Friday, February 27, 2009

It DOES Matter If You're Black Or White


The times they are a changin'...

Our friends at Jezebel.com have done a dandy job of calculating the diversity of models that walked the recent NY Fashion Week. In my head, they used a Chanel calculator for said sums - I mean, seriously, Chanel now does guitars, snow boards, bikes and segways (don't worry, I had to Google it too) so why not a calculator? I could think of 100 Russian mafia wives who would just adore doing their rubles to euros conversions on one, dahlllling.

Anyway.

So, 116 labels showed at NY Fashion Week, with a total of 3,697 outfits, and of these 668 - or 18% - were, to be blunt, not white. Of these models, 41% were black, 36% Asian, 22% Latina and 1% other exotic stuff.

This figure represents a 6% increase on last year, which is great news. Yay! But, according to the 2006 US census, the general population is 26% not white, so the NY runways are still lagging behind...

If Jezebel do the sums again in September, I'll give you all an update. If they don't - any volunteers? BYO Chanel.