Italian fashion designer Stella Jean dropped out of Milan Fashion Week, accusing organizers of failing to support diversity and inclusion.
Jean, who is Black, said she’s going on a hunger strike until the Italian National Fashion Chamber promises the minority designers in a collective she co-founded won’t be penalized professionally over her withdrawal.
“This admittedly extreme measure of mine stems from having heard several voices from the collective worried about ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ repercussions, including difficulty in securing funding and services from sponsors and partners, given the power wielded by you as president of the chamber in the industry,” Jean wrote in a letter Wednesday to the chamber’s president, Carlo Capasa.
Jean, 44, was scheduled to open Milan Fashion Week with the We Are Made in Italy (WAMI) collective, which she helped launch to combat “every form of discrimination against the BIPOC community,” according to the group’s website. WAMI also dropped out of the fashion week, which begins Feb. 21.
The withdrawal comes after Stella Jean said she suffered professionally for speaking about racial justice during a September 2022 fashion show. She claims WAMI received less support from the fashion chamber following her speech.
“I am a fighter by nature, but I cannot be this way all the time,” Jean said of this month’s withdrawal.
Capasa said he hadn’t read Jean’s letter but defended the Milan Fashion Week as being “full of diversity.”
“In the calendar that we are presenting today, you will see all that we are doing for people of color who are working in Italy,″ Capasa said.