Model Leomie Anderson Speaks Out About Race And Diversity In The Fashion Industry

The fashion industry might gradually be becoming more inclusive when it comes to featuring models of all colours on the catwalk and in editorial and campaigns, but it's still got a long way to go before it reflects the true diversity that you see in real life.

So what's it really like to be a black model working in the industry?

We met up with Leomie Anderson, who's modelled for everyone from Kanye West and Moschino to Marc Jacobs and Victoria's Secret, to find out.

Only last month Leomie spoke out on Twitter after an incident at a New York Fashion Week show where the makeup artists were not fully prepped to work with models of black skin tones. In the end she had to get out her own personal makeup to get her face runway ready. 

"You feel very offended by it as a black person in general, but as a model you feel like, I'm sitting here next to a white model and I am the one being mistreated," Leomie says. 

"She's fine, she's confident to sit in any makeup chair, for example. She can sit with a black or white makeup artist and they'll have her skin tone," she continues. "But as a black model you always feel like you have to bring extra stuff or be prepared that you are maybe going to be spoken to in a certain way at a casting or at a job. It's just really unfair."

But it goes even deeper than that and as Leomie explains, unless we start having conversations and addressing both the disproportionate representation and the way models of colour are treated in comparison to white models, there's no way things are ever going to change.

Watch what Leomie has to say about her experiences in full below.