MILAN (AP) — The only black designer on Italy’s fashion council is pulling out of Milan Fashion Week this month, citing a lack of commitment to diversity and inclusion, and announced a hunger strike Wednesday over concerns that others minority designers would associate with it will suffer a backlash.
Stella Jean told The Associated Press that the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana has significantly reduced support for the We Are Made in Italy collective of young black designers working in Italy after she gave an impassioned speech about the personal price she paid to expose racial injustice. in Italy during a fashion show last September.
Together with Stella Jean, the WAMI collective withdraws from the fashion week, which was supposed to open with a digital presentation.
The president of Italy’s Fashion Chamber, Carlo Capasa, told the AP he regretted Stella Jean’s decision, adding that the final fashion week calendar to be unveiled Wednesday is “full of diversity.”
“In the calendar we’re presenting today, you’ll see everything we’re doing for black people working in Italy,” Capasa told the AP. A press conference was scheduled for next Wednesday.
Jean sent a letter to Capasa informing him of the hunger strike, which he said would only be called off with his written assurance that WAMI planners and supporters would not suffer any professional harm “because of our history of misunderstandings.”
“This extreme measure of mine comes from hearing several voices in the collective concerned about the ‘serious’ or ‘harsh’ repercussions, including difficulties in obtaining funding and services from sponsors and partners, given the power you hold as president. . of the room. in the industry,” he wrote in a letter obtained by the AP.
Capasa said he had not yet read the letter and was unaware of the hunger strike and WAMI withdrawal. Both Stella Jean and WAMI appeared in a draft of the Milan Fashion Week calendar, mainly previewing womenswear for next winter, which launched last month.
WAMI was launched in the wake of the Black Lives Matters movement in 2020 by Jean, African-American designer Edward Buchanan and Michelle Ngonmo, head of Milan Afro Fashion Week, to draw attention to the lack of representation of minorities in the Italian fashion world. What followed were racial blunders by major fashion houses that made headlines around the world.
Ngonmo told the AP that financial support for the project from the House has dwindled in the three years so far, and that Afro Fashion Week in Milan has failed to come up with the 20,000 euros ($21,000) it would cost to support it . the five young designers created a robust presentation layout, plus a video.
The Italian fashion chamber fully supported the collections for the two WAMI classes, each with five designers, but the third generation did not receive any funding from the chamber, Ngonmo and Jean said. The September show with Jean, Buchanan and WAMI was funded by other allies and their contributions.
“Maybe the message is that the whole industry needs to wake up and say what can we do to make this happen?” Ngonmo told the AP.
A WAMI stylist, Joy Meribe, opened the Milan Fashion Week previews for Spring/Summer 2022, marking a major milestone for the movement.
But Jean said such moves proved to be “performative”.
“They used WAMI as a free pass to diversity,” Jean told the AP. He said he was coming out of exhaustion because of the “continuous struggle” for recognition of black designers in Italy.
“I’m a fighter by nature, but I can’t always be,” she said.
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