Fashion icons issue united "I am an immigrant" video

[Tanuki]

http://www.wmagazine.com/story/new-york-fashion-week-2017-i-am-an-immigrant

"On a recent afternoon during New York Fashion Week, between shows and presentations, models, photographers, designers, and stylists took a break to to come together at Chelsea's Milk Studios. The reason was simple. At the urging of W magazine, they had all gathered to make a united and defiant statement on video, and one by one they faced the camera and said: “I am an immigrant.”

In the aftermath of President Donald J. Trump’s now legally-challenged refugee ban, there’s been an outrage from all corners of the world towards the White House’s apparent anti-immigration policies. Fashion people aren’t as insulated as they might seem; they’ve been equally appalled by the rhetoric stemming from Washington, perhaps because so many members of this colorful community are immigrants themselves, certainly friends, partners, collaborators, admirers of immigrant artists and designers.

In a corner of the studio, W’s creative and fashion director, Edward Enninful, who was born in Ghana and raised in the United Kingdom, held court as designer Joseph Altuzarra, a native Frenchman, arrived on set with a three-month-old puppy for moral support. Diane von Furstenberg, the Belgian-American designer who was a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, stepped in front of the camera, ad-libbing: “I thought I’d say, ‘I am an immigrant and proud to be,’” she said. Then, she thought of a couplet: “I am an immigrant and America’s been good to me.”
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Though designers like Carol Lim and Humberto Leon of Opening Ceremony and Kenzo and Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss have long taken overt political stances in their work, the Fall 2017 season marks something of a watershed moment for American fashion and activism. Less than a month into his administration, Trump has attacked immigration, reproductive, and LGBTQ rights in an onslaught of executive orders. A wide swath of brands who show at New York Fashion Week addressed the current political climate, whether explicitly or more obliquely.

There were the “Feminist AF” T-shirts gifted to the front row at Jonathan Simkhai; the “Yes, We Should All Be Feminists… (Thank You, Chimamanda and Maria)” shirts that walked the runway at Prabal Gurung, where former Clinton adviser Huma Abedin sat front-row; and the “Make America New York” baseball caps, a riff on Donald Trump’s campaign merch, at Public School. Eckhaus Latta examined the impact of the political climate on the individual, and Proenza Schouler offered an ode to New York in its swan song at New York Fashion Week.

“Then you get to Raf Simons and he’s just celebrating being a foreigner in America. That was the most important show of the season, and he just celebrated America,” Enninful said of Simons’s debut at Calvin Klein. “Designers are expressing empathy, joy, everybody is treating the current political climate in their own way. There’s not one way to respond to today. There’s not one way you can celebrate or you can protest.”

Just as the United States—socially, politically, economically—would not exist without immigrants, so, too, is the backbone of the fashion industry informed by the dialogue between cultures and the tireless work of individuals migrating from other countries. “People like me thought America was the best place to be creative, to be free to create, to have the freedom to be who you are,” Enninful said. “I just thought, ‘Let’s do something that shows that we’re all from somewhere else’”—whether participants were immigrants personally, or the descendants of immigrants.