New York Fashion Week will soon descend upon us like a school group descends on Pinkberry after a field trip, so naturally people in the biz are gearing up for the circus.
CFDA chairman Diane von Furstenberg and president Steven Kolb have sent an open letter to NYFW designers reminding them of the CFDA’s health guidelines and urging them to keep celebrating diversity, so, good on them. If you were wondering if the BMI law recently passed in Paris changed anything for NYFW, the answer is no. Listen to RunwayRiot’s Iskra Lawrence’s thoughts on the law here.
The CFDA letter reads, “New York is the most diverse city in the world, and the New York runways reflect this more and more. With NYFW: Men’s and Women’s upon us, we’d like to remind you to keep celebrating that diversity. ” If by “more and more” you mean that the NYFW models who walked back in the fall were 71.6% white as opposed to 77.4% the previous spring then yes, you’re correct on that, DVF.
The health guidelines highlight the same ‘ole stuff — education, eating disorder counseling, not keeping young models out past curfew, and providing healthy nibbles for the troupe backstage. Reasonable.
The “diversity” the industry has consistently given us doesn’t even come close to cutting it as far as representation for women of all ethnicities and sizes goes. We don’t need to go into the boatload of reasons why it’s long overdue that the fashion industry put the PEDAL TO THE METAL on diversity.
It’s helpful that DVF and Kolb are taking time out of their sweet, fashionable, important lives to send this message. Needless to say, we’ll be crossing our fingers and toes that more designers actually take the diversity memo into account, but we won’t be holding our breaths or anything.
Related Links:
This Awesome Petition Is Demanding Larger Sample Sizes at NYFW
Paris Fashion Week’s Top Shows Gave Us 0 Curvier Models Out of 414
