Life
Brazil: More black models should be included in Rio fashion show
Afro Brazilian model Isabel Correia.
Only a handful of black models sashayed down the catwalk at this week’s Rio fashion show, sparking fresh calls for quotas to ensure greater diversity in a country where more than half of the population is of African ancestry.
Some 24 labels displayed their latest designs at the Rio de Janeiro winter 2012 fashion week, that ran from Wednesday to Saturday, and as in previous years the models were overwhelmingly white.
Yet Brazil, home to 190 million people, has the world’s second largest black population after Nigeria.
Organizers refused to address this perennial lack of racial diversity, although in the past they claimed that “there is no racial discrimination” in an industry known for its preference for eurocentric standards of beauty.
For the first time in June 2009, the Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW), Latin America’s premier fashion event, imposed quotas requiring at least 10 percent of the models to be black or indigenous.
It acted after strong pressure from black groups and Brazilian prosecutors who blasted the SPFW’s longstanding bias towards white models.
Previously, only a handful of black models featured among the 350 or so that sashayed down the catwalk, usually less than 3 percent.
