One of Britain’s leading model agents has offered a disturbing insight into the racial discrimination holding back the careers of black models
Speaking as London Fashion Week drew to a close, Carole White, co-founder of Premier Model Management, which supplies models to top fashion brands, admitted that finding work for black clients was significantly harder than for the white models, because both magazines and fashion designers were reluctant to employ them.
“Sadly we are in the business where you stock your shelves with what sells,” she said.
“According to the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3255, black models don’t sell,” White continued. “People don’t tend to talk about it, but black models have to be so beautiful and perfect because we can’t have a lot of diversity with black models; it’s harder work for the agency because there’s not so much on offer. White models can have more diversity.”
Ms White pointed the finger at those organising model castings, adding: “We have had casting briefs which say ‘no ethnics’. But we are better in London than Paris and Milan; there if you offer a black girl they will drop the book like it’s hot; it’s such hard work for the bookers.”Her comments will reopen one of the most sensitive debates within the fashion industry, where the presence of racism has been a cause of fierce resentment in the past. After a brief golden age in the Eighties and Nineties, Ms White’s analysis suggests that fashion show designers and the industry media have regressed to an earlier, more blinkered approach. Naomi Campbell has been particularly critical of the trend, at one point threatening to set up a model agency for black women.