Todays post is something a bit different for Fantasy Fashionista, a very interesting guest post on prejudice in the modelling industry. There's a lot to be said on this subject, so I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
In the fall out from Jourdan Dunn being cut from the Dior Couture show, we explore the issue of discrimination and prejudice in the fashion industry today.
Earlier this month Jourdan Dunn, the 22-year-old British model, was unexpectedly cut from the Dior Couture line-up despite having spent the previous weekend being fitted for garments in preparation for the show.
The model revealed on her Twitter account the reason for her dismissal: ‘Ahahahahahahaha I just got cancelled from Dior because of my boobs!’
The mother of one took the news with a sense of humour and went on to tweet that she was ‘normally told I’m cancelled because I’m coloured so being cancelled because of my boobs is minor :)’.
It’s not the first time that Dior has been called out because of their choice of models. Dhani Mau, from Fashionista.com, noted that ever since Raf Simons took the helm at the fashion house in 2012 the selection of models has been ‘almost exclusively white’.
James Scully, a casting director, said in an interview with Buzzfeed.com that he felt the Dior show ‘is so pointedly white it’s deliberate. I watch that show and it bothers me - I almost can’t concentrate on the clothes because of the cast. And, recently, they’re changing from a very diverse, worldwide, multicultural cast to a very Germanic-looking white girl’.
In 2008 Dunn won the impressive, if dubious, title of being the first black model to walk for Prada since Naomi Campbell, 11 years earlier. This is an impressive feat for Dunn in some respects, although it is a shame that it took Prada so long to delve into the pool of hundreds of beautiful black models working in the industry over the past decade.
So was Dior’s issue with Dunn’s voluptuous figure really the reason for her sudden dismissal? Or was it a thinly veiled attempt to uphold the latent discrimination present both within the industry and the brand?
The London-born coltish beauty admits that it’s certainly not the first time she’s been on the receiving end of prejudice within the modelling industry. She told
The Times: ‘A few times I got excused by designers who told me, “We already found one black girl. We don’t need any more.” I felt very discouraged.’
Dhani Mau points out that the question isn’t whether prejudice is still present in the fashion industry, but rather: what is the industry doing to fix it? Runway shows are more than a vehicle to sell luxury bags and
high-end designer t-shirts – every detail represents the designer’s vision, and it’s disturbing when that vision only includes women who all look the same.
But it’s not just the colour of a model’s skin that can see them lose out on work. In 2009 the model Filippa Hamilton was fired from Ralph Lauren reportedly for being ‘too fat’. The company had previously digitally altered her image to the point where her hips measured the same size as her head.
Last year Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou, casting director for Victoria’s Secret, decided to comment on the Sports Illustrated cover star Kate Upton, stating that the brand would never use Kate for their show because she was ‘too obvious’ and looked ‘like a Page 3 girl; she’s like a footballers wife with the too-blonde hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy’.
It seems that it wasn’t enough for Neophitou simply to not hire the model; she felt the need to highlight why exactly they would never work with her, commenting on her physical appearance with vitriol.
Less than a year after these remarks the brand hired Upton to model for them after her meteoric rise in popularity - despite her ‘too-blonde hair’ and footballer’s wife look.
Earlier this year Mike Jeffries, the CEO of the clothing chain Abercrombie & Fitch, came under fire when comments that he made in a 2006 interview, in which he explained that the brand was marketed to the ‘cool kids’ and that they were being purposefully exclusionary, went viral on social media.
‘That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores, because good-looking people attract good-looking people, and we want to market to the cool, good-looking people,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to market to anyone other than that.’
This absurd remark is indicative of an attitude that has landed the company with a number of hefty litigations. In 2004 it reached a $40 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by Hispanic, black and Asian employees who were allegedly forced to work in the back of the shops.
The issue of discrimination is nothing new and the fashion industry is certainly not the only guilty party when it comes to prejudice. But what is new is the omnipresence of social media and its ability to bring experiences such as Jourdan Dunn’s - and long-forgotten quotes from an at-best misguided CEO in the case of Mike Jeffries - to public attention.
The public can now judge for themselves and, hopefully, speak out and play their part in changing the way the fashion industry objectifies women because of the size of their bust or the colour of their skin.
