The association helping Black fashion designers make it on the runways

A decade ago, Michelle Francine Ngonmo, a 38-year-old Italian-Cameroonian, founded the Afrofashion Association after noticing the lack of diversity in creative industries like fashion. The association has helped thousands of people - and continues its work, like most recently on the runway in Milan.

A day before a young Ghanaian designer made his Milan runway debut earlier this month, Michelle Francine Ngonmo was troubleshooting how to squeeze more people into the venue to meet demand.

Hours before the show, she was up before dawn with her team setting up backstage and the showroom.

Ngonmo, a 38-year-old Cameroonian-Italian, has dedicated her professional life to helping raise the profile of Africans and other people of colour in Italian fashion and other creative fields “because there was, let’s say, a lack of representation of people like me.’’ To open up spaces, Ngonmo founded the Afrofashion Association a decade ago. She produces runway shows, mentors talent and recognizes trailblazing achievements through the Black Carpet Awards that she launched three years ago. Ngonmo also teaches fashion students and travels regularly to Africa to work with designers there.

In its first decade, the Afrofashion Association has worked with 3,000 people of color, 92 of whom are working in creative jobs that Ngonmo says are “on a sustainable professional path.’’ That number is both a sign of the Afrofashion Association’s success – and a measure of how much more work there is to be done.

More diversity in Italian fashion

“Italy is no longer a white Italy, as imagined, but an Italy where there are many colours,’’ Ngonmo said.

The Black Lives Matters movement launched a discussion in Italy about the absence of people of colour in Italian fashion’s influential design studios, after designers Stella Jean and Edward Buchanan teamed up with Ngonmo to demand fashion houses to replace expressions of solidarity with action. The fashion system won't disclose diversity numbers, but the lack seemed evident as several prominent fashion houses were coming out of scandals over racially insensitive designs or campaigns.

For several seasons, the trio mentored creatives of colour through under the catchphrase: We Are Made in Italy (WAMI). But slowly the spotlight faded, as diversity and inclusion money dried up and the fashion industry as a whole was plunged into an economic crisis.

“At the time there was a reaction, indeed a very strong request to have to deal with creatives, especially Blacks in Italy,’’ Ngonmo said. “And then slowly the curtain closed because the attention was no longer on that.” As she regroups, Ngonmo said she is focusing her attention “on those companies, those institutions that have remained with us during these years, and look at the result we have brought.”

A denim collection from Ghana on the runway in Milan

That includes the Italian National Fashion Chamber, which backed WAMI and is giving platforms to up and coming Black talents on the Milan Fashion Week Calendar, like Victor-Hart, the Ghanian brand by Victor Reginald Bob Abbey-Hart who debuted his collection of mostly denim looks on Saturday. The Milan fashion chamber’s president, Carlo Capasa, said projects with the Afrofashion Association have given visibility and behind-the-scenes support to more than 30 designers of colour during recent fashion weeks.

“There is a lot to do in diversity and inclusion everywhere in the world, for sure also in Italy,’’ Capasa said, adding that Ngonmo’s role has been key in helping institutions “understand what were the needs” in minority communities, from tutoring, to mentoring, to education.

Capasa joined top fashion editors in the front row for the packed Victor-Hart show, wearing one of the designer’s statuesque denim coats. Abbey-Hart, who recently designed a denim collection for Max & Co., has worked with Ngonmo to raise his profile, graduating from showing his looks at a Black Carpet Awards ceremony to a presentation during fashion week in September before the runway show.

Abbey-Hart said his love affair with fashion started when he saw his first Gucci bag back in Ghana. “I realized I want to go where it was made. So that was the dream,’’ he said, despite many naysayers at home who saw only obstacles.

“Coming to Italy really gave me a big door of opportunity to understand what the world really asks for, as a designer."

Still, he said, finding opportunities as a Black man in Italy, where he has lived for the last nine years, is hard.

“Sometimes, before you even get to the room for the interview, you’ve been disqualified already. It’s really tough, and I want people to understand,’’ he said. “Take away the color, take away what I represent, just look at the job.”