Is fashion tone-deaf?

Fashion brands use provocative campaigns to stand out, but they often fail and seem deliberately obtuse

- Pooja Singh

A month ago, luxury womenswear brand AMPM launched a social media campaign for its autumn-winter collection, Hum. It featured models, painted head-to-toe in charcoal, against hand-painted backdrops meant to evoke a rural setting. A snippet on Instagram shows a model's face being covered with charcoal paint, just like the canvases.

The campaign didn’t make much noise on social media till earlier this week when an international content creator shared it. This was followed by several reshares and likes. No one thought there was anything wrong with painting the bodies of humans “charcoal”—similar to “blackface”, which originated in 19th-century US when white performers darkened their faces with shoe polish or charcoal in racist depictions of African Americans.