Haute Mess creates a hot mess

The full editorial here

Everyone is up in a tizzy about this editorial being "racist."

On The Cut Franca Sozzani explained the editorial :

“Most of fashion all looks alike. It is really beautiful, but it is very similar in a way. You go to London, and everything has flowers. You go somewhere else, and everything is minimal. We wanted to make something quite extravagant. It’s more to push people to be creative and extravagant. … Because I read everything in the blogs, but honestly, we just thought it was the concept of extravagance, of creativity, even something over-the-top, something that is not usual. If you want, you don’t dress like that, you don’t put on this kind of makeup, but it’s just to make a fake, to go over-the-top, it makes you happy in a way, more alive, more colorful — sometimes fashion looks sad.”

People are freaking out that it's racist. So then they find these images of the same hairstyles on a website called Yum Yucky in a gallery entitled "Ghetto-Fabulous, Edible Hair Dos," and use that as proof that it is racist. Franca Sozzani denies ever seeing this website or these pictures, and people are like, "They're so similar, how couldn't she have seen them?"

Have they not thought that perhaps SHE had never seen them, but maybe some hair intern had? Just because she's never seen them doesn't mean someone else didn't. How was she supposed to know someone used that reference photo? And if they did maybe it was just that, a reference photo, not a racist move. They wanted creativity, and those hairstyles were creative. Someone titled the album "ghetto-fabulous" but perhaps the person googling creative hairstyles didn't care about the "ghettoness" and just wanted a hairstyle. The title of a reference photo does not a racist photoshoot make.

Even if it is referencing a certain "ghetto" kind of style, it is just a style. We reference WASP style, chinoiserie, gypsy, or French style all the time and it isn't an issue. Racism is when you assert that someone is below you, or you treat them differently, simply because of their race. That was not present in this editorial, it only played on an aesthetic, and didn't make any assertion about it. It's almost more racist to think it is racist, just because it involves a style usually associated with Black Americans.

And maybe it's just a style of general bad taste? Maybe there are references to other styles in there, like the "messy drag queens" Ms. Sozzani was talking about.

People love creating drama where it's not needed, and this is one of those cases.

It's a tongue-in-cheek protest to stiff fashion. Can we please not take everything so seriously and have fun?

*But really now, it's hilarious. It looks like the trash reality TV we watch like Jersey Shore, and it's in Vogue. The selfies in the mirror kill me, it's like looking at my Facebook feed.
** I hate the bias in that article I linked to. Please, be respectable and unbiased, not pretending to listen to someone while having a preconceived notion the whole time.