Do black lives matter in Italian fashion?

For the first time in the history of Italian fashion, five bipoc fashion designers opened the Milan fashion week with the project “The Fab Five – We are Made in Italy”. And that’s not all: for the first time the National Chamber for Italian Fashion has decided to set up a working group of Afro-Italian professionals, called “Wami – We Are Made in Italy“, as an answer to the question: “Do Black Lives Matter in Italian Fashion?”.

A question posed in July 2020 by the stylist Stella Jean, the only black member of the Fashion Chamber, who was invited some time ago to parade on the stage of Giorgio Armani with her creations that recounted Africa in a modern key and showed fabrics in sophisticated colours.

After long months of dialogue, today five talents with roots in Africa and their present in Italy – Gisèle Claudia Ntsama (Cameroon-Como), Frida Kiza (Burundi-Fabriano), Mokodu Fall (Senegal-Rome), Karim Daoudi (Marrocco-San Mauro Pascoli) and Joy Meribe (Nigeria-Parma) – presented their collections in a virtual fashion show that opened the curtain on Milanese fashion. And in the “Wami” group, founded by Stella Jean herself, by Edward Buchanan and Michelle Francine Ngonmo, as well as the CNMI President Carlo Capasa, seven professionals from the world of “black excellence” from various sectors work together. All united by a single objective: to break down all forms of discrimination and work towards building a competitive multicultural system.