Race shouldn’t be going in and out of fashion. We need a fully diverse industry | Priya Elan

Yet more cases of racial insensitivity prove that people of colour need to be at the table when decisions are made

Like pencil skirts, cinched leather jackets and florals, it has come around again. But this “it” isn’t a trend, it is fashion’s tortured attitude towards racial diversity. For an industry built on intricate artistic visions and multilayered, meaningful visuals, there is a weak and shifting, stop-start attitude towards race.

Last week, Elle Germany’s latest issue featured the cover line “Back to black”, but the cover model was white. Inside, in a feature about models of colour, it misidentified one of them, Naomi Chin Wing, as another, Janaye Furman. The Elle Germany incident comes after last month’s snafu involving designer Kerby Jean-Raymond and The Business of Fashion. At an event organised by the news website to celebrate a list of people shaping fashion, including the likes of Dapper Dan, Jean-Raymond, whose collections for Pyer Moss reframe black history, called out the “insulting” and tokenistic way the event dealt with inclusivity. Inclusivity is currently a fashion buzzword.

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