A fashion week experienced in a regime of limitation due to the rules imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which however brought important innovations to the catwalk, especially the collections of five Bipoc designers.
Bipoc is an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous and People Of Color, five stylists active in Italy of African origin. They are Gisèle Claudia Ntsama (Cameroon – Como), Frida Kiza (Burundi – Fabriano), Mokodu Fall (Senegal – Rome), Karim Daoudi (Marrocco – San Mauro Pascoli) and Joy Meribe (Nigeria – Parma).
Michelle Francine Ngonmo, founder and director of Afro Fashion Week and for seven years committed to building and structuring the Afro presence on the Milanese fashion scene, chose them “for their talent and also for the variety of style and history that each of them embodies “.
This edition of the fashion week also brought another innovation on the multicultural front: the establishment by the National Chamber of Italian Fashion of a group of Afro-Italian professionals called We are Made in Italy. In addition to Ngonmo itself, Stella Jean, Edward Buchanan, Veronica Costanza Ward, Celia Sears, Angelica Pesarini, Jordan Anderson also belong to it.
I am happy that the Italian fashion machine is finally opening up to multiculturalism
says Ngonmo, who has Cameroonian origins and grew up and studied in Italy.
What I really care about is that we are able to do research work based on quality together and that we are not limited to tokenism, that is to recruit black models or designers to give an idea of inclusiveness
