- Title: VARIOUS: Italian Vogue releases issue featuring all black models
- Date: 16th July 2008
- Summary: ABUJA, NIGERIA (JULY 11, 2008) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) NAOMI CAMPBELL, SAYING: "I've had an extremely wonderful and am very grateful for my career but I'm worried after me the girls after me, the opportunities they get, the way they get treated. And one of the reasons I still do what I do is because if I don't do it there would be no representation and I want to help the ones coming up after me or I might have stopped already but I feel I have a responsibility to keep black women or women of colour out there."
- Embargoed: 31st July 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Entertainment
- Reuters ID: LVA26V55S9AXE94UYKOUIX9V5KM0
- Story Text: Italian Vogue has decided to push the question of colour to the fore by bringing out its July issue featuring only black models. The issue is set to be released in the United States on Tuesday (July 15).
Italian vogue has decided to face the issue of colour in the fashion industry to the fore with its July issue featuring only black models.
After years of complaints by models such as Naomi Campbell that black models had a tougher time getting ahead, the magazine's editor Franca Sozzani has decided to highlight the issue.
The magazine also includes Tyra Banks, Iman, and other black actors, models and singers.
Black role models in the modelling world, along with designers and agents have formed a protest group in New York in order to combat what they call discriminatory measures in the fashion industry that, they say, have caused levels of exposure for black models to fall drastically since the 1960's.
Sozzani hopes in some way to combat this discrimination but she says she was also inspired by the figure of American presidential candidate Barack Obama, who could become the country's first black president.
"When I decided to do this issue it was the beginning of February.
It was the big Tuesday, something like that, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and I thought that was a fantastic change for America," Sozzani told Reuters Television at a fashion show in Rome earlier this month.
"I really don't think at all that there would be any kind of racism over black in fashion," Sozzani told Reuters Television at a fashion show in Rome recently.
"It is much easier to find white girls because we have had in the years many kind of waves from the American girls to the Swedish girls, to now the east girls, from the Russian girls, I think we need to find more talents even in the black girls instead to complain and to say there are no black girls, because there are a lot of beautiful black girls around," Sozzani added.
Ethiopian Liya Kedebe discovered by former designer of Gucci and YSL Tom Ford was selected to be the cover girl for the special Italian Vogue issue. Alongside her are British teenage model Jourdann Dunn, Sessilee Lopez, and Naomi Campbell.
Iman, also from Ethiopia, was often credited as being the first black supermodel and was a favourite of French designer Yves Saint Laurent.
Alek Wek was born in Sudan and emigrated to the United Kingdom after fleeing the civil war in her country. She was discovered while shopping in a market in London.
Tyra Banks hosts a hugely successful eponymous talk show and hostess of "America's Next Top Model" but has walked the runways for Victoria's Secret and became the first black woman to appear on the cover of the highly-coveted Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
But perhaps the most prolific is British supermodel Naomi Campbell who refuses to retire after more than two decades on the world's catwalks because there are still too few black beauties in the fashion industry.
While many of her colleagues of the late 1980s -- like Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington -- have moved on from the runways, the 38-year-old icon continues to turn heads at the world's top fashion shows.
"I'm very grateful for my career, but I worry for the girls after me for the opportunities they get -- the way they get treated. And this is one of the reasons I still do what I do," she told Reuters in a weekend interview in Nigeria.
Campbell, who as a teenager was the first black model to grace the covers of the French and British editions of Vogue magazine, said many fashion designers still favoured fair-skinned models over their dark-skinned counterparts.
"I don't do so many shows anymore, but I do count how many girls of colour they use in the shows. It happens to be last year New York was the worst," the British bombshell said, wearing a simple white short-sleeved top and blue jeans.
"Now at Paris Haute Couture there was only one black girl out of all the shows. It cannot be a trend."
Insiders in the fashion world believe the all black issue in Italian vogue is unlikely to be recreated in the U.S. edition with only a small article about the issue of colour in the fashion industry expected to appear in the July edition. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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