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The "All Black" Issue Of Italian Vogue: Both A Success And A Failure It's official: The "all black" issue of Italian Vogue is a hit. According to Time magazine's Jeff Israely, "After the original run of the July issue sold out in the U.S. and U.K. in 72 hours, Vogue Italia has just rushed to reprint 30,000 extra copies for American newsstands, another 10,000 for Britain and 20,000 more in Italy. The only complaints about the reprints might come from those currently trying to sell copies on eBay for $45 apiece." But not everyone thinks the issue is ground-breaking enough. Writer Priyamvada Gopal has a column in today's Guardian in which she claims black women actually have "little to gain" from the issue. So for whom should we chalk one up? Gopal writes: Well, it certainly is one for the inalienable right to be tall, thin, and airbrushed‌ Black models? Sure. But there's not a "natural" or "kinky" in sight, indeed, barely even a mop of curly hair. This is black girls-as-white girls: all aquiline noses, large eyes, oval faces (bar the standard exception of "unusual" Alek Wek), hair coaxed into silky straightness or carefully turbaned away in shot after shot. As for "black", it's more latte than americano. By simultaneously marking blackness as "special" and yet ensuring conformity to dominant (white and European) ideas of sophistication and beauty, the "black issue" tells us a great deal about race and ethnicity in the media today. To be non-white is to be constantly relegated to a "special issue", while the regular edition remains determinedly white. She has a point. Magazines are not inclusive. There's absolutely a euro-centric point of view; a Westernized, Caucasian standard of beauty. But I'll argue that without the "special" issue, some people would not be talking about the race problems in the fashion industry at all. Model mogul Bethann Hardison spearheaded conversations about the lack of black models last fall; I attended
Villanova School of Business 2008 Media Report