Another round of fashion weeks has come to a close, thus another opportunity presents itself to examine the industry's strides when it comes to inclusivity on the runway. Like previous seasons, diversity both grew and progressed on the catwalk in some areas of The Fashion Spot's seasonal diversity report, while other realms of representation still need major work. We're happy to report that Fall 2018 was the most inclusive of transgender and ethnically diverse castings, though it lacked in size inclusivity.
New York Fashion Week continued to be the most racially diverse of all the fashion weeks, with 37.3 percent nonwhite models ― just a .4 percent increase from last season. Across the pond, London Fashion Week had a significant increase in runway diversity, with a 3.6 percent increase at 37.6 percent nonwhite models. MFW was up as well with 27.1 percent nonwhite models with a 2.4 percent increase and a historic yet "seriously?" moment with Anok Yai becoming the first black model to open Prada since Naomi Campbell in 1997, while Paris had the biggest increase with a 5.2 percent jump to 27 percent. The Fall 2018 season also made major improvements for transgender and non-binary representation with 64 models cast across the four cities.
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There wasn't much advancement made for size representation and inclusivity. Percentages of curvy models on the runways actually fell back for the first time in two seasons, after records were broken for Spring 2018 with twelve runways featuring a total of 38 curvy models. As we expected, Chromat and Christian Siriano accounted for 19 of the season's 30 curvy model castings and a protest erupted at London Fashion Week to address the lack of curvy models there, led by Hayley Hasselfhoff. As writer Shammara Lawrence so poignantly called out earlier this month, "As more designers are becoming aware of the racial makeup of their model casts, one has to wonder why the same amount of attention isn’t being paid to plus representation. As the numbers show, plus women are not afforded the the same opportunities as their straight size counterparts — but why?"
With another Fashion Week comes another chance for improvement, thus we hope the brands that sorely missed the inclusivity mark for Fall 2018 turn things around next season. Even Anna Wintour admitted, "It’s just like fashion shows are so behind still. It’s really frustrating,” We second that emotion, while still holding onto the optimism that the industry's image makers will understand that a better reflection of reality can only help their bottom line.
Related: Dear European Designers, Stop Acting Like Plus-Size Models Don't Exist
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