During a Zoom-based town hall hosted on Tuesday evening by Harlem’s Fashion Row, an agency that promotes Black fashion designers, the mood was equally sober and defiant.
The groundswell of support that buoyed Black-owned brands in the months after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 has been ebbing away since last year, according to designers on the call. Legacy companies that supported efforts to diversify the fashion industry a few years ago are ending those programs. And tech platforms like Meta have openly and explicitly put an end to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts they championed only a few years ago.
On top of it all, the newly inaugurated Trump administration immediately unleashed a salvo of blunt-force executive orders targeting diversity efforts in both the government and the private sector. In particular, one executive order signed on the president’s first day in office rescinded a six-decade-old order that prevents businesses from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”
“Four years of progress have been erased in 10 days,” said Dr. D’Wayne Edwards, a footwear design legend whose career stretches back 30 years. Edwards is currently the founder and president of the Pensole Footwear Design Academy, the only Historically Black College in the country to exclusively focus on design.
Inga Beckham, co-founder and co-owner of the luxury fashion brand Sergio Hudson, which sells in department stores including Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s, said it’s clear that there has been a serious shift away from the environment that helped boost Black-owned brands in the last few years.
“When George Floyd happened, it went from one extreme to another,” Beckham said. “It was great. Our phone was ringing off the hook. ‘DEI’ started happening and everyone was knocking on our door. Big retailers came and were placing big orders. And then, all of a sudden, it starts rolling back and rolling back.”
Sergio Hudson has never had outside investment and has struggled to compete with legacy luxury houses like Gucci and Chanel, which have institutional backing and decades of inertia behind them. That, compounded by the lack of generational wealth of Black Americans thanks to centuries of discrimination, has made being Black in fashion an increasingly difficult prospect.
“The power in fashion is through money and, at the core of it, Black people don’t have money in fashion,” said Sergio Hudson, the designer of his namesake brand. “We don’t have big power brands like Gucci or Chanel that are Black-owned. There aren’t serious investors that are Black who invest in fashion.”
But there was a feeling of optimism that collective action could help stave off the attacks on diversity in fashion until, hopefully, the pendulum swings the other way.
“What Black designers need now is for people who care to buy something,” Hudson said. “And if you can’t afford to, tell someone else to buy something. That’s what we need.”
Even as companies like Target publicly end their DEI efforts, others like Pinterest have signaled that they will not give up their support. This week, the beauty brand Lush Cosmetics announced it is renaming three of its bath bombs to “Diversity,” “Equity” and “Inclusion.” In a statement, the company said it “doesn’t wish to see the words disappear.”
“We stand in solidarity with all those people who have worked so hard to create these rights,” said Mark Constantine, founder and CEO of Lush Cosmetics.
Terry Roberts, who is chief diversity officer at American Eagle Outfitters, said his brand is still committed to DEI.
“A lot of people at work, of all races, have come to me in the last couple weeks and asked if we are going to continue on our path,” Roberts said. “And I say, ‘Yes we are.’ There are a lot of people who are still going to fight and find a strategy that works.”
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‘It’s rolling back and rolling back’: What Black fashion leaders are saying about DEI – Glossy
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