Typically thestory during Fashion Week is fashion but something interesting happened andit’s happening in Hollywood too. In thispolitical environment of exclusion and the #mettoo movement there was somethingvery strange happening at fashion week, inclusion. A world that has typicallyexcluded certain women, making them feel they weren’t good enough suddenlyappeared to be all about the power of being a woman. I’m hoping the trend willcontinue, grow and become the new normal. Designers, producers and ad agencieshave finally heard us, they are showing us people that better represent us as a whole.
We saw plus sizedmodels on the runway, let me repeat that plus sized models! This is something thepublic has been screaming they wanted for decades. When we learned that nodesigner was willing to dress Leslie Jones for her red carpet moment thefashion world told us that we are not included in their world. Than somethingamazing and powerful happened, Christian Siriano stepped up not only for Lesliebut several plus sized stars. He heard her story and thought it was insane,cruel so he contacted Leslie. He now has made a point of dressing the throw alwaysof the fashion world and it didn’t hurt his brand. The world didn’t stopturning and I don’t know about you but he became one of my favorites.
Last week we sawother designers embrace us and our differences, showing us that it’s ourdifferences that make us beautiful. Others decided to embrace the #metoomovement like Tom Ford’s trend worthy sequined Pussy Power bag. New Yorkfashion week featured an all hijab clothing line by Vivi Zubedi and it wasstunning. There were women of color, different ethnicities and more welldiversity. The big story however was the amount of plus sized models walkingthe runway at some of the biggest shows like Prabal Gurung, Chromat, MichaelKors and of course Christian Siriano to name a few. For the first time we sawpeople like us being represented at one of the biggest fashion shows.
It’s not just fashion week, the ads inmagazines, on tv and now movies are becoming more inclusive. Last year girlsgot their first solo super hero, Wonder Woman and the Black Panther have givengirls and black children big screen heroes that look like them. They were hugeproductions that have been critically acclaimed and breaking box office recordsthat just shows how hungry we have been to be included. Hopefully Hollywoodsees that being inclusive is profitable, that giving our children super heroesthat look like them on the big screen is empowering even if it’s just aboutprofits. In a time were a lot of us feel excluded from government, with whitesupremacist no longer hiding and women feeling powerless against sexualharassment at work Hollywood, fashion and ad agencies are in a unique positionto make changes. Hopefully now that they see it is also profitable and we keepsupporting companies that have become more inclusive, that have empoweredwomen, people of color and religious diversity this is just the beginning andreal change is coming
