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Amidst these unfortunate situations of political and communal unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd, the fashion fraternity has stood together and done their bit for the black community as well as protestors. While many high-end fashion labels and ace designers have donated funds to the Black Lives Matter movement and other charities that support this cause, there were a few international brands who faced flak for their racist actions in the past. Many models and stylists called out such labels that have posted solidarity messages but refused to act on it prior. However, this time facing the flak was Anna Wintour’s Vogue Magazine!
Vogue came under fire when its employees recalled their unpleasant experience of facing racism at the workplace. Diet Prada, being fashion’s vigilante, shed light on this issue in his latest post:
Lending support to the magazine’s ex-employee Shelby Ivey Christie, DP shared her version of the story. She called her experience working for the glossy back in 2016 as the “the most challenging and miserable” time of her career, and to top that, bullying from white colleagues was exhausting.
DP also highlighted Christie’s series of tweets wherein she narrated an incident related to racism and no one including the HR took an action against it. She also mentioned about black employees being overqualified yet underpaid. Not just racism, the employees of colour also faced a nepotism issue as on the magazine’s social media team two black members were "Ivy League grads while their white counterparts had “no prior relevant experience”.
Another Vogue’s employee, Zara Rahim opened up on this sensitive issue. Hired as the communications director in 2017, she was the only woman of colour back in that time and thus was loaded with diversity responsibilities that could easily pass as an additional job. "I was told in the end I was ‘complaining too much’", she mentioned as quoted by Diet Prada. “There are people who hold these keys and have held them for decades. They know what they are doing, fire them”, she concluded.
Although not being a Vogue employee, journalist Noor Tagouri’s experience with the glossy also reeked of racism. She was photographed for a feature in February 2019 and misidentified in print as a Pakistani actress, Noor Bukhari.
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To sort out the situation, Vogue offered her a written feature but didn’t allow her to acknowledge the misidentification. When countered with a separate feature topic she was told the magazine wouldn’t publish two diversity pieces in one year. “An offer to lead a free Diversity & Inclusion event was also shut down because “it would make it look like Vogue has ‘a problem.’”Eventually, they settled on a Town Hall, but ghosted Tagouri after a schedule mix up,” read Diet Prada’s caption.
What are your thoughts on this?
(Source- Instagram)
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