Black Lives Matter in Italian Fashion

 

Stella Jean’s name might be absent from the Milan Fashion Week show schedule for spring/summer 2021, but she will be making her presence felt at the week-long co-ed event later this month. 

The celebrated Haitian-Italian designer has joined forces with the African-American, Milan-based designer Edward Buchanan, Afro Fashion Week Milan founder Michelle Ngonmo and the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) president, Carlo Capasa, to launch a working group called Black Lives Matter In Italian Fashion. The announcement comes a month after Jean and Buchanan wrote an open letter to the CNMI, titled “Do #BLM in Italian Fashion?”, in which they asked the executive board of 15 to advocate for “fashion reform on the taboo topic of race in Italian fashion”.

As a part of the initiative, representatives from Italian fashion houses will be invited to participate in a think tank taking place on 22 September, which will highlight the need for concrete action regarding more internal and structural diversity behind the scenes at Italian fashion companies. “Discussing fashion reform and setting a precedent for rules to be adopted by the CNMI from day one,” will be key talking points, says Jean speaking to Vogue over the phone from her home in Rome. “From this moment on, [people] won’t have the excuse to say they didn’t know this [discrimination] was happening.”

It’s been a long time coming. Despite the Italian fashion council comprising over 100 companies, Jean remains the only Black-owned brand on the CNMI roster. “My uniqueness in Italy is truly incomprehensible. In a field like fashion, that prides itself on celebrating progressiveness, creativity and freedom of expression, injustice and prejudice continue to have a notable grip on the industry at large,” she says. 

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Italian fashion hasn't changed enough black designers say

Stella Jean at Karachi fashion week SS/2020

 The designer Stella Jean wanted to make something clear about an impassioned letter she sent to Italian fashion’s governing body: “It’s not a protest,” she said. “I’m not protesting. It’s a proposal.”

Last week Ms. Jean sent the letter — titled “Do #BLM in Italian Fashion?” — to the president and 14 executive board members of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, which organizes the Milan shows. Those board members included the chief executives of Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and more. The letter was co-signed by Edward Buchanan, an American designer based in Milan.

In the letter, shared with reporters on July 30, Ms. Jean and Mr. Buchanan asked for “a constructive, working dialogue” about how to best support the country’s Black designers ahead of Milan Fashion Week in September.

They acknowledged that in late 2019, the fashion council had published a manifesto promising “sweeping reforms” in diversity and inclusion. They suggested that those reforms had not yet come.

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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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