Is Fashion Finally Starting to Embrace Natural Black Hair?

As the whole Zendaya vs Fashion Police locs
controversy shows, we’ve still got a long way to go when it comes to acceptance of black hairstyles. Actual fashion as opposed to shitty E! network fashion is not much different. Runway and magazine diversity is improving at a snail’s pace, with stylists given very
specific (read: very white) instructions about how they want models to look on the runway.
But it looks like fashion is finally starting to step it up in the black hair acceptance game. This month Vogue Italia , which has always been the trailblazer of the glossy’s global editions, features a spread starring Riley
Montana, Cheyenne Carty, and Leila Ndabirabe — who sport giant afros in the Francesco Carrozzini-lensed shots. And not because they’re going for an “African Queen” look.

Riley Montana, Cheyenne Carty & Leila Ndabirabe in Vogue Italia March 2015

We’d be tempted to give a nod of approval and move on, but there’s also Elle France ‘s new cover featuring Kenyan-born Brit Malaika Firth in another full-blown afro. It’s not just a cover either — the accompanying spread features over 20 images of Firth wearing high hair and high-impact clothing.

Malaika Firth by Jean-Baptiste Mondino in Elle France March 2015

It’s certainly about time that publications finally started hiring people who know how to style a range of different hair types. Think back to what model Brandee Brown recently told Refinery 29 about one particularly
infuriating experience with white hairstylists, which unfortunately was not a stand-alone one
either.

“They started picking at my hair like little
monkeys, lifting it up and examining it like
it was out of this world,” Brown says of one
experience backstage. Then, there were 20
hands on her head at once, “pulling my
head this way and that with flat irons and
blowdryers… I didn’t even know I had that
much hair on my head. And, here we are,
right before the show’s about to start, and
all the other girls are laughing and talking
to each other and taking pictures.”

And if three’s a trend, this was also the season that newcomer Lineisy Montero hit the Prada runway sporting a shorter style. Prada has a rep for delivering pretty whitewashed runways, with Jourdan Dunn’s 2008 debut making her the brand’s first black catwalker since
Naomi Campbell in ’97, and Malaika Firth’s campaign the first featuring a black model since 1994. So Montero’s appearance was kind of a big deal.
Lastly, let’s not forget the woman currently killing it in the style stakes in Paris — Solange Knowles.

 It was only a few months ago that In Touch compared her natural hair to a dog , so let’s hope these more positive examples become more frequent.-Styleit