Dear Aus Fashion Week 👗 We Need To Talk 😡

Published Nov 7, 2023, 4:34 AM

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13 models have boycotted Melbourne Fashion Week. 

And simply, it's not looking good. 

Your fave gremlins discuss what needs to change, respectfully. 

We love chit chatting, so whatever we can't say on air, we put here, In our catchup podcast! Every weekday we bring you a replay of our show and an extended segment just for the podcast (like this one!). 

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How bad does the Australian fashion industry have to be for them to be an active boycott? You have to wonder, because we already know, and I'm sure people kind of know that modeling or fashion isn't really the best industry. I think a lot of people talk about how it can feel and come across as quite exploitative or quite uninclusive, and so to hear that it's gotten worse, you have to think, like.

How bad could it actually get?

And I know that people kind of make the statement that, oh, people know what they're getting into when they go into certain types of careers. But I would argue that you don't really know something until you've done it, and you could really empathize or sympathize or even conceptualize what it could be like. But if you're actually in there actively benefiting and you stop your.

Own bag, that's big. That's big anyway.

So over the last couple of weeks, I've been seeing a lot of unnews articles pop up about black models in particular boycotting Melbourne Fashion Week and other things in the Australian fashion industry, and you might ask for what reason in particular, and why is it just a group of these thirteen black models. And so they've talked about how they've experienced blatant tokenism, lack of necessary inclusive practices, like having people that can actually do their hair and do their makeup receiving less pay than their non black colleagues. And the thing that gets to be really tricky is because a lot of these models have and do work internationally, so they're not comparing this to like, I've only worked here and this is really bad and I'm just complaining. It's more so I've worked everywhere else and this is not on There was a direct quote and I won't name the people who are quoting this because we should protect identities. This is a very tense and tenuous subject, but this one model said that in London, New York and Paris you could not get away with what the Australian fashion industry is doing here, like what and how it treats black models, but they don't seem to care or to want to change. Another person said, black models doing Australian Fans Week is a form of self destruction.

Babes. These are quotes.

These are not just like these are statements. Another person said, it's absolutely the most traumatizing, dehumanizing, underpaying, an overall mentally draining week, and I have no desire to continue to participate. Now here's the thing about boycotts. You can approach them in a ton of different ways. You can actively stop participating making any money through it. You can boycott certain events. You can just make statement and encourage other people to do what they need to do. But in this instance, I feel like maybe what's caused this conversation to start is because for the last three years, as though, there's been this over emphasis on making sure that all kind of entertainment industries are more inclusive. And we talked about body inclusivity, disability inclusivity, gender inclusivity, sexuality inclusivity, all of these things. And so I think what people are getting frustrated with is that we're learning the rhetoric. We know what to say, we know how to make people think that things are going to get better. And when push comes to shove for thirteen people, thirteen models, to put their names and face to these statements, it's not looking good. It's not looking good. I really, really do employ you to go check out these articles for yourself. There's an expertsa currently in the City Morning Herald, and it is very lengthy and it's very deep and it's very detailed, and I'm not sure if you'd know what to do afterwards, because I sure didn't. I was like, Okay, damn, well, I'm not going to fashion.

Think that's not the one.

But you know, I'm just one person, and I don't run the fashion industry, and I can opt in and opt out, and these are this is these people's vocation, it's their livelihood. Like, yes, I'm sure some of the skills are transferable, but at this point, choosing like morals of a livelihood babes. You gotta know it's looking bad.

I feel like I've noticed, which is why this is surprising from like a consumer point of view that the fashion industry does have more diversity. But then sometimes I'm put in situations with like certain brands or certain events and stuff, and I'm like, oh, oh my god, I live in.

Everyone's heard this all before.

But like the little microcosm of like following like a very small percentage of people who would be affected by this, Yeah, it's like what we saw with like the voice Parliament. Yeah, like I'm assuming everyone's on the S train in the next minute. It's like totally not that.

Yeah.

It always surprises me when I when I go to events or when I hear these kind of things and you hear these like you can actually see that of course this is still happening. When it's presented to you, it is hard to not feel hopeless. But then it also kind of is one of those things where they're I think there is actionable things that can happen to fix this that it actually is like relatively simple, which is just to continue to include more and more people, is it not?

No, well, I mean it is simple. Number one.

I think the boycott shouldn't be happening. Like the extent that somebody would have to literally limit their ability to live their life, to cut off their own supply to money that gives them safety, security, and shelter, to make a statement so low charge about what they're experiencing insane like insane. Could you imagine going to your retail job, going to your office job and being treated so badly, you and all your other employers of the same ethnicity being treated so poorly that you were like I would rather have no job and risk having no home, no way to feed myself, no way to live, than to be in this environment. Like you couldn't even fathom having to make that decision because it would just not be necessary, Like what could truly be happening to you? That this is necessary? That's the thing that gets me and I loved in the expos how they talked about how the tokenism, because I think that people can't fathom how tokenism isn't actually good in the sense that what ends up happening is that it's exactly what you said. It's like by looking at it, like isn't it fine? Like isn't it fine? It's like I can't tell you how many times I've been included in like a makeup campaign for a brand that doesn't have my shit aid who's just like, oh, we just want use it.

You don't even need it.

You don't even need foundation or conciller, Like it's just like beautiful skins, beautiful, you.

Don't even need it.

Or you know how many times I've gone to do a photo shoot and someone's like, we love her body positivity and then tries to put me a size twenty in size twelves and then.

Says, oh, but this is really stretchy. Do you know?

It's like people, it's it's definitely hard to conceptualize something that you don't experience.

But I think that's the thing.

Like the easy part is to claim, like to claim that you are aware, to claim that you are inclusive, to claim that you are not exclusive. The hard part is to actually be it, because suddenly you're like, oh, there's so much I hadn't considered. Like if you threw me, if you were getting your makeup done and the makeup artist pulled out all their stuff and did not have All they had was foundation that was sixteen shades too dark for you. All they had was concealer that was too dark for you. All they had was lipstick that was too dark for you. You'd be like, oh, that's like what is this?

Who is this person? And like how are you qualified?

And that's everything people always ask me. It's like, oh my god, Like why do you do your own hair and makeup and shoots? Why do you style yourself?

Why would I do that?

I see somebody recently wanted to do a feature on me in a magazine and they were like, oh, with all of our features, we include shoppable links. So like, you know, let's say you talk about a lip loss you like, or you talk about a book you wanted to read, We'll just like include links and then we get.

A bit of a kickback, right.

Part of the discussion was about like what you wear and how you dress, and like, oh, people really like your style. I want to be able to link clothing and things. And so they're like, but we can only link from a few of our selected partners, like people that we can get affiliate kickbacks from. So it's going to choose those people. I said, okay, cool, show me what that looks like. When you're done. Every single brand they chose to feature didn't go high than a size twelve.

Oh, and they're like, do you mind.

I was like, yeah, babe, Like, I definitely mind, because you're not going to use my likeness so you get a kickback to sell things to people. Given the impression that I'm co signing it, I don't get a kickback.

They're like, no, yeah, totally, Like we get where you're coming from. We sh get realize it to be so hard.

I'm like that's the point though, Yeah, And so like when we get back to this idea, like it's okay to not realize it's really difficult. But now that people are having to cut off access to like livelihoods, what is the solution? And unfortunately, I don't think the solution is going to happen because realistically, you take away these thirteen black models, there are thousand and forty five hundred million trillion other models or other ethnicities who would die to be in those spots, who are a different kind of inclusive who can they just like platform.

Yeah.

Man, that's why I say, you know, you guys are all anti girl Boss. What do you think that I have all these businesses, so I'm the one in charge of how I make money, so at the end of the day, I don't have to experience these things where like people are ostracizing me so much that I have to make these statements to cut off my back.

What I find funny is I was like, from my time on the insidequote unquote on the.

Inside the womb is like I can see in prison.

I can see on a very like person to person level, the amount of hot potatoing that goes on in every single like workplace.

It's not my problem, it's not my problem.

Well I can't do This's like we just we just make the event, we just make the brand, or we just did the marketing. And it's true, like it's not everybody's thing to deal with, but if nobody is looking after it, then nothing changes.

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