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subscribe to style file blog via RSSagainst the grain
February 15, 2008 12:07 pm
As if to prove the justice of Naomi Campbell’s vocal disapproval of the dearth of diversity in fashion, British-born Jourdan Dunn was the only model of color who appeared repeatedly on major catwalks in London this season. “I worry about it,” she said after the Issa show. “Luck is on my side that I keep getting cast, but there are so many beautiful black girls. I don’t understand why it’s always only me and maybe another girl who are chosen.” But at an uncommonly crowded Vauxhall Fashion Scout show, Avsh Alom Gur (who’s got Suzy Menkes’ approval) underscored Dunn’s seemingly obvious point about the range of black women who should be walking the runways by casting only women of color to show his orange, jade, and biscuit-colored silk and recycled-paper garments. Many outfits were bound with duct tape belts, and recalled the textures and combinations in African artist Seydou Keïta’s portraits. “My colors looked best against these models’ skin tones,” Gur pragmatically explained. “I was initially inspired by photos from the twenties and thirties of black women dressing to attend church in the American South. But I was not making a statement with this decision. I was just inspired by them.”
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