Colour blind

There is a question that has been perplexing me for a while: Is creating and selling luxury the sole preserve of white people? Ever since various luxury labels have been coming to India to sell their wares, I have been stuck by the fact that most international luxury companies are owned and headed by whites.

This wouldn’t have been so odd, say, even 30 years ago, but in a world where the President of the United States is a black man, it is decidedly strange. Fashion and luxury, internationally, have been businesses with a clear white bias. In recent times, many have complained that black models don’t get a look-in because of this whites-only mindset. Naomi Campbell was the last big black supermodel and she is now well into her late thirties.

 

If black is a colour favoured for garments, not people, brown, too, is strangely absent from the fashion and luxury business. Several heads of luxury businesses who come to India, all excited about the possibility of selling us luxury, admit that they do not employ Indians in their international offices, be it in the design studios or on the management side. And finding an Indian CEO or head of design at any of these big labels is well nigh impossible.

I find this both perplexing and troubling. Indians have shown their mettle in creative endeavours as well as on the management side. In other businesses, from high finance to the highly competitive beverages segment, Indians have risen to the top job. Why is it that Indians aren’t being hired in the luxury business? Could it be that the old stereotypes and mindsets haven’t changed, even as markets have?

The change in the way countries consume has made these luxury giants come to India, but it seems clear that it isn’t yet enough for them to allow Indians into the top job. This month, the International Herald Tribune’s famed luxury conference will be held in New Delhi. This event is held in a different country every year. The conference is scheduled to discuss many issues like responsible and sustainable luxury, as well as the Indian consumer.

This column would like to introduce another topic for the conference: finding the very best talent to run the international fashion and luxury business, without any bias. By hiring a more diverse group of people at the top for these closely held companies would be beneficial. One would imagine that it would be fairly obvious to just about anyone but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be so.

It isn’t just about tokenism or appeasing the “natives” when you come to sell here but the fact that there are people with great and innovative ideas all over the world. And if a company, in any segment, wants to succeed, it cannot afford to ignore talent on the basis of colour.

The good thing about recession is that it forces one to think innovatively. And the innovation this industry is looking for is to shed the colour-blindness that has dogged it for so many years.

Bring brown and black back, not just on the runways but also in the boardrooms and design studios.

(archana.jahagirdar@bsmail.in)