I think you can be "exclusive" and still have a diverse range of models on the runway ...
Fashion (as opposed to just clothes) is all about selling people dreams, and I do think models play a big part in that - you want models who are beautiful and have a distinctive walk (or if they are in a wheelchair, a distinctive way of moving) and an attitude ... but none of these things are solely the province of skinny white people!!!!! And to think otherwise is just totally unimaginative and limited and boring.
Your ideas of the kind of sell tickets to spectacular runway events to the masses is not actually very far off from how the first American fashion shows operated! The first "fashion show" in the U.S. was in 1903, hosted by NYC dry-goods emporium Ehrich Brothers. By 1915, department stores across the country began holding their own shows or opening parties to showcase the latest trends and styles. These shows weren't for press but for customers and were — as I put it in an article I did once about the history of NY Fashion Week — "at once democratic and, sometimes, almost stupidly extravagant. They often revolved around a theme, such as “Napoleon and Josephine” or “Monte Carlo,” for which the late Gimbels’ Herald Square location had casinos, roulette tables and fake Mediterranean gardens installed in the store."
Hilariously, nobody wanted to go to the more "exclusive," fancy made-to-measure presentations here in the U.S. because they were so boring. The historian Caroline Milbank told me that Mainbocher, for instance, “only served ice water" at his presentations and that “the focus was solely on the clothes, not on socializing.”
I'm in agreement with you. I worked my first season of New York Fashion Week in 2011, and while there has been a shift in the industry, every time I see the words "inclusive" and "fashion" together, I feel like it's a fully loaded statement or headline with no meaning behind it.
Two takeaways from this:
“Fashion week remains an elite industry event for a small group of industry people.”
“Despite the media acting like fashion week “includes” all kinds of people now, this isn’t really the case.”
Yes and yes.
Enninful is someone often quoted re: making things "more inclusive", and while I'm in agreement he's made some strides, I'm kind of growing tired of the word now because fashion is still exclusive, so let's stop pretending it's something that it's not.
I think you can be "exclusive" and still have a diverse range of models on the runway ...
Fashion (as opposed to just clothes) is all about selling people dreams, and I do think models play a big part in that - you want models who are beautiful and have a distinctive walk (or if they are in a wheelchair, a distinctive way of moving) and an attitude ... but none of these things are solely the province of skinny white people!!!!! And to think otherwise is just totally unimaginative and limited and boring.
Your ideas of the kind of sell tickets to spectacular runway events to the masses is not actually very far off from how the first American fashion shows operated! The first "fashion show" in the U.S. was in 1903, hosted by NYC dry-goods emporium Ehrich Brothers. By 1915, department stores across the country began holding their own shows or opening parties to showcase the latest trends and styles. These shows weren't for press but for customers and were — as I put it in an article I did once about the history of NY Fashion Week — "at once democratic and, sometimes, almost stupidly extravagant. They often revolved around a theme, such as “Napoleon and Josephine” or “Monte Carlo,” for which the late Gimbels’ Herald Square location had casinos, roulette tables and fake Mediterranean gardens installed in the store."
Hilariously, nobody wanted to go to the more "exclusive," fancy made-to-measure presentations here in the U.S. because they were so boring. The historian Caroline Milbank told me that Mainbocher, for instance, “only served ice water" at his presentations and that “the focus was solely on the clothes, not on socializing.”
I'm in agreement with you. I worked my first season of New York Fashion Week in 2011, and while there has been a shift in the industry, every time I see the words "inclusive" and "fashion" together, I feel like it's a fully loaded statement or headline with no meaning behind it.
Two takeaways from this:
“Fashion week remains an elite industry event for a small group of industry people.”
“Despite the media acting like fashion week “includes” all kinds of people now, this isn’t really the case.”
Yes and yes.
Enninful is someone often quoted re: making things "more inclusive", and while I'm in agreement he's made some strides, I'm kind of growing tired of the word now because fashion is still exclusive, so let's stop pretending it's something that it's not.