These images are supposed to hearken back to Blackamoor images as decorative, but let’s look at what the term Blackamoor means.
blackamoor (plural blackamoors)
- (degrading) A person with dark skin, especially (but not necessarily) one from northern Africa [quotations ▼]
- a blackamoor slave, a blackamoor servant; and hence any slave, servant, inferior, or child [quotations ▼]
- (heraldry) a stylized Negro Argent, three blackamoors’ heads couped sable, capped or, fretty gules.
So, this is from Dolce & Gabbana’s 2013 collection. Let’s talk about the decision to re-purpose the racist imagery of the past as fashion for the future! While we’re talking about that, let’s also talk about the process from conception to execution for a collection which only images of black people as servants, and yet no actual black models were present on the runway. What does that thought process look like & how exactly will people try to spin this as harmless? Oh right, I’m certain any references to actual history will be met with the insistence that things are different now, and it just happens that the only black faces in this collection belong to images of slaves.
Dear Fashion industry,
(via supersoygrrrl)
