Daily Skimm

Fashion month is almost over. One of the biggest talkers? Pharrell Williams taking the helm of menswear at Louis Vuitton. While Black creatives have shaped fashion for decades — from designers like Tracy Reese and the late Virgil Abloh, to editors like Edward Enninful and the late André Leon Talley — many believe the industry has a long way to go toward true representation.

For a deeper dive, we spoke to Kimberly Jenkins, founder of The Fashion and Race Database and the consultancy Artis Solomon…

Q: What influence have Black culture and creators had on global fashion over time?

Throughout times of enslavement — this dark history — we still manage to innovate with our style and use what we had. Throughout history we’ve been able to make things stylish like zoot suits and any type of hairstyle from braids, to afros, to wigs, to straightened hair. Over time we bought a new flavor to runway fashion, designers took note, and Black models started showing what they can do for you in luxury fashion from shows like the Ebony Fashion Fair.

Q: How has representation within the industry changed?

It’s been at a glacial pace, unfortunately. Over the decades, we’ve just had to see ourselves building our own thing. In the ’60s, Kwame Brathwaite started the Black is Beautiful movement with Grandassa Models in response to white beauty ideals. We’re gonna build our own runway, we’re gonna build our own campaign of looks, our own movement, so over the decades you see more and more of that. And then finally on the covers of magazines. [But] there’s this wave movement and by the ’90s controversial heroin chic was in and we started getting excited about thin models, which meant a lot of Black bodies were out. So we can’t really rely on fashion, at least fashion with a capital F, to guide us towards that because it ebbs and flows.

Q: And now?

I’m seeing a rise now of more exciting Black emerging designers coming in. And when you have these Black designers coming in, they’re bringing in their friends who are stylists, they’re bringing in their friends who are photographers. [But] you still see fashion — major labels and luxury labels — focusing on the next thing...and so many of them just don’t really have time to care about Black representation. So, it’s just yet another reason why we can’t really rely on these brands to be dedicated to this because when you look inside their companies and their shareholders, they’re not Black.