Blackface in the Fashion Industry at Schema : more than ethnic

Blackface in the Fashion Industry

The National Film Board of Canada, Schema Magazine and the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) are proud to present the Vancouver premiere of The Colour of Beauty, a provocative documentary about racism in the fashion industry, on May 16th, 2010 @ 7:00PM at the MOV. The film deals with the under-representation of ethnically diverse (specifically black) models in the fashion industry while profiling Renee Thompson, a black model on her daily grind to reach the top. There is no better time than the present to discuss another issue regarding the representation of blacks in fashion.

The use of "blackface" in the fashion industry goes deeper than its historical connotations or inappropriateness. It begs the greater question, are white models being painted black in lieu of hiring black models themselves? In an industry that wants a black girl to look like a "white girl dipped in chocolate," it seems that they have finally solved their dilemma by doing just that.

Model Lara Stone as she appeared in the October 2009 issue of French Vogue

Some recent examples of blackface in the industry include model Lara Stone's 14 page spread in the October 2009 issue of French Vogue, the biracial photo shoot on cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model, an image of models Sasha Pivovarova and Heidi Mount in the November 2009 issue of V magazine, and a runway show by Paris based Mongolian designer Tsolmandakh Munkhuu for the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography that took place a couple of weeks ago.

Black people are not actually "black" per se.

Racial categories are socially defined man-made groupings based on perceived phenomenological differences in skin colour. I'm actually more of a cocoa brown myself. Not all instances of painting a person the colour black should necessarily be considered instances of blackface. Sometimes the desired look is more of an aesthetic sensibility, and may have nothing to do with drawing a likeness to people of African ancestry. This is where I personally feel Tsolmandakh Munkhuu's collection falls.

Paris based Mongolian designer Tsolmandakh Munkhuu pictured with two models wearing her collection from the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography earlier this month

Of course, there are many instances of more blatant and deliberate attempts of trying to pass a white person off as black in fashion. I think Maurilio Carnino, the MTC casting director and producer that Renee Thompson meets with in the film, said it best when he half jokingly explained that industry professionals want a black girl to look like a "white girl dipped in chocolate." It's nice that someone can laugh about it because black models everywhere are grinding their teeth as they struggle with careers that may never take off because of such prejudice. As the film expresses, it can be difficult for black girls to book jobs in the first place, but what is the black model to do when the industry calls off the search, and opts to paint a white girl black instead? Not only does this close off a whole host of potential jobs from black models, but it opens up a debate surrounding the integrity and intentions of the fashion industry itself.

We need to consider both the context and the purpose of each instance individually, as the lines are a little more blurry in something like the America's Next Top Model shoot, which transformed models of various ethnicities into a number of biracial counterparts. That being said, allow me to make a blanket accusation and generalization for a moment. I say that by and large the use of blackface in fashion most definitely comes down to blatant discrimination and an unwillingness to employ black models. But that's just my opinion.

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Blackface in the Fashion Industry

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