The colorful images you see before you are apart of Vogue Italia’s “Haute Mess” spread. The visuals have been causing quite a stir. Why? you might ask, because they are stereotypical and offensive! The “Haute Mess” photos show white women in fast food settings with massive weaves and long fingernails. A woman is even pregnant in one image, she also has a gold tooth and pink bangs.
Vogue Italia editor, Franca Sozanni said:
“We wanted to make something quite extravagant. It’s more to push people to be creative and extravagant. … Because I read everything in the blogs, but honestly, we just thought it was the concept of extravagance, of creativity, even something over-the-top, something that is not usual. If you want, you don’t dress like that, you don’t put on this kind of makeup, but it’s just to make a fake, to go over-the-top, it makes you happy in a way, more alive, more colorful — sometimes fashion looks sad.”
A racist image, I really do not understand. I went through the pages so many times. Like when we did the Black Issue, everybody said that we did that on purpose because Obama was the person chosen to go to the White House, and if you just think one second, not more than one second, you can see that to make a magazine like what we did for the Black Issue, it takes six months [to do]. … People wanted to see an economical and a financial [decision], just to get more money, because we talk about Black Issue, it’s probably because the president is black. What do you answer? They don’t know what it means to work at a magazine. That’s it.”
Do you find these photos to be racist?
