Fashion/Clothes: Never Ending Race...

I read Robin Givhan's review of Lanvin's show, more specifically its designer, Albers Elbaz (pictured above). This is in the New York Magazine (Fashion). There is a write-up about the decision of using 5 black models to close his presentation. Or rather, why there was a standing ovation from the crowd. Why the one and only time the crowd clapped was when the 5 black models stepped out onto the runway.

Personally, I'm not perturbed about all of these sorts of fashion tricks, if I may. There is so much more behind it. The fashion world does, for some reason, believe they can get away with SO much all in the name of 'open mindedned' without any form of explanation. All in the name of 'Art'. Oh well...

Here's what piece I loved from the review:

-> In short, Elbaz’s decision had nothing to do with race. And yet, it had everything to do with it.

“As soon as you put five girls together as a group—African-American or Asian—it does make a statement: a political statement,” says André Leon Talley, contributing editor at Vogue and a judge on America’s Next Top Model. “We’re supposed to be living in a postracial, nonracial world. We’re just not there.”

And so it goes in fashion. The industry sees itself as open-minded and progressive. (Yes, it’s judgmental about your weight, your hair, and your clothes, but it judges everyone.) So it aims to treat race like any other aesthetic touchstone, as unremarkable as red hair or a cleft chin. Race is little more than “a paint chip,” former fashion publicist Susan Portnoy, who worked for Nicole Miller and Oscar de la Renta’s Oscar line, once told me. The fashion world considers itself so cosmopolitan and sophisticated that it can play fast and loose with racial stereotypes—occasionally shattering them, sometimes benefiting from their stubborn existence. Fashion folks naïvely—bravely?—attempt to be racially blasé in a culture that still struggles with the burdens of prejudice and the wounds of history. As a result, the fashion community in general often comes across as bumbling on the topic of race. It gets tripped up by ignorance. Fashion editorials can be thoughtful and exasperating—sometimes in the same breath.<-

The race issue is a very sensitive one, in anyway you choose to look at it.