Diesel Showed Almost No Diversity on the Runway
Graffiti artist Rosemarie Calderon models in the 2013 Diesel advertising campaign. Photo: Diesel
When Diesel launched a new Tumblr-driven ad campaign in 2013, it broke barriers and looked cool. Starring a female swimmer turned male model, a plus-sized pink haired artist, and other vanguard faces, the ads broadcast a new era of the denim giant: one focused on power and cultural caché built through—not in spite of—inclusion.
Three years later, Diesel continues to break boundaries by building bridges. They’ve put beauties on blast like Jillian Mercato, a power-pouting brunette with muscular dystrophy who later booked a job with Carine Roitfeld. They cast Winnie Harlow, a model with huge doe eyes and full-body vitiligo, a full year before Beyoncé did. And in their most recent campaign, they got Terry Richardson to shoot a mature silver-haired model who was both sexy and fully clothed (imagine).
So today at Diesel’s Black Gold runway, we had high hopes for the vision of great clothes on global bodies to continue, especially on a catwalk for the brand’s upscale Black Gold label. That assumption was our bad.
Diesel Spring Summer 2017 runway show in Milan, Italy. Photo: Getty Images
The show boasted beautiful girls, for sure. But very few were women of color. All were sample sized. All were at least 5'7. And none resembled the vibrant mix of beautiful misfits that we’d hoped to see, especially as the world begins to realize—finally—that luxury is not a homogenous concept.
Are we holding the brand to a different standard than other shows? Perhaps, though even Prada—a notorious #SoWhite show—boasted a rainbow of skin tones on its current catwalk. But when your Instagram bio says you’re “an alternative contemporary resource to a new fashion world,” it means you’re looking forward towards the future style scene.
Is that scene pale, tall, and thin? It’s not—and Diesel’s “main” campaigns know it. Hopefully Diesel Black Gold, and the runway it creates, can catch up.
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