high fashion, real progress and black beauty

earlier this spring when i heard about the july issue of vogue italia that would feature black models exclusively, something in me gushed with enthusiasm and more than a little hope. italian vogue has always used black models. it is said that they are driven more by creativity and art than commerce and it has a strong influence internationally. where they go, others follow. would that happen this time? or would this issue be an exotic one-off?

according to the editor franca sozzani, this move was inspired by many factors, most notably the rise of senator obama and the change that seems to be swirling in the air in america, and his smart, attractive and fashionably on-point wife michelle. but there was more. evidently when former agent/mother of kadeem hardison/legendary former 60's model bethann hardison held a 3 day forum on the lack of diversity in the fashion industry last fall, ms. sozzani took notice and was inspired enough to want to do something about it. by february, she and stephen meisel (the photographer behind madonna's book sex) were talking about the possibility of an all black issue and a short time later, they were off to the races.

there was a lot of speculation about this issue: who would be on the cover (that all important question); who would be prominently featured (and how); and most importantly, the impact of the statement that an all black issue from such an influential stylemaker would make on the rest of the fashion world. i looked forward with heady optimism to the rush of being able to open a world-class magazine and see an array of beautiful black women.

then for some strange reason, something in me began to sour on the idea of it, and the more i thought about it, the more unsure i became about its positive outcome.

the last time i was overwhelmed by one black model after another after another, it was when vicksburg mississippi native patrick kelly ruled the runways. remember him? i could glimpse so much of my black southern self in everything he did because he never apologized for who he was. he reveled in it. he ran around in overalls all the time. he gave away little pickaninny dolls -- symbolic of at all of his fashion events, so much so that they became his totem. he amassed a large collection of black dolls, actually. when he used white models, he put them in blackface and put their hair in plaits to make them look like some racially inverted version of topsy. and those mismatched buttons? he said he got that from his grandmother, who couldn't always find buttons that matched when it was time to mend his clothes when he was a child.

as the legend goes, mr. kelly's grandmother brought home a fashion magazine one day when he was 6 years old. when he asked why there were no african-american models in it, she told him that fashion designers didn't have time for black women. and so mr. kelly decided that someday he would do something about that. oh, boy did he ever.

when fashion designer willi smith of williwear -- brother of the infamous toukie smith -- died of pneumonia at 39 in 1987 that was a huge loss. when mr. kelly died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 35 at the peak of his career, i knew that it was the end of an era. yes, other black designers would appear. but that flood of black models everywhere? not a chance.

with no patrick kelly at the helm to infuse his southern blackness everywhere, i had to acknowledge 3 things as i looked at the preliminary pictures of the july issue:

1. when we as people of color are in control of our image -- when we photograph ourselves, design the clothes, style the shoots and make the pertinent choices (like who's going to be the model for this shoot?) -- those images are unlike the images that our counterparts would create of us. that led me to another thought...
2. these are europeans creating and manipulating images of africans/african-americans/people of color -- not africans/african-americans/people of color making those images of themselves. if andre leon talley or bethann hardison had the opportunity to be a guest editor and create something like this, it would probably look a lot different than what vogue italia has done.
3. exactly who worked on this issue? were there any african-american consultants/stylists/fashion designers involved? were any black people in high fashion a part of the decision-making process? were there any black consultants?

in the end, who is this really for, exactly? is this issue for the fashion world, to show them that black really is beautiful, that there are many black models available for work, that they are just as alluring as the blue-eyed blonde russians/eastern europeans? will it take more than one issue to pull that off -- or will over 150 pages of stunning photos make them see the light?

evidently so. vogue italia was all black but the paris couture show was all white -- and parading the same excuses of "supply and demand." so yes, its going to take more than one issue. but one thing is for sure: the conversation has begun.

oh -- and lest you think that it's just fashion and fashion doesn't matter, i leave you with this quote from Robin Givhan, a fashion writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator for The Washington Post:

“One of the things people need to understand and come to grips with is they’re in the business of defining beauty and selling beauty. Beauty is a form of currency and if the industry is in the business of defining what is beautiful, then it also is in the business of defining who is valuable and who is invisible.”

ps: check out the NYT slideshow here.

oh, lebron

why is it that whenever a black male athlete is on the cover of a nationally distributed and well-respected magazine, he looks like a wild beast of some sort that someone just unleashed onto an unsuspecting public -- yet when his white counterpart is featured on the cover, he looks like a strong, handsome (sexy, even!) conquering hero, with his foot on his helmet and his shirt off and him looking out past you, into the horizon and everything, like he can see the next game he's going to win?

come on, now. i can't be the only one that sees this distinction and wonders about it.

what's especially heinous is that this is the first black man on the cover of VOGUE magazine. all of the black male models we know and love, black models that were ruling the runways in paris and milan and gracing everyone else's magazine cover, these people waited until 2008 to feature a black man on the cover? then again, that shouldn't be surprising when you consider that they didn't put a black woman on the cover until 1977. (and yes, it was beverley johnson.)

lebron james (also called "King James" by the way -- i like that) says he was putting on his game face for this shot -- but why would he need that look for a VOGUE magazine cover? shouldn't he save his game face for the actual game?

he certainly hasn't pulled out this game face for the commercials he's done. we've all seen "the lebrons" in the sun, haven't we: lebron, dressed in an all-white suit and carefully shaped spherical afro looking for all the world like an elegant dandy, pulling off a spectacular swan-dive in slow motion into a large swimming pool and smiling at the camera beatifically as he seems to lounge underwater, all the while surrounded by various and sundry characters at poolside who turn out to be lebron himself, a la eddie murphy/the nutty professor.

not surprisingly, it's my favorite one: lebron as comedian and character actor is so unexpected, and what with all the assumptions/stereotypes about black people not knowing how to swim/being afraid of the water, a poolside oneupsmanship/showdown against his many selves was effing brilliant. what's next, i wondered? will "the lebrons" go skiing?

oh, you haven't seen my favorite lebron commercial, you say? well, here it is.



what's in this commercial is a far cry from what i see on the cover of VOGUE for the month of april: a King Kong for the 21st century, with giselle as fay wray.

i suppose one could say that i'm being overly sensitive or touchy, that it's just a magazine cover, that it doesn't matter. but actually, it does. in a media-saturated world where such images are carefully thought out and planned by people who are supposedly intelligent and educated and worldly, any visual inference that portrays black men as dangerous, angry, violent animals is not a good thing and it really shouldn't be celebrated as such. subconsciously, people are absorbing those images as truth and they treat black men accordingly.

you don't even want me to get into the images that are floating around out there about black women. you really don't.

the racism inside all of this is so obvious, it feels idiotic to explain it. it's like my friend ralph, driving up on a white skateboarder in the middle of the street at 120th and 5th and yelling at him to get out of the road. the kicker was that marcus garvey park was right there, mere inches away, but he'd rather skate in the street. (seriously, that really happened...)

interestingly, there are a lot of people who disagree with me on this. and one of them is lebron. hey, it's the april issue, it's out there. at this point, what else can he be but magnanimous?

boy. they'd better hope i never get famous.