I have described myself as an intellectual wallflower and a social butterfly, but you should also know that I am something of a “single black female addicted to retail.” Maybe that is an extreme title because I don’t really spend my spare time shopping as much as do sleeping or eating, but I do love clothes. I am particular about what I wear and who it comes from, yet I am far from a label whore, just very label conscious. I don’t own any Louis, Gucci, or Prada but I can spot them from a mile away and I would be lying if I said I didn’t hope to own at least one item from each of these and other designers. But I read something today that makes me want to defer my dreams, indefinitely.

“Chanel Iman Still Hears, ‘We Already Have One Black Girl, We Don’t Need You Anymore'”

This headline from an article published in Jezebel.com focused on an interview that supermodel Chanel Iman did with the Times of London. Chanel Iman, one of the most beautiful models in the business–not “one of the most beautiful models who is black” but beautiful, period–told the Times that she still gets excused by designers because they have reached their black girl quota. For obvious reasons this is upsetting to her because the designers getting their one black model looks like a filling of a race quota instead of looking for beautiful women to wear beautiful clothing. The article goes on to document the dearth of black models in runway and print advertisements of some of the most popular fashion houses and shares word from some of the best casting agents in the business. From the latter we hear that some fashion houses–like Gucci–are looking to cast a particular type of beauty and it just so happens that that beauty is always white. Advertisers stand behind the business fact that “black models don’t sell.” At runway shows, people are lucky if they see one black model. The one black model has become the standard at some shows such as Calvin Klein who features one every other season. Of course designers themselves contrive excuses for why there aren’t more models of color based on the fact that black woman, non-white Hispanic women, or Asian women all have different body types (translation: we aren’t trying to make clothes that fit real women with shape of any kind). But none of this is new. Black models have complained about their treatment for years and their change hasn’t come.

I read the article and wondered, “What could make these designers, advertisers, casting agents, and anyone involved in the industry change their ways? And it hit me, “What if black women who, statistically speaking, are big spenders when it comes to apparel, accessories, and other non-essentials, stopped buying products from all of these designers who fail to represent them?” You vote with your money and to continue giving it to the people who don’t think enough of your beauty as a black woman is to vote “Yes” to a system of oppression–yes I went there. How is this a system of oppression? Consider it this way, the majority of black women spending their hard-earned money on Louis, Gucci, and Prada can barely afford it. And the ones who can afford it seem more interested in acquiring something that is a status symbol which proves to themselves and everybody else that they’ve “arrived.” In both cases, women are coming up off of millions of dollars to buy into a system that doesn’t see their intrinsic beauty as women, let alone as black women. Instead these designers are more than willing to profit off of the big-spending black woman and thriving off of tokenism. These women buy their designer goods, but the money in no way, shape, or form put back into their communities. The “one black girl is enough” response is not acceptable and as long as they have a quota for how many black women they put in a show, or continue to look for a particular kind of beauty that just happens to be white, we can’t continue to give them our money. Until every woman is able to see herself in a Burberry ad or on the runway of Calvin Klein–every season, or on the runways of Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, etc, consistently, she should guard her wallet fiercely and take her business to someone else.