For what it’s worth, Alek Wek, the Sudanese model (and resident of Fort Greene), decided after a long while to talk about racism in the fashion industry, Vogue’s website reports.
Apparently in her new biography (the new accessory), she compares a campaign she did for an Italian coffee company to colonial racist ads:
‘… ALEK WEK thinks the calendar she posed in for Lavazza Italian coffee was racist. According to PAGESIX.COM, the supermodel writes in her autobiography that she posed nude inside a “gigantic white espresso cup bigger than a car . . . My skin was to be the espresso.” While she admits that the images are beautiful, she goes on to say that: “I can’t help but compare them to all the images of black people that have been used in marketing over the decades. There was the big-lipped jungle-dweller on the blackamoor ceramic mugs sold in the Forties; the golliwog badges given away with jam; Little Black Sambo, who decorated the walls of an American restaurant chain in the 1960s; and Uncle Ben, whose apparently benign image still sells rice.” Lavazza CEO Ennio Ranaboldo defends the image as art, however. “A great artist photographer, Albert Watson. A great model, Alek Wek. A great calendar. That’s all there’s to say.”‘
