The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

(miamiherald.com)

The Ebony Fashion Fair — a catwalk show that traveled across the country, Canada and the Bahamas bringing designer fashion from around the world to predominantly black audiences — has put its fall 2009 schedule on hiatus.

The reason? The economy.

Just a year after celebrating its 50th anniversary, the annual show featuring black models has been canceled by its producer, Johnson Publishing Company, which also publishes Ebony and Jet magazines. The fund-raising show made stops in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

In a statement, chairwoman and CEO Linda Johnson Rice said: “In light of the overall economic challenges that are affecting many, including our potential corporate sponsors, we have arrived at a most difficult decision to cancel Ebony Fashion Fair’s fall 2009 season. In the coming months, we will develop a new business model to ensure that the show is a mutually beneficial endeavor.” (more…)

And before someone goes there, here is a little perspective:

#The Ebony Fashion Fair is by far considered that main fashion fair that is both produced and maintained by Blacks. For Whites, there has always been a whole plethora of fashion fairs both here and abroad. Why am I bringing this up? Because the demise of one fair (our only fair) does not signal racism. You have to look at the industry at large (which brings me to my second point).

#Apparently, the fashion industry at large has been getting rocked by the economy for some time now. The fact that it took this long to finially reach the Ebony Fashion Fair is something in of itself.

The fashion industry sinks in the global economic downturn

On a related note, from time to time my wife and I love to watch the African fashion shows on The Africa Channel. There was also one show on that channel recently that was sorta like the African version of “America’s Next Top Model”. It was quite interesting to see how beauty is defined in different cultures.

More on the Ebony Fashion Fair

Not too long ago, I saw a program on TV that went into the history of the fair. If someone can find it on Youtube, please let me know.

This isn’t the program I was talking about earlier, but it’s close.

This may come as a surprise to some, but one of my dream jobs is to work on the business end of the Black fashion industry. My wife and I have been doing something to that effect for about 6 years now, but it have been very small scale.