Vogue Italia recently did an online feature on jewelry entitled “Slave Earrings”.  But really?! Of all titles out there, they couldn’t be a tad bit more creative?  The word slave has never had a positive connotation.  With the history of enslavement of Africans and their displacement around the world, what would possess someone to sign off on such a title?   I question whether they are just trying to drum up publicity?   Any publicity is good publicity they say but at what expense?  Vogue Italia then changed the name to “Ethnic Earrings” but the damage had already been done.

World renown super model Iman had this to say …

“I’m a huge fan of Franca Sozzani and Vogue Italia’s website because they have a whole section on black models…But yeah, I didn’t like it. Slave does not make it ethnic. Mind you, it’s not lost in translation–the word slave, we know what it is. They might as well have called them n***** earrings. For somebody like Franca Sozzani, who did that whole black issue for Vogue, somebody should have said something.”

Vogue Italia’s statement “Jewellery has always flirted with circular shapes, especially for use in making earrings. The most classic models are theslave and creole styles in gold hoops.   If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of colour who were brought to the southern Unites States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom. Colored stones, symbolic pendants and multiple spheres. And the evolution goes on.”

One of the featured earrings.

slave-earrings

Comments from the site:

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See here for my previous write-up about French Vogue and their photo shoot with 10-year-old Thylane Lena-Rose Blondeau and the concerns that raised.

Where is the end to all this insensitivity?  It’s not about white and black it’s about common sense and respecting certain issues that have forever shaped the world.

-DK