Race, gender and class took over the London catwalks this season. Elitism is out and diversity is in
Fashion week has been hijacked by the real world. For decades, “the shows” existed in a champagne bubble, a parallel universe in which celebrities were jammed together on long benches, as if for a very glamorous school photo, and where mysterious diktats – Navy is the New Black; Minimalism is Dead – were pronounced six months ahead of time, as if by a cabal of fortune tellers.
But this is 2016, and identity politics has trumped everything else. From Brexit to the presidential election, public debate centres on issues not of policy, or economics, but of class, race and gender. On social media, if you are not cooing over cute panda videos you are probably debating a hashtagged identity issue – Kim Kardashian and the politics of nude selfies, or diversity at the Oscars. The most striking image of summer 2016 was of a woman in a burkini, surrounded by armed police. On 4 September, Kanye West caused a furore with a casting call requesting “multiracial women only” for his Yeezy catwalk show. On 8 September, the day New York fashion week opened, Lionel Shriver wore a sombrero on stage during an instantly controversial speech about cultural appropriation. In other words, this season’s fashion headlines were never all that likely to be about the sleeve shapes.
Related: Was Kanye West wrong to seek to cast 'multiracial women only'?
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