Rome — Stella Jean, the Haitian-Italian designer who has just announced a boycott of Milan Fashion Week, says she has suffered racism all her life.
The former model, a protégé of Giorgio Armani and the only black person ever to be appointed to Italy’s influential Fashion Council, will not show her latest collection at Milan Fashion Week later this month in a protest over racism. Jean said that while discrimination has been an “uncomfortable and punctual travel companion” in her life, she only encountered it in the fashion industry recently, when she raised questions of race. When she did so, she found that “broaching the subject of racism in Italy is to this day still an unconfessable taboo”.
Last week, Italy’s foreign minister Luigi Di Maio drew criticism for sharing “blackface” memes of himself on his Facebook page, a response to a wave of earlier memes that surfaced when he appeared in public with a deep sun tan.Jean said there has been years of silence and denial around questions of race in Italy. Earlier this year, she released a film showing Italian women of black and Asian origin revealing the racist comments they confront on a regular basis.
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