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Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - It's been the biggest fashion story of the year and it's had nothing to do with harem pants, the coat versus the cape, or the alluring comeback of the brogue. An industry not known for its crises of confidence has been forced to ask itself some uncomfortable questions. Might there be something nearing apartheid inside the pages of the glossy magazines and on the runways of the international designer collections? Is fashion racist? The debate - some say long overdue - would not have been kick-started without a woman called Bethann Hardison. The first black saleswoman in the Garment District of New York in the Sixties and a runway model in the Seventies, she spent the Eighties and Nineties as one of the few black women with her own modelling agency (for black and white clients). She's so celebrated in the business that she's known mostly by her first name only, like Naomi and Iman, to each of whom she also happens to be a long-time confidante and mentor. Over the past 14 months she's held campaign meetings in New York to speak out about a subject that has been largely taboo in the fashion industry. These are protest groups like no other - a cross between a rumbustious church service and the coolest party you have ever been to. Here, the likes of Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Iman, Tyson Beckford and Veronica Webb squeeze into a room with some of the fashion world's biggest players such as André Leon Talley, editor-at-large of American Vogue and designer Vera Wang, as well as casting agents, stylists and representatives from the modelling agencies. At each meeting, Hardison sits at the front and beckons people she knows to stand up and speak. 'I knew I could make things happen,' she says. 'I knew I could make the rest of the industry feel self-conscious about what was going on.' Over the months her audiences revealed a fashion white-out - design houses that hadn't used a black model for a decade; issue after issue of American Vogue without a single black model on the fashion pages. Casting agents who stipulate 'No ethnics' this season. Magazine editors who say black covers don't sell. Caption writers who get the few black models who are successful mixed up. Designers who, out of a total of 30 models, use only two who are black because, 'If it's more than two it becomes a Black Thing'. Black models paid less than their white counterparts. As Iman said at one of the early groups: 'In any other industry it would be racism and you'd be taken to court for it.'Hardison had actually sold her agency and stepped out of fashion, preferring, she says, to lie in a hammock in Mexico and dance salsa with pretty skinny Latino boys. (She is, it swiftly transpires, not a typical sixtysomething. She won't tell me her exact age. 'Not even my doctor knows that!' she hoots.) It was Naomi Campbell who persuaded her to come out of retirement to organise the events. 'Every couple of months she'd ring me and say, "There are no black girls out there. You've got to do something!"' Hardison was in a unique position. She'd retired, which meant she had nothing to gain financially. She knew everyone. She was respected and well liked in a business renowned for being fickle and as ingrained with ego and jealousy as a designer logo on a leather handbag. Eventually she decided to act. She emailed Iman. 'Did you realise that, over the past decade, black models have been reduced to a category? Call me.'We sit in her small apartment near Bryant Park in New York, a short walk from the Garment District where she started out working for a button company. Paintings, mostly of black women, line the walls; there's a large framed poster from Andy Warhol's American Indian Series. She is, she tells me, exhausted. Something to do with the fact that yesterday she held another campaign meeting, and that she's fasting because it is the month of Ramadan. What irks her most about the lack of diversity on the catwalks is the fact that 'we'd had it before and it had disappeared'. In the late 70s and early 80s, she recalls, on the back of the black civil-rights movement, catwalks and magazines were often more diverse than they are now; black models were the stars.'Once you've climbed to the top of the mountain you don't expect to be back at the bottom again. It's like once you've seen Paris it's hard to go back to the farm. We had been there. We had achieved all of this' - she sits up straighter, tilting her chin imperiously and I catch a glimpse of how arresting she must have been as a 20-something woman striding down a runway for Oscar de la Renta or Halston - 'and we'd disappeared'.Casual observers might wonder why this issue is important, why anyone cares who's wearing a £2,500 coat in a magazine fashion spread or on a catwalk since most of us will never be able to afford it anyway. According to Hardison: 'Fashion should be a reflection of society. I want my industry to be as modern as the next one. And my industry is the least modern of them all. Fashion isn't just about the way a dress moves.' The concern is that a generation of girls, both black and white, will grow up thinking there is only one - white - benchmark for beauty.It seems astonishing to think that, in two days' time, America may elect its first black president, but the editor of a glossy magazine might still think twice about putting a beautiful black woman on the front cover. Or even, indeed, on the inside pages, thanks to the current fascination with celebrity that means a famous person (usually a white, fake-tanned one) bags the cover slot. Thus the number of new, well-known black or Asian models has shrunk to a handful: Jourdan Dunn, Chanel Iman, Sessilee Lopez, Georgie Badiel. On Forbes magazine's 2007 list of the 15 top-earning models, only one - Liya Kebede - was black.Trying to work out why fashion seems to have gone backwards on diversity is complex.Everyone blames everyone else - model agencies blame casting directors, magazine editors blame readers, designers blame model agencies. The reasons range from the aesthetic to the more insidious.'I don't think in terms of black and white,' stylist Katie Grand tells me. 'I just think about who is going to look best in the clothes.' The fashion designer Katharine Hamnett claims to be baffled by the situation. 'The strange thing is that Caucasian girls actually got the short straw. Very few of them are model material. Black girls and Indian girls have far better faces and far better figures than white girls, period. I remember taking my kids to India and looking out of the bus window and saying, "My God, this is like a model casting". Why white girls remain so popular is a mystery to me, whether it's because consumers are mostly white, or aspire to be white, I don't know.'In America, where 30 per cent of the population is non-white and where black women spend a colossal $20 billion on fashion and cosmetics, the issue is particularly sensitive. Other American media, including some hit television dramas, reflect a society that is racially mixed, but the fashion industry remains as pale as a partially cooked chicken drumstick. American Vogue, with a readership of two million, has, in particular been criticised for its scarcity of black images.'We still have reactionary forces in this country,' says Veronica Webb, one of the most successful black American models in the Eighties and the first to land a major cosmetics contract for Revlon. 'And they are part of our power base. It's our national ailment. To be told "no" simply because of your colour means you are screwed ... And it wasn't even so bad for me because I am very mixed - part black, part African, part Latino.' Nevertheless she recalls being turned down for a job for a leading French design house. 'The photographer, who was a friend, told me the client didn't want their accessories to become status symbols in the black community.'I repeat this story to other black commentators in the industry and it's so typical they don't even sound surprised. Former model Beverly Bond has set up a group for black teenage girls called 'Black Girls Rock', an attempt to attach a slogan to the protest in the same way that 'Black is Beautiful' did in the Seventies. 'I've been to auditions where they automatically turn away the black girls without even looking at their books. It's racist. Imagine them behaving that way if I went to a job interview. It's amazing how far behind the fashion world is and how they can get away with being so blatant about it.'She's given up modelling and become a well-known DJ instead. 'In the end black models get disheartened by it. No matter how hot you look, you are never going to be hot enough.'In July, no doubt partly because of Bethann Hardison's campaign, Italian Vogue published what they called 'a black issue'. Every page of editorial was devoted to black beauty (while the advertising remained almost universally white). It included many of the best black models of the past 30 years, from ground-breakers like Pat Cleveland to Jourdan Dunn, said to be the new Naomi Campbell. (It seems there's little chance of there being room for two very successful black models at the same time.) The result was dazzling, although the website Gawker noted wryly: 'Never has the racism issue looked so stunning.'For the first time in its history the magazine sold out, helped by a campaign on Facebook by black readers starved of the black image for long enough. The issue made newspaper headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Commentators said it showed, finally, that the black image could sell. Critics noted that the majority of the models were pale-skinned, their hair often slicked back or hidden in a turban. True, black women don't all look the same - and thinking they do is part of the problem - but there were few images of darker skin and natural afro hair. With a circulation of 145,000, Italian Vogue's readership is edgy and niche. Editor Franca Sozzani can afford to take risks. Rivals may have sat up and taken notice but most probably thought, 'Fabulous publicity. I wish I'd thought of that!' And then carried on as before.Some felt that it was too little too late. 'There's nothing I like more than to see beautiful black people,' says Rebecca Carroll, author of Sugar in the Raw, about black teenage girls in America, 'but it felt a bit like black history month - "Now we've done it we don't have to worry about it again".' Black stylist and fashion editor Edward Enninful disagrees. He worked on the issue: 'I'd love it if fashion was 50/50 between black and white. But you have to think in terms of baby steps. In the end little drops make an ocean.'Whenever designers and stylists enter the debate many talk about the cyclical nature of the business and how trends come and go. However, even if this is the case, change is achingly slow. Katie Grand worked on five shows last season and struggled to find the quality of black models she wanted. 'I think the agencies could do more,' she says. 'I saw every girl but there were very few black girls.' At Louis Vuitton, out of a total of 54 models, she used only four that were black. At the recent collections in September Chanel still had no black models; nor did Yohji Yamamoto, Giorgio Armani, Marni or Jil Sander. Balenciaga, Gucci, Christian Lacroix and Prada had one each. The vast majority used just two or three (at least, everyone said, it was better than last year) although many were only seen on the runway once. Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood, famously fans of a mixed cabine, broke through the 20 per cent ceiling. One up-and-coming designer, Sophie Theallet, stood out - her whole show was made up of only black models. It was a success but, as she tells me: 'I told nobody beforehand - only my husband and the people closest to me at work. It was too risky. I didn't want anyone telling me it was not a good idea.' And this in a spring/summer collection when, as Bethann Hardison points out, black models traditionally do much better. 'The bright colours against the dark skin ...' she says, rolling her eyes. When she was an agent she used to ring up the design houses and say: 'You know we do wear clothes in winter time?'People in the fashion and media industry who know Bethann describe her as an icon. Admittedly fashion has its fair share of luvviness, but watch her at her meetings and the affection people feel for her is obvious. Both inspiring and outspoken without being self-righteous, she's able to rouse and provoke in equal measure, poking fun at a business that she clearly loves but one which takes itself rather too seriously at times. However, her background had little to do with designer shops on Madison Avenue. Hardison's father, a practising Muslim, was a supervisor in the local housing authority. After her parents separated she was looked after by her mother and grandmother who were domestics in Brooklyn. 'You've got to leave Brooklyn,' she says, 'to be proud of where you come from.' Her mother loved the local bar scene, dancing and dressing up - 'Though in those days, the Fifties, everybody dressed in the same silhouette, whether they were black or white.' Hardison fell pregnant at the age of 18 - 'I had never had sex before and I got pregnant on the first time, which is the worst thing in the world.' When her baby son, Kadeem, was small, her mother and grandmother looked after him (he grew up to become a successful actor, based in Los Angeles) and for a while she had a mixture of jobs working at a telephone company and in a prison before she found a position in a firm that made hand-painted buttons for design houses.She'd inherited her mother's sense of style. 'That first day I wore a white straw hat, a one-off white suit, slingback shoes. The owner was worried I'd get covered in paint so he decided I could be the one to take the buttons to the designers.' It would be true to say she never looked back. Hardison worked her way up through an industry that back then was focused on a few streets in midtown Manhattan. She was an assistant for a dress company, which meant she was secretary, receptionist and book-keeper. Finally two Jewish women who ran a salon allowed her to be the first black saleswoman in the Garment District. The idea of a white woman with money to spend being shown the collection in the showroom by a black woman was unheard of.Hardison's hair was cropped short, as it is now. She was also very skinny. 'Boy was I skinny! Big eyes. I looked like I was from Biafra.' Her unusual look came to the attention of some of the designers she met at work. 'I wasn't a pretty girl but there was something about me that attracted them.' Her debut as a model was in the early Seventies for a designer called Chester Weinberg. The audience, made up of industry buyers, was wholly white. 'They looked stunned. I looked like a little African girl. There were a few other girls of colour but they had a sort of bounce about them. I was just straight.' By the third outfit the uproar was so loud, she could barely get to the end of the room. 'I was dying inside. I wanted to walk right through the door onto the subway and go home. But somehow I kept my head up and it became a point of defiance. I wouldn't let them see how much they hurt me. That became my style. They had never seen anyone who looked like me but that defiance changed the way models could look.'It wasn't long before black models were in demand. 'They called us the black stallions. Black or white it didn't matter. It was a great time because it was so creative and stylish and bohemian. You didn't have to have lots of money to be at the party.' Sensibly - and Hardison, you come to realise, has a very sensible head on those shoulders - she never gave up her day job. By this time she was working as a design assistant. She knew everyone from the Studio 54 crowd to Truman Capote, Jerry Hall to Woody Allen, but, as she says: 'There wasn't a lot of bullcrap then. All you had to do was have interesting dinner-party conversation.'A man once told her she was too busy to be committed to a relationship and, though she was married twice, neither marriage lasted long. In the Eighties she decided to start her own modelling agency. She found premises in the then unfashionable SoHo area of New York. 'As a black businesswoman you can't believe anyone is taking you seriously because you have no one before you who has done what you are doing. It's like walking down the Yellow Brick Road before it's been laid.' She would run the agency for 21 years and set up a pressure group called Black Girls' Coalition with Iman. By the time she sold up there may not have been parity between white and black models but she imagined she'd done enough.The industry changed with the influx of Eastern-European models. Bewitching-looking women: tall, translucent, angular, with flinty cheekbones and piercing eyes. 'They flooded the market,' says Carole White, who owns Premier Model Management. 'They are beautiful, but it is a bland beauty. It's a certain look. We can all spot it.' As a reaction to the reign of the supermodels, labels like Jil Sander and Prada wanted anonymous faces. 'It was almost as though they were revolted by what they had created,' says Michael Gross, the author of Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. According to Hardison: 'The model was reduced to a coathanger.' Of 200 models on White's books, only seven are black or Asian women and she says they have to work twice as hard to get the jobs. White thinks that fashion has become dominated by a white aesthetic that goes beyond the designers. 'Photographers used to be apprenticed for five years. They would learn about lighting and printing,' she explains. 'The thing is that now they probably use digital cameras and don't know how to light a black girl. It's the same with make-up artists. Black make-up artists like Pat McGrath work magic on white models but you don't see it the other way around. It's probably ignorance, and they are probably frightened. They just don't know how to do it.' There is an unspoken presumption that white readers want white models, white women only want to see an image of themselves on the catwalks. It's what academics call 'the white hegemony' and it's so casual if you're white you don't even notice it. But might the pundits be talking down to their consumers?'Editors say customers won't have it, it won't sell,' says Barbara Summers, a black model in the Seventies and the author of Black and Beautiful and Open the Unusual Door. 'But it's self-defeating. They're projecting their own failure and using black people to make the excuse. It's just cowardice. The irony is that the industry is shrinking in the current financial crisis. It can't grow again if it stays stuck in these past ideas. You can't expand your customer base if you only make products for white girls.' The result, according to Rebecca Carroll, is black teenage girls growing up thinking that they're not admired, a sense that goes beyond what they see in the mirror. 'It's painful,' she says. 'No one likes to be excluded and they grow up thinking they don't exist, therefore people don't care.'Even if one goes along with the view that Italian Vogue was, as Enninful says, 'historic and monumental', look through this month's bunch of British monthly glossies and you'd be hard pressed to find any black images. Editors often maintain that the number of black models they include proportionately matches the population. However, in this month's British glossies, the main fashion spreads are universally white. When you do see black models in magazines the same tropes are repeated again and again, says Zoe Whitley. She is a curator and visiting fellow at Sussex University, whose MA thesis was about blackness in Vogue. In mainstream magazines there is traditionally a proliferation of leopard-print and other animalistic symbols. Certain postures are popular - crawling, leaping in the air and smiling. There are lots of accessories and jewellery and colours that deliberately show up the contrast between fabric and skin - vivid reds, turquoise, white. 'The stories can be stunning,' says Whitley, 'but you don't often get a sense that you'd see a black model in a story about tweed, or a muted palette.' The alternative is to create an atmosphere of exoticism by putting a white model in a foreign environment like an African country or India. 'She becomes exotic and they don't even have to resort to using a black model.'Whitley has a theory that, when a black image is used on the front of a glossy magazine it is often in February, traditionally the lowest-selling month anyway. 'The poor sales become a self-fulfilling prophesy.' As a young woman growing up in Washington and Los Angeles, her family would rush out to buy any magazine with a black person on the front. They imagined they could boost sales single-handed.The lack of black images prompts some commentators to wonder whether magazines are interested in black readers at all. Fashion is a business and like all businesses it goes where it thinks the money is. 'This is a commercial industry,' says Michael Gross, 'run by a bunch of old people. Their job is not to change the world, it is to sell frocks. It's not racism. It's not even unconscious racism. It's an utter cluelessness about the real world.'There is a view, though, that if Senator Barack Obama does win on Tuesday, the response will be profound, even on cosseted, inward-looking Planet Fashion. Michelle Obama has wowed the industry with her fashion instincts. She's already reinvented the way a potential First Lady can dress. She might soon be the most sought-after woman on any glossy magazine front cover anywhere in the world. True, she's not a model but it could mark a sea change. 'It will be a wake-up call,' says Gross. 'The reaction in the fashion business will be a blatant and almost laughable attempt to catch up. Such is this craven industry and such is the way they behave.'CatwalkFashionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Black. Beautiful. Barely seen | Life and style | The Observer {...} Louise France meets the woman leading the fight against racism on the catwalk {...} Published: November 2, 2008, 12:03 am - Indexed: November 2, 2008, 10:47 am - Page Size: 93KB |