Column:

Fashion should transcend all colors, sizes

By ChaToyya Sewell

Published Oct. 20, 2009

Elizabeth Gates at the Daily Beast wrote an article this week, lovingly titled "Duh! Of course fashion's racist," in which she argued the controversy over this month's issue of French Vogue is righteous but worthless. The issue contains a spread in which a white Dutch model, Lara Stone, is painted to appear black and was photographed by American Steven Klein. This is not the first time Klein has employed nuevo black face in his work.

To add insult to injury, the fashion spread also appeared in an issue that employed no black models. Gates holds the fashion spread is not only racist itself, but fashion, in general, operates by "no moral code." I wholeheartedly agree, but I wonder how do we fight for something that by right should represent all of us? Big, small, brown, white and all in between. Should we allow fashion to stew in its own problematic corner of pop culture?

I think not. This is where my bias comes into play. In the interest of full disclosure: I love fashion. Not your women's magazine, catalog fashion but high-concept, high-design, highly cerebral fashion. I watch the fashion week shows online crouched in front of my computer for hours. I waste copious amounts of time merely trying to place inspirations for lines. I have several — yes, several — alarms waiting to go off two months from now, when Rodarte for Target hits stores.

This might seem tangential, but there is a point: I cannot be the only one. There are millions of women of color who love clothing and who have the means to buy expensive clothing. Just as there are millions of plus size girls who do the same. High fashion is losing money by shuffling all of us "women on the fringes" (ie: women who are not small, white women) into specialty markets. But part of high fashion's advertising plan is illusion.

And unfortunately, a lot of brands still operate under an antiquated ideology about buyers who up the prestige of the brand. Buyers of color and buyers who are of non-socially acceptable sizes are feared for their supposed capacity to destroy a brand's prestige. I would hope we could give consumers more credit than that. See, I can be optimistic.

I find the true mark of a designer is not someone who can dress a tall waif-like blonde but someone who can dress women with their varied bumps, hips and colors. But then some would argue there is no money in dressing women of color or big women because they do not spend money on clothes. This is just patently false. Each year, billions of dollars flow into markets for beauty expenditure by these women.

I mean, we have to get dressed, too. So maybe we hit fashion where it metaphorically hurts. Fashion might pretend it does not need new buyers, but not needing buyers and merely seeming that way are two very different things. So we stop supporting designers who send down all white runway shows, who don't design for a variety of body sizes. And we pour money into those who do. Fashion is a lot of things, but one stereotype it is not, is stupid.

Some will argue fashion is inherently patriarchal and therefore worthless. Fashion is, undoubtedly, currently a reflection of the patriarchal society it exists in, but it is here to stay. Ignoring it and its inherent issues does not solve said issues. Neither does it comfort thousands of young girls who cannot see themselves in something they love.