The Color Of Fashion Ethnic Models Are Not The Look Of The Moment

The models shuffled down the runways wearing the newest fall fashions, a lackadaisical attitude and a troubling blondness.

Like androids, they advanced with their eyes at half-mast and their arms barely moving. First one, then another and another. Relentlessly, undeniably blond. Individually, these models are not striking. None has a va-voom physique, gams like Rita Hayworth or a face that can make heads swivel. Mostly, they are nice-looking girls - the diminutive the industry applies to all female models - with similar appearances: reed-thin frames, pale complexions and light hair.

They have the look of the moment. And it is white.

Fashion “got whitewashed,” says Harriette Cole, former fashion editor of Essence and creative director of Savoy, a black lifestyle magazine in development.

Black models had made significant inroads during the late ‘70s. Designers Hubert de Givenchy, Andre Courreges and Christian Dior all used black models, says Audrey Smaltz, founder of the Ground Crew, which provides backstage support for many top New York runway shows. Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent “loved black girls. They liked the way they moved,” she says.

There weren’t a lot of black models, but there they were: Beverly Johnson, Iman, Naomi Sims, Pat Cleveland and mannequins whose names aren’t remembered.

In 1968 Glamour put the first black woman on the cover of a mainstream woman’s magazine.

A dynamic group of black models came into its own during the ‘80s and early ‘90s, including Karen Alexander, Veronica Webb, Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks. Campbell gained international acclaim. Revlon’s signing of Webb in 1992 made her the first black model to snag a major cosmetics contract.

Few black models took their place on the catwalk, however, as the reign of the gangly blondes began. And the industry loves them.

“When I see what they think is beautiful,” says Bethann Hardison, former model and founder of Bethann Management, “it blows my (expletive) mind.”

In the few weeks before a runway show, the booking of models begins. At “go-sees,” models visit designers, show producers, public relations staff and others. It’s a chance for an unknown girl to snag a high-profile job. It gives an agency the opportunity to push a new model.

According to industry experts, agencies send very few black models on go-sees, in part because they don’t have many to send. And that’s because the demand for black models is limited.

Says Cole: “Racism prevails. We can just say it.”

There’s also the secret language of go-sees.

“If you’re on a tight budget and maybe you only have $150 an hour to spend,” Smaltz says, “they’ll send all the black girls (who’re eager for the work), but they won’t send the good white girls.”

A model not only needs jobs, she needs the right clients. That’s where a handful of folks like James Scully, production coordinator for Kevin Krier & Associates, come in. In a single women’s wear season, Kevin Krier might produce up to eight of the top shows, including those for such designers as Todd Oldham and Tom Ford of Gucci. Scully can’t make a star, but if he puts a girl in the right shows, where she wears the hot dress, her photograph will appear around the world.

Two black models, Chrystelle and Kiara, have infiltrated the blond pack at a few of the important shows. Campbell still wields clout. But that’s it.

“In the black market,” Scully says, “it’s hard to find girls as beautiful as a Naomi (Campbell) or Kiara.”

Beauty, in the fashion industry, has a different meaning. “It’s a fashion level of beauty, not a good-looking-girl level,” Hardison says.

Fashion embraces those with striking, startling or mesmerizing looks. It celebrates change. But black models often are defined strictly by their ethnicity.

“For ethnic girls, it becomes a harder thing because they become pigeonholed,” Scully says.

“Fashion people, in their conscious mind, are not racists,” Hardison says. “But they’re not educated about black people or Asian people or Hispanic people. Their education is themselves, what they look like or what they want to look like.

“They’re not leaders; they’re followers. Everything is a trend in our business: What’s going on? What’s being done? How can I compete?”

The one trend to which the fashion industry seems oblivious is the changing face of the consumer. By 2010, the population is projected to be 25 percent non-white, says Wendy Liebmann, whose New York-based WSL Strategic Retail studies trends in marketing to ethnically diverse communities.

Yet the industry has long held that black cover models drive magazine sales down. Mark Clements says that’s not true. His New York research firm has, for more than 30 years, measured and studied factors affecting magazine sales. His clients have included all the major publishers of fashion magazines. What makes an issue sell ranges from the cover lines that promote stories to the expression on a model’s face.

When Glamour editor Ruth Whitney put the first black woman, Katiti Kironde II, on the cover of the college issue in August 1968, that issue marked Glamour’s largest sales at that point, says Whitney.

“It was something I really wanted to do,” she says. “I like it best, though, when it’s just casual, when it’s not a deliberate inclusion of some ethnic model in a hair story to include that kind of hair or in a skin story to include that kind of skin tone.”