FASHION
Magazines That Rank at the Top of Model Diversity
The FashionSpot, a Los Angeles-based online social forum and website of designers, stylists and industry insiders, has perused some 462 issues from 45 international fashion publications and come up with this conclusion.
While models representing different ethnic diversity were still rare, it has gotten better than last year.
Out of 721 total cover appearances this year, 77.2 percent of the models were white. This represents a slight improvement over last year when 82.7 percent of cover models were white.
The shift is in keeping with the proportion of models of color who appeared on the runways during the Spring 2016 Fashion Week shows in New York, London, Paris and Milan where 77.6 percent were white models compared to 80 percent the previous year.
"Famous faces in fashion like Jourdan Dunn and pop stars Zendaya and Rihanna are proving that Americans are happy to pick up an issue with a model of color off the newsstand. The public is ready for diversity even if magazines are hesitant to embrace it,” said Jennifer Davidson, managing editor of the FashionSpot.
The least diverse magazines were ELLE UK, Jalouse, LOVE, Vogue Australia, Vogue Portugal, Vogue Russia, Vogue Ukraine and WSJ Magazine, all of which featured no cover models of color.
