Does tokenism and racism still exist in the fashion industry?

 Tokenism and racism have been the fashion industry’s buzzword for some time now. The industry struggles to accept dark-skinned models, no thanks to tokenism, which commands that there can only be one Black girl on a runaway.

A video story of a British Indian model Neelam Gil which was reposted from Stylist Magazine shared about how she experienced racist taunts when she was growing up which affected her outlook and confidence.

She also spoke about how the fashion industry needs to change and motivational message to women of colour undergoing with the same issues that she once did.

Gill said the main thing that needs to change in the fashion industry is tokenism, adding that a lot of brands in the industry just use colour models to cover their backs. The show will be full of white women but there was only one black woman for the show. “I do see there’s been a change. It’s not enough but at least it’s a step in the right direction,” she says in the video.

When she was a kid, she remembered walking to school and someone shouted ‘Paki’ out the window. She had comments like ‘‘does your Dad own the corner shop?’ or ‘Is he a taxi driver?’ It makes me feel really angry. ‘I could never imagine doing that to someone’. It’s not something I’d stand for now and now I’m very outspoken about it.”

The first British Indian model to become the face of Burberry Beauty in 2014, Gill explained that every dark-skinned person should be proud of how they look and believes that it is about time for everyone to break barriers and stigmas.

In 2014, Ashley Chew, a model started the #BlackModelsMatter movement, which saw more models of colour on the runways, which at the time was only 10 percent diverse.

With the same effort, prominent models and celebrities should advocate against tokenism and racism so the fashion industry would eventually change.