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But Liya is a rare example, one of only three or four models who are not Caucasian currently working at a high-fashion level, an unspoken quota that, despite a few anomalous seasons, has persisted for years. Jennifer Starr, an industry casting agent, says she has never heard a designer say he doesn't want an African-American or Hispanic model to represent the brand. "He'll describe the feel and inspiration for the collection, and we'll send as many models, regardless of race, that fit that description," she says. Says designer Diane von Furstenberg: "Sometimes you're not thinking about race; you just cast what's available. You don't actually think, 'Oh, my God. Do I have enough black girls?'" Nevertheless, Von Furstenberg's show at the presentations of the fall ready-to-wear collections in February was rare in that it featured at least half a dozen black and Asian models. Many of the other shows had only one model of color (usually Liya), while some, like Prada and Calvin Klein, had none at all.
More than 30 years after minorities began making initial inroads into the fashion world, it seems the industry is still struggling with race, and some people think things have worsened. "We are actually in a moment where we are seeing fewer black models than ever," says IMG's Bart.
So what or who is to blame? To some degree, the situation can be chalked up to trends. At various times, certain looks are more in demand. Says Liya's IMG agent, Kyle Hagler: "A while ago, every show had to have Asian girls, but that seems to have passed." At the moment, one would be hard pressed to find a model who hails from somewhere other than Eastern Europe.
Bart suggests another factor may be that right now the more influential decision makers hold less than enlightened views on diversity. Bethann Hardisonwho was a model and design assistant in the 1970s and in the '90s ran her own modeling agency, which launched the careers of many black modelspoints out that over the past decade, virtually every design house has been bought by a conglomerate, which she believes has stifled creativity and imagination.
Hardison was around in the early 1970s when this was not the case. "In New York in those days, we were coming off the tail end of the civil rights movement, and everything was so creative and open," she recalls. "It was all about style. Girls could be white, girls could be black, but they had to have style." There were at least half a dozen widely known black models who worked regularly, including Pat Cleveland, Naomi Sims, Iman and Beverly Johnson, who in 1974 became the first black woman to appear on the cover of Vogue.
Even then things weren't always rosy. Iman says that when she arrived in New York in 1975, she realized she was being pitted against Beverly Johnson. "I learned that magazines would only use one black girl at a time, and they were trying to create a competition between us," she says. And no one knew how to do her hair or makeup. "The colors they had for girls like me were hideous, so I started bringing my own makeup woman." (In 1994 she launched her own line of cosmetics specifically for black skin.)