Diversity in Fashion

Fashion Week The Big 4

Paris

Milan

New York

London

Where does London get it wrong?

London is chaotic; they don’t organize their show rooms. Show rooms should be ordered in the same way as the catwalk. The show rooms should have garments in the order that they are displayed on the catwalk to create easy and appeal to the consumers and fashion critiques. 

The Changing Role of Fashion

The face of fashion has changed over the past 20 years. These changes have left us questioning whether fashion institutions should educate new designers/design students to think about diversity in order to make them commercially viable? and if contemporary British fashion/High Fashion reflects modern Britain?

The Brand is now the king, not the designer; the designer is despicable. A brand has many different designers over the time yet the brand essence it kept the same. Such as Raf Simmons taking over from John Galliano in 2012 The message of the brand needs controlling so that it can be enhanced by the younger generation.

Age

Age has been a disputable topic within the fashion world. It has changed over the years as to whether having a person above a certain age on your campaign is a positive or negative factor. Isabella Rossellini was the face of Lancôme from 1982-92 yet was sacked as she was classed as too old. Since these times fashion has changed so considerably that Carmen Dell’orefice is still working for Valentino aged 80, she still appears on their catwalk shows. Mary Portas, a massive name in fashion, widely known for bringing Westfield to England had her own 'Mary’s Boutique' specifically 'for women not girls', this showed a large fashion following. The older generation are becoming more popular in the fashion world as to be faces of campaigns etc, this reflects what fashion used to be like. In the 1950's the High Fashion market was dominated by women 40+ as they had the wealth, therefor the models of this era were a similar age to its consumers. 

Size

The height and waist size of a model has been as massive part of the fashion world over the past 50 years. Some say the models of campaigns, catwalk, etc, should reflect their consumers. 46% of women are a size 16. This shows no comparison to the size 6-10 models that we see today. 

There have been some outbursts of fashion businesses using larger women to promote or create a shock factor. LOVE magazine used Beth Ditto on the cover of this magazine and using photoshop increased her size to make her look larger as she was not large enough for the look the editor was going for. 

Ideas 

ALL WALKS: Beyond the Catwalk is a fashion activism in pursuit of emotional considerate design and achievable body ideals, founded by Debra Bourne, Erin O Connor and Caryn Franklin in 2010. This is helping to promote fashion away from the typical stick thin culture and channels diversity in fashion through the way we dress and look. 

Race and Class

Donyale Luna, Naomi Sims, Iman and Naomi Campbell are all well known black models. Black women on the cover is rare and this is why their names become so big and iconic where as your typical blonde white girl is going to disappear amongst all the other blonde white girls. 

American Vogue refuse to use Christy Turlington as she is Latino and Latinos are seen as the second class. This shows the prestigiousness of Vogue and how much its appearance means to it. 

  

The Global Market Place:

Designers need good editorial coverage and write-ups, this can promote them to go global. An example of an emerging fashion location is Sao Paulo, is is not Brazil's Capital but in terms of Fashion it now is, holding Brazil's Fashion Week.