Rachel Zoe Slammed for Lack of Diversity at Her Pre-NYFW Show

Stylist and opinionated fashion maven Rachel Zoe is catching serious heat for what some are calling a lack of diversity in her most recent fashion show. Zoe’s pre–New York Fashion Week preview presentation of her upcoming Fall/Winter line was recently held in Los Angeles and one eagle-eyed Instagram fan picked up very quickly on one noticeable issue: There was only one model of color hired to walk in Zoe’s presentation show.

Instagram user diet_prada picked up on the issue and posted a photo set reacting to what some might perceive as a noticeably problematic issue (especially when many other designers are making a point of hiring models of all ethnicities, genders, ages, and body types for their shows right now) regarding the ratio of white models to models of color. Namely, there was only one model of color (what diet_prada called “tokenized” in their caption) present in the postshow group shot.

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“If you need to relieve yourself for a second from the tokenized casting nightmare that was the @rachelzoe show, watch this,” diet_prada wrote, posting a clip from Zoe’s Bravo reality TV show wherein Zoe’s then-client, supermodel Naomi Campbell, reacted to a problem while Zoe was styling her.

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Zoe actually posted a photo and videos from the presentation to her Instagram as well, inadvertently highlighting the perceived diversity issue while actually focusing on the clothing and celebrating the new looks she was bringing to the table in her new collection. Commenters quickly picked up on the glaring issue of diversity as seen in Zoe’s posts. Comments range from “Let’s add some more diversity in this casting,” to “[H]ow could you proudly display your lack of diversity,” to “0 asians 0 brown women 1 black woman. Go home.” Yikes.

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At the time of reporting, neither Zoe nor Zoe’s reps have released a statement on this matter or given any insight into their casting methods for the show.