A few months ago, I received a message that started with the words “Every Nigga.” It was from a black human-resources manager warning me that people in fashion wouldn’t hire me if I had a framed print of the words “Every Nigga Is a Star” in the background of my profile picture. I tried to laugh it off, but it stung. How far have we really come in fashion if a black woman I’ve never met is advising me to dim my blackness so that I can continue to have a seat at the table?
A Besides, last January, the Russian street-style star Miroslava Duma had posted a bouquet of flowers with a note from her friend that said: “To my niggas in Paris.” Despite an outcry from some of Duma’s million-plus followers, she is still sought after for her opinions about the future of fashion.
Up until that moment, I had been proud of that photo. What the HR woman probably didn’t know is it had been taken as part of a feature on Into The Gloss. Boris Gardiner’s “Every Nigger Is a Star” is a classic anthem. It is the reason why Issa Rae says, “I’m rooting for everybody black,” when asked on the red carpet who she hopes will win an award. Black people are constantly told by our own government that we are lesser than, that our lives don’t matter. Those words are a rallying call.
The song “Every Nigger Is a Star” also played during the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund 2018 finalist Pyer Moss’s fall-winter 2018 show. Issa Rae then wore one of Moss’s jumpsuits with the phrase embroidered on a black satin sash at the CFDA Fashion awards, as the first person of color to host it in its 37-year history.
So why should it make this stranger so concerned for my future? To find out, I surveyed more than 100 black individuals, from assistants to executives, stylists, celebrities, models, and everyone in between. Plenty of names you might recognize declined to participate, and several cited fear as the reason. But I also had some of the most authentic, and often tearful, conversations about the pains of racism I’ve ever had.
It all makes sense once you see that behind the scenes, on sets for magazine covers, in castings for runways, and on the teams chosen to create multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, black people are rarely to be found in positions of power. There have never been more than one or two black editors-in-chief of any major U.S. magazines, and only one black designer leading a major American fashion brand. And, up until this month, no black photographer had ever shot the cover of Vogue. Only 15 of the 495 CFDA members are black, and only ten black designers have ever won a CFDA or CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award. One of the most popular and financially successful black designers, Tracy Reese, has never received a single nod. Less than 10 percent of the 146 fashion designers who showed at the major fall 2018 shows for New York Fashion Week were black, and only 1,173 black models out of 7,608 model castings walked.
