Milan Fashion Week launches anti-discrimination initiative: 'Results within a year'

Three Italian organisations have signed an agreement that aims to promote equality within the fashion industry. The Italian Fashion Council (Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, CNMI), nonprofit African Fashion Gate (AFG) and the Italian government's anti-discrimination agency (Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, UNAR) have agreed that more needs to be done to "detect, identify and combat" discrimination.

The initiative starts with a broad survey of the experiences of women, people of colour and other underrepresented groups in the industry, with both fashion brands and retailers to be scrutinised. During the conference on the Tuesday of Milan Fashion Week at the Fashion Hub (Sala Parlamentino) in Palazzo Giureconsulti, it was announced that fashion blogger Tamu McPherson will become the chair of Diversity and Inclusion at CNMI.

CNMI president Carlo Capasa told The Associated Press that he hopes to share results from the initiative within a year. "I don't think an association like ours can solve the [discrimination] problem, or that it would be very easy to solve it. I think we can try to make a small contribution," Capasa said, adding that the role of the government is crucial.

Capasa revealed that the CNMI has previously made an attempt to combat discrimination in the fashion industry, but that establishing figures was hampered by privacy restrictions, which he hopes to circumvent with the new research.

The Italian fashion industry has been under pressure since the July 2020 Black Lives Matters movement, due to the shortage of people of colour in leadership positions.

This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.NL. Translation and edit by: Rachel Douglass.