't blame you.

I can't because you're most likely right. The fashion industry, in all its glory, is still painfully monochromatic. Even in the best rooms to be in - backstage at London or Paris Fashion Week, for example - black creators and models stand out from the crowd.

We're the minority, we're often tokenised, and our work is often plagiarised. Often, we only seem to be there to tick a box. And it's these truths that we're forced to sit with as we hold our tongues and try to be thankful.

Now this is not to say that fashion is a racist, bigoted industry, and that any POC with runway dreams should drop them and take up accounting.

But, what is true is that as a POC, fashion is that much harder of an industry to crack.