ok, but why do we default to white if it didn't matter to consumers? look at balmain menswear. lookbooks are white-exclusive. designer is black. i just find it... odd.
I have no idea honestly.
My personal take on it is that looking for equality in high fashion is a fool's errand. By their very nature they are exclusionary. They don't showcase anyone that could really be considered "ugly" unless it's some kind of ironic and exotic ugly. They don't showcase anyone that's not super skinny.
Before we even move on to race, we've already established here that the norm for these people is to look down on most of the population and only pick a small handful of them to use as models.
Add race into the mix and who knows what their motivation really is? Is it sales, status, tradition, or straight up racism? I don't pretend to know. The difference is that I don't pretend to care either.
They're an insular, highly judgmental community of snobs that define their lives by obsessing about how they look. Trying to convince these people to pick something other than what they want seems like a fool's errand. Fashion is their art, and artists can do whatever they want in my opinion. How many minorities actual try to break into high fashion? What are the numbers on that statistically? I have no idea so if anyone knows, that would be interesting.
Most of these people are probably liberals, like most artists, so I don't know how much I believe actual racism is the motivation behind it. It's certainly possible, but without any detailed knowledge of the situation, I don't like to label people with that until I'm sure.