Milan Fashion Week gives small opening to BLM with Italian-African designers

In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, the Italian fashion event in Milan took a step in the process and included five African-born designers on the official Milan Fashion Week calendar. Stella Jean, who is the only Black designer belonging to Italy’s prestigious fashion council, said that she hopes that the decision will bring real diversity to the creative and decision-making centres of Italian fashion to combat racism in the industry. 

According to AP reports, Italy has a relatively small African-origin population. With no well-known faces in the political class or on television, the Black population is believed to be mostly invisible in the country of nearly 60 million. It was just last week that a think thank bringing together top fashion houses on the council with Black creatives was launched. However, Jean had said that there still remains resistance to the campaign she has launched with the US designer Edward Buchanan and Michelle Ngomo, founder of Afro Fashion Week Milano, with pressure on the to abandon it. 

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‘Racism in Italy is a unique case study’ 

Jean has been pushing the industry to make concrete moves towards diversifying Italian fashion. After several major houses showed social media support for the BLM protests over racial equality and police brutality during the summer, officials have also been asking for an accounting of the numbers of people of colour working inside the system. 

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Jean said, “No one is looking to stand back and blame you for the current situation. Instead, we are asking you to be part of the solution starting today. Racism in Italy ... is a very unique case study. It doesn’t resemble the type that exists with our European neighbours and it also differs greatly from the American kind. This however doesn’t render it less harmful or discriminative, only different”. 

Moreover, the fashion council has also agreed to implement six reform points by February. The council will be proving scholarship and mentorship to fashion students of colour. While calling the recent step ‘a beginning’, the head of Italy’s fashion council, Carlo Capasa, said that the officials will continue to work on diversity points of its diversity manifesto, including the commitment that diversity is an asset. Further, he confirmed that the new think thank launched would continue to meet periodically. 

(Images & Inputs: AP) 

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