The fashion insider says the high profile of black women on the runway is no passing trend. It’s a long-overdue paradigm shift
“It’s ‘in’ to use me and maybe some people do it when they don’t really like me. But even if they are prejudiced, they have to be tactful if they want a good picture.” Naomi Sims, The New York Times, 1969
Black women are in fashion,” one editor casually said to me in Paris following a runway show. The skin on my arms felt prickly and my stomach tight in the way it does when I feel a conversation taking a particular kind of turn. I found it curious that someone would use the temporal language ascribed to clothing and fleeting fashions to frame an entire people. It felt wrong. It sounded wrong. And yet I kept hearing similar observations while travelling the runway show circuit and doing all manner of panel discussions (so many panel discussions) about diversity and inclusion in fashion in general.
