In February, “Econ Extra Credit” is watching “Invisible Beauty,” a documentary portrait of activist Bethann Hardison, focused on her fight to improve working conditions for Black fashion models.
Fashion is fickle. Alas, so is the industry’s commitment to diversity.
Activist and model Bethann Hardison saw that during her long career. She built a successful modeling agency the ’80s and ’90s, prompting more labels to hire Black models for their runways and campaigns, and placing more people of color in magazine spreads.
Fashion historian and brand consultant Shelby Ivey Christie “Marketplace Morning Report” joined host David Brancaccio to discuss the industry’s continued inconsistencies on diversity and representation — not just on runways or magazine covers, but in boardrooms and editorial departments, as well.
Subscribers to our “Econ Extra Credit” newsletter got access to a version of this interview earlier this week. For more early and original content, sign up to receive the weekly “Econ Extra Credit” email newsletter (and others offered by Marketplace). The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: Things come into fashion, they go out of fashion. Alas, a commitment to diversity seems to be one of those things. From your perspective, it gets embraced for a season or two then goes away?
Shelby Ivey Christie: Definitely. As a fashion costume historian, a lot of my work is aimed at examining fashion through the lens of race, class and culture and kind of how all of these things intersect with fashion. I think when we look at the state of diversity and fashion, it appears to be very fad-focused. You know, we saw all of the black squares go up in solidarity in 2020. And then here we are seeing many DEI roles are being eliminated from organizations. We’re seeing runways go back to very thin body types. We still haven’t seen very much plus size variation on the runways. We’re going back to the very white, thin, blond hair, blue-eyed archetype in fashion. And even beyond the runway into these boardrooms, into these organizations, we’re still not seeing diversity, right? We’re seeing creative directors post their teams — you know, a celebratory post at the end of an amazing show — and we’re seeing completely white teams. So, it’s on both ends of the spectrum. It’s in the pages, on the runway, in the visual outputs of fashion, but it is also in the boardrooms, in the organizations, in the business of fashion. We’re not seeing the diversity.
Brancaccio: And built into your answer is an important reminder that diversity also encompasses, it could be race, it could be sizes, it could be features. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways of thinking about diversity in any industry, but also fashion.
Christie: Correct. You nailed it, you named it correctly. Diversity is across many different things. Even as you touched on featureism, right? Hair texture. Colorism is another challenge that we have in fashion, right? Is there a representation on the darker end of the spectrum of skin tone, on a kinkier texture of hair, and who is having say in what visual output is on the runway and what ultimately drives trends, as you said? There might be a little bit of diversity in body type now for I feel like female models. Not enough. But on the men’s side, we’re still seeing that YSL, very thin cigarette, you know, kind of approach and look to fashion. It can be very polarized within fashion, that diversity. We might see it springing up in women’s wear but maybe not in menswear. And then now we’re moving away from gender. So how do we account for diversity in the fluid space as well?
Brancaccio: This sense that you have where the industry is right now, you’ve seen echoed in, for instance, what you’re seeing during fashion week is reinforcing the views that you just shared?
Christie: So designers who are diverse themselves, whether it’s ethnically, racially, we’re seeing them really drive the diversity. Designers like Edvin Thompson at Theophilio, he’s a Jamaican immigrant; the head of design at Luar [Raul Lopez], who used to be at Hood By Air. We’re seeing a lot of these designers drive the change and the innovation when it comes to diversity, in my opinion. But what we’re not seeing are legacy, you know, white houses with white creative directors, white heads of design really driving the diversity. It can’t be the diverse group of people always driving the advancement. We need it to spread out into the industry and be something that everyone is valuing. Marc Jacobs might be doing a relatively good job. But outside of that, I do feel like it’s people of color, designers of color really driving that diversity.
Brancaccio: We’ve been inviting our audience members to watch this really autobiographical documentary this month, “Invisible Beauty,” about of course, Bethann Hardison. There are accounts in this movie of people accepting as an article of faith that, if you put Black models on the cover of a magazine, it’s not going to sell — which, of course, has been disproven over and over.
Christie: Yeah, it’s jarring to hear, you know, 40, 50, 60 years later that these are still some of the challenges that we’re having. Even that comment implies that whiteness is the standard, and everything else is the other, right? And so that attitude in the industry, I think, is still very much so prevalent. Usher was just on the cover of Vogue, and there was a woman next to him, a white woman and similar with LeBron James’ cover. Even sometimes where there is a Black person there, there has to be a white person present to counter it, even if they have absolutely nothing to add to the context, add to the editorial. You know, these are things that are still happening.
Brancaccio: Yeah, it’s the Jan. 17 Vogue. Here it is. We have these charming young kids in full football get up. There’s Usher who’s holding one of the young football players on his shoulder, and there’s a big football. And then kind of from who knows where is a white model dressed all fancy and you’re not quite sure exactly why she’s there.
Christie: Not to take anything away from the model — she’s gorgeous and talented — but in the context of trying to celebrate Usher, his upcoming Super Bowl performance, he is a legend and an icon in his own right. He’s been, you know, a talent for 30 years pumping out excellent work. Why is this person in this image? Why, when it is Black talent or talent of color, there has to be a white proxy there to seemingly give credibility or make it more palatable or whatever the conversation might have been behind the scenes about the sellability, profitability? And as I mentioned, LeBron James had a similar cover, which caught a lot of backlash around maybe looking like King Kong. He also had a white female celebrity alongside him. And again, it calls into question, why can’t these talents stand alone? These are megatalents, award-winning talents, generational talents.
Brancaccio: I get from your answer that what you may not be able to prove but suspect is that someone in the fashion industry, someone making choices at Vogue, may have thought, “Well, you got to put a white person in the cover.”
Christie: Yeah, and it goes a level deeper than that. So sometimes it’s the nuance of not only is it just the Vogue editorial staff, you’re also answering to the sales team and the publisher about what brands are in that picture, right? What do they have on? It might be ad-related, it might be brand-related. What ads are in that book? And then you also might be to the service of those brands, right? Depending on what they’re wearing. You know, what is styling that look, brands? And if they’re spending a lot of advertising dollars somewhere, they want to have say. I don’t know if that’s the case in this image, but that is within the industry, right? If you place an ad, that brand might have say so over the other content that’s going on because their product is placed in that image, and so they may also have some say so. It is important about who is at those tables too, right? Who is in those rooms and those decision makers on the brand side, as well.
“Invisible Beauty” is available to stream on Hulu, with a subscription. You can also buy or rent the film on Prime Video, Apple TV+ and YouTube.
