Liz: Twenty years ago the media seemed pretty concerned about diversity in fashion.
Announcer: Modeling can be a tough business at the best of times but when you're black, the situation is compounded.
Announcer: Has black beauty finally come of age? Or is it all just an exotic illusion?
Liz: Today, all of our sins have been absolved because hashtags.
Diversity is trending.
Reporter: Diversity is very in this year, let's hope it's not a passing trend.
Liz: So what does this rainbow utopia really look like?
In 2013, Bethann Hardison, a diversity advocate and former model
wrote an open letter calling out specific designers who had featured 1 or 0 women of color
in their runway shows around the world
Bethann: I think they're ignorant and they're arrogant and I think it's not even about racism
I think it's a sense of laziness, and they've told themselves a story.
Host: Boy, they were unvarnished.
Host: Mhmm, unvarnished and real.
Host: And mad.
Liz: Yes, what are these unvarnished, mad black women going on about anyways?
While some newcomers and younger brands have embraced diverse casting in their runway shows
the data reveals that progress is relatively stagnant.
Some designers are making progress by including people with disabilities in their shows,
but have we lost sight of the race issue that's been plaguing the industry for decades?
[Music]
Liz: Some people are calling this Fashion Week the most diverse Fashion Week ever in history,
do you guys agree with that in terms of what you've seen on the runway,
and what you've seen in the shows?
Woman: Oh, definitely seeing a lot of diversity in terms of clothes. Some are very playful,
whereas others are more transient.
Liz: Did you think that it was great that they were representing Native American culture?
Woman: Of course, listen we're in New York, it's a great thing
Woman: We had one Asian, one red hair, colored, blonde. We had all of them!
Liz: OK, even redheads?
Woman: Yes! I was like, "Yes! This is beautiful!"
Liz: And are you excited that there's no more racism in the fashion industry?
Woman: umm...
Yeah, I am happy.
Liz: Yeah? Woman: Yeah. Liz: Yeah
Liz: Do you feel like we've solved like, fashion's racism problem? Are you glad that it's done?
Woman: No, absolutely yes.
Liz: I'm glad we like solved racism. Like, check.
Woman: Yes, definitely.
Liz: To be fair, this isn't the only part of the fashion industry.
Maybe people are seeing more diversity in magazines or advertisements
so I went and bought a handful of the most popular fashion magazines and went
through them with a model and fellow journalist, Yomi Abiola.
We decided to rip out all of the advertisements and make 2 piles
pile 1: only people who are white
pile 2: only people who are... anything else
Yomi: Let's start with Vanity Fair
Liz: I love it.
Liz: That's an ad for...
Yomi: That's for you. This is for you. That's for you.
Liz: White ladies.
Very white.
White person.
Double whiteness.
White
Yomi: This is an Asian man.
Yomi: That's for you.
Liz: Oh there's a... Nope.
White girl, white girl
This is a toothbrush.
White girl
Yomi: [laughing]
Liz: white girl on white girl
White girl
Yomi: Maybe I can have this one, Pharrell's in the background.
[ripping]
Liz: OK, so you get the idea
Let's fast forward a bit to when we counted our piles
89, 90, 91
92, 93, 94 and I didn't even count the double sides
How many do you have?
Yomi: Do you really want to know?
Liz: We have to know.
Yomi: Thirteen and a half
Liz: We found similar issues in other high fashion magazines
Vogue had 272 ads featuring only white people versus 38 featuring people of color
Yomi: I was definitely hoping that at least since I started, that things would have changed.
It's not good.
I mean, let's not dress it up. It's just I really was hoping that things had changed
There was a moment in time for me when I saw
a brown women on television... I saw Naomi Campbell
and I was mesmerized. But I want every single woman to be able to have that experience
of having your beauty, but beyond your beauty, what you look like
validated. You exist and you're seen
and you're part of society.
It's time to wake up.
Liz: So, how do we solve this?
Remember Bethann Hardison? When she wrote that open letter two years ago
almost all of the highlighted designers increased the number of people of color
in their shows
although the industry's overall numbers stayed roughly the same
Bethann laid out the framework for how to incite change by calling out the worst
offenders by name.
Taking Bethann's lead, the best thing we can do is hold designers accountable.
The worst thing we can do: become complacent and stop taking
responsibility to make things better.
Bethann: I'm so proud of watching what someone can do when they decide
let's take up the cause.
The responsibility is all of ours.