HOW CAN WE MAKE THE EXCLUSIVE INCLUSIVE?

In so many ways, fashion is freedom. It’s a world that encourages boundless creative possibility. Image-makers, designers, stylists, hair and makeup artists – all of us are afforded the opportunity to create entire universes – visual narratives that reflect the way we see the world, or the way we wish that we existed in the world.We react and respond to our world, see beyond our horizons and create our future. Perhaps that’s why we so often use the word “fantasy” to describe fashion – because, at its very core, fantasy is the imagination’s effort to realise an ideal, to create a utopia. I’ve always found this idea of “fashion as fantasy” difficult to negotiate because it requires me to subscribe to rather arbitrary and subjective standards of beauty and the idea that certain things are desirable and others are not. It’s always made me question who is determining who is beautiful and what is ideal, and I’ve found it challenging to exist in an industry that demonstrably categorises me as neither. Fashion can bring the world together but only if we abandon the idea that there are superior ways to be, to dress, to look. I love fashion. I love clothes. I worship craftsmanship and the men and women who work day in, day out to produce the wondrous objects that furnish our world. I would spend my last dollar on a Prada platform that makes me feel invincible, but I will always do so knowing that it is a luxury.That my access to luxury is a rare and incredible privilege and that the spaces I inhabit – spaces that allow me to interact with luxury on a daily basis – are rarefied and exclusive. Fashion does not need to be a reality for everyone, but I do think we can work in ways to democratise this industry.We should absolutely preserve the aspirational aspects of fashion that allow people to dream or to escape.We should protect the fantasy. But we must also construct a world that allows all people to see themselves within it. I’ve found that one of the most effective ways to do this is to hire teams that are representative of the world around us and to photograph subjects who are diverse.To me, the question of whether or not “diversity” as a concept is divisive feels irrelevant. Instead, we should be thinking about why we are asking this in the first place.The need to represent should not be a theoretical or moral pursuit – it shouldn’t be forced upon the powers that be or necessitated to check some sort of box.We must change the way we think about who can engage with fashion… and we’d better do it fast because the world won’t wait forever.