New York Fashion Week by the Numbers: More Models Of Color Are Working

New York fashion week wrapped up its Spring-Summer 2013 season with a whopping 143 shows and live presentations — more shows and

 presentations than we've ever had to cover during the eight seasons we've been compiling these runway diversity reports. (Back in February

 of 2009, there were only 116 shows.) As NYFW has grown, so has awareness of the problems that models of color can face in the industry: the

 ways that some magazines talk about race as though it were a trend, like British Vogue, and the manifest (if only occasionally acknowledged)

 preference of most clients for white models. Way too often in fashion, looking "aspirational" is still considered synonymous with "having

 white skin."
 It is heartening, then, that this season proved to be the most racially diverse that we have ever counted. For the second time ever (and the

 second season in a row), white models actually comprised just less than 80% of the total model pool. Contrast that with the 87% of all

 runway spots that were given to white models in Fall-Winter 2008, when we began keeping track of models and race at NYFW.

 This season, 143 designers presented some 4708 individual women's wear "looks" to buyers and press during the eight days of fashion week.

 3736 of those looks, or 79.4%, were given to white models. Again this season, the second largest ethnic group on the runway at fashion week

 was Asians — Asian models got 476, or 10.1% of all the runway looks. Black models nabbed 383, or 8.1%. Non-white Latina models had 88

 looks, or 1.9%. And models of other races wore 25, or 0.5% of all looks. Click on any chart in this post to enlarge.

 These results may be partly attributed to the season, because one trend that is apparent from our data is the preference for slightly more

 models of color at the spring-summer collections and slightly fewer at the fall-winter collections, which may be due to a belief on the part

 of casting directors that darker skin tones suit the bright colors of spring clothes better than they do fall's more somber hues. (Or at

 least that's what some casting directors tell us off-the-record — generally while rolling their eyes.) But more jobs for models of color is

 good news no matter what the reason.

 Despite the overall positive trend, there were still a number of shows that were not very diverse. Eight brands — Araks, Brood, Calvin

 Klein, Elizabeth & James, Louise Goldin, MM6 Maison Martin Margiela, See by Chloé, and The Row — had zero models of color. Their casts were

 entirely white. That's around 6% of all shows. (In 2007, according to published reports, one-third of the shows at NYFW had all-white

 casts.) Additionally, there were 31 shows and presentations that had three or fewer models of color. That's more than 20% of all shows.

 Calvin Klein, after seasons in which it showed its collection on an all-white cast but for one model of color, decided to just go with an

 all-white cast. The Olsen twins continued their habit of hiring all-white casts for their two brands, The Row and Elizabeth & James.

 Some of the most diverse shows were Tracy Reese, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Jason Wu, Jen Kao, Anna Sui, Barbara Tfank, Boy by Band of Outsiders,

 Edun, Chado Ralph Rucci, and Betsey Johnson. At the industry's high end, Ralph Lauren and Oscar de la Renta also showed their collections on

 very racially diverse casts. Emerging brands like Calla and Dean Quinn also included a lot of models of color.

 The conversation about racial diversity in fashion is a large and complex one, of which data like these are only one part. As I wrote last

 season,
 It's difficult to quantify a problem like high fashion's demonstrated preference for white skin. Race is a social construct, not a fact. And

 our "categories" — black, Asian, non-white Latina, and what we for lack of a better term call "other" — are not (and probably cannot be)

 perfect. We don't count white women from Latin America in our gerrymandered "Latina" category; though they are as Latina as their darker-

 complected countrywomen, on the international modeling circuit, the color of their skin is more important than the passports they bear or

 the cultural heritage they represent, and they have the privilege of competing with other white models for the much larger pool of jobs that

 are open to white models. So this count comes with some obvious caveats.