dge; Rashad Robinson, president of US-based racial justice organisation Color of Change; and MoAnA Luu, chief content and creative officer at Essence Ventures – recently spoke about the obstacles that Black designers and professionals continue to face in fashion, and shared ideas for how to address them. Here are four key takeaways from their panel discussion — Black Representation Beyond the Runway, moderated by stylist Alexander-Julian.  1. Close the financing gap With major retailers like Nordstrom committing to stocking more Black-owned brands in their stores and online, you might think it’s simply a matter of watching the sales roll in. But many Black-owned brands struggle to access the financing they need to fill large purchase orders.  “When I launched the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which is a call-to-action to major retailers to commit 15 per cent of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses, the second thing that [I realised] was, if they get this purchase order [of] $100,000 from Nordstrom, where are they going to get the $50,000 that they need to fund that?” James said. “That’s very real. The big thing that I’ve been working on for the last year at the Pledge is making sure we can start building those economic resources.” 2. Rethink language around representation While it’s true that Black-owned businesses have a harder time accessing finance, and Black designers are underrepresented at major labels, the way the industry talks about these issues often obscures who has the power to change them.  “We will say things like, ‘Black women are less likely to be hired in fashion’, or ‘Black people are less likely to get a loan from the bank’, instead of saying, ‘banks are less likely to give loans to Black people’, or ‘fashion companies exclude Black people’,” Robinson said.  “That may feel like semantics, but when you start a conversation by putting the active voice on the people and the passive voice on the system, then you have people continually trying to fix people instead of fixing systems.” 3. Go beyond mentorship programs In an effort to bring more Black people into their businesses, many brands have created mentorship programs designed to increase diversity at all levels of employment. But Robinson believes they need to do more and actually tie diversity targets to leadership bonuses.  “Diversity, equity and inclusion can’t be the only place in a company that fails year over year and nobody is held accountable. Far too often, it’s seen as an extracurricular activity – a nice thing to have, not something on the bottom line. People don’t get promoted for it,” he said. “If a company has an incentive structure that rewards people for certain types of behaviour [and] diversity, equity and inclusion aren’t part of that same incentive structure, then it’s not part of what the company values. Companies are here to make money, and if it’s not connected to that, it’s not happening.  “Mentorship is really important, but it creates this idea that the problem exists with the people who have been excluded, rather than the institutions that have excluded them.” 4. Demand transparency  Over the past two years, many people have expressed a desire to support efforts to increase Black representation in fashion, but are unsure how to do so. According to Robinson, the most important thing allies can do is use their power to demand transparency.  “One example of that is making demands around racial equity audits inside of these companies. Racial equity audits give a clear understanding of how businesses are working inside of diversity, what are the problems, where are the challenges. Once those things become clear, then we can move to actually fixing the problem,” he said. “Our equity shouldn’t rely on being able to have the right friend or non-Black ally in the right position, until that person may no longer be in that position, and then all of a sudden, the unwritten way we were able to make the system work for us, doesn’t work anymore. Part of being a good ally is laying down a pathway to changing the rules, so that the changes live beyond oneself.”