We are really glad you decided to ask this question. We come from Croatia, a country which generally isn’t very present on the fashion map. This position is already enough to know about the less inclusive side of the fashion spectrum. The industry simply isn’t trying hard enough. They’ve trained themselves to pull radically marginalized examples out of their sleeves so as to present themselves as socially aware, while actually the vast majority still remains in a grey zone area, a sort of limbo.
Fashion, unfortunately, isn’t global – not really. The cookie crumbles mostly around the traditional fashion capitals, which if not in the least inclusive are absolutely exclusive. We do, however, still believe that doing meaningful, momentous work and working hard always pay off.
If we are talking about the diversity on the runway, that’s quite relative. Our home country, for example, is a racially homogenous country, which makes complete diversity of representation impossible. If physical fashion brands would try to force that, it would be an insult to foreign cultures with the purpose of self-promotion. There are many examples of the sort that had already happened on global scale runways. We believe that the respect for culture in its natural habitat is far more important than endless reinterpretations for the sake of diversity.