Stella Jean, the only Black woman on Italy’s fashion council withdrew from Milan Fashion Week in 2023, citing a lack of dedication to diversity and inclusion – fearing negative consequences for herself and other minority-affiliated designers.
She delivered an emotional speech about the personal cost she had to pay for drawing attention to racial injustice in Italy during a runway show last September 2023.
Following this, she told The Associated Press that the Italian National Fashion Chamber had drastically reduced support for the We Are Made in Italy collective of young designers of color working in Italy.
The WAMI group, who were scheduled to kick off the fashion week with a digital presentation, withdrew from the event together with Stella Jean.
Jean’s decision was regretted, Italian Fashion Chamber President Carlo Capasa told the AP at the time. He also said that the final fashion week calendar presented was “full of diversity.”
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Capasa told the AP, “You will see all that we are doing for people of color who are working in Italy in the calendar that we are presenting today.”
In a letter to Capasa, Jean announced her strike and requested that it only be lifted if he could guarantee in writing that the WAMI designers and supporters won’t suffer any harm in their professional lives “because of our history of misunderstanding.”
“This admittedly extreme measure of mine stems from having heard several voices from the collective worried about ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ repercussions, including difficulty in securing funding and services from sponsors and partners, given the power wielded by you as president of the chamber in the industry,’’ she wrote in a letter obtained by the AP.
Capasa claimed not to have read the letter yet and not to be aware of WAMI’s withdrawal. The draft of the Milan Fashion Week schedule including largely womenswear previews for the 2023 winter season was even leaked, featuring Stella Jean and WAMI.
Following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, African-American designer Edward Buchanan, Jean, and Afro Fashion Week Milano director Michelle Ngonmo established WAMI with the goal of drawing attention to the underrepresentation of minorities in the Italian fashion business. It happened after a few well-known fashion labels made headlines across the globe for their racial faux pas.
Ngonmo told the AP that over the project’s three years, the chamber’s financial support had decreased, and Afro Fashion Week Milano was unable to raise the 20,000 euros ($21,000) necessary to help the five young designers create strong looks to present along with a video.
According to Ngonmo and Jean, the Italian fashion chamber provided complete support for the collections of the two WAMI classes, each comprising five designers. However, the third generation has not received any money from the chamber. With the help of other allies and their own efforts, Jean, Buchanan, and WAMI were able to finance their September event.
In a significant development for the movement, WAMI designer Joy Meribe began Milan Fashion Week previews for spring/summer 2022.
However, Jean said that these actions had proven to be “performative.” She told the AP, “They used WAMI as a free pass of safe conduct for diversity.” She claimed that she was giving up on the “ongoing battle” in Italy to get attention for designers of color because she was tired of it.
She remarked, “I cannot always be this way; I am a fighter by nature.”
