Naomi Campbell in Kenya by Luis Alberto Rodriguez for i-D Magazine

Naomi Campbell in Kenya by Luis Alberto Rodriguez for i-D Magazine AOC Fashion

Supermodel Naomi Campbell covers the Spring 2021 Utopia in Dystopia Issue no. 362 of i-D Magazine, posing at her home in Kenya. The Black woman English goddess with deep ties to Africa is styled by Carlos Nazario in images by Luis Alberto Rodriguez [IG]./ Hair by Jawara; makeup by Bimpe Onakoya and Naomi Campbell

Mahoro Seward conducts the interview. This story originally appeared in i-D's Utopia in Dystopia Issue, no. 362, Spring 2021. Order your copy here.

In a moment when Black talent and Black creatives — and other people of color, too — are dominating magazine content and culture, it’s startling to read the legendary Naomi Campbell say that photographer Luis Alberto Rodriguez is “the third photographer of colour I’ve worked with in my whole career in fashion.”

AOC hopes that we can all agree that Naomi’s statement is profoundly disturbing and one that cuts through the clutter of babble about why creatives of color are finally popping up everywhere— like it’s raining Black creatives. If you’re a Black creative, you’re hired.

Given all the years we’ve lived without Black talent in magazines, advertising and on the runways — even though they are the drivers of culture in America for decades — expect to see the disproportionate number of them now and certainly into the near future.

I’ve referred multiple times to the fact that I put my Victoria’s Secret job on the line over Naomi Campbell. In a moment of pre-Christmas, window marketing weak-knees, my colleagues were seriously concerned about Naomi going solo in VS windows across America. I did make the statistical argument for just how many VS customers were women of color, as I was a walking stat machine even though I operated in the creative end of the business.

Understand that the campaign was finished. This VS marketing moment was the final sendoff of our first wave of holiday marketing from the home office. And people were getting cold feet about consumer response in some small Midwestern city. I came of age as a young woman in a fashion industry that believed that using models of color depressed sales.

When questions about remixing the marketing with older shots and reprinting, I knew drastic action was required. This is an action that people of principle can take all over the fashion industry. Quite simply, I said “If we don’t stop this conversation about redoing the marketing over Naomi’s solo windows, I will resign.”

If you know Anne, you understand that I spoke 5-10 sentences, not one. But you get my point. My colleagues knew that I meant every word of this dropping the gauntlet, radical promise.

It’s fair to say that you better be very talented and a true asset to your company, when you make such a declaration. Riding high on two promotions in six months, I knew I was on the VS good girl list.

AOC is glad that Naomi Campbell uses her voice still to confront this topic of fashion industry racism on an ongoing basis. Returning to Naomi’s full statement for i-D, she said:

“It was just very real, very organic. And I felt proud, humbled and happy to be part of a shoot with young creatives that are all my skin colour, and that I’m getting to work with them after so many years of being in fashion industry. It’s very rare that this has happened to me. Luis is the third photographer of colour I’ve worked with in my whole career in fashion.

Naomi Campbell is proactive in her optimism, which is another new twist from the supermodel.

“At the end of 2020, my main reflections were on the need for us to move upward and forward. We have to rise to every challenge and walk through it. And we will get through it. 2021 is going to be a great year, we’ve just got a few more bumps to get through first. Nothing disappears overnight, but we just need to get through this first quarter. After that, I believe that this is going to be an amazing year.