Italian fashion brands urged to tackle racism in industry

 Black fashion designers in Italy have called upon Gucci, Prada and Dolce & Gabbana to commit to eradicating racism in the country’s fashion industry, accusing brands of prioritising performative gestures of support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the US at the expense of tackling discrimination closer to home.

A letter written by the designers Stella Jean and Edward Buchanan, entitled “Do #BLM in Italian fashion?”, asks Italian fashion industry leaders to enact a plan of investment, education and monitoring, instead of a tokenistic approach, which earlier this month resulted in no black-owned fashion brands showing at Milan fashion week.

“Let’s change [from] roundtables on diversity and workshops on the theories of multiculturalism … into true work, true collaboration” the letter reads. “Only this will ensure that all of our constant sources of passive inspiration are transformed into valid and active agents of real change.”

Many of the larger Italian fashion houses have noted histories of featuring racist imagery. Infamously, this includes Gucci’s blackface jumper, Prada’s golliwog trinket and Dolce & Gabbana’s pizza advert. And yet there is a reluctance to discuss the underlying issues openly.

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