A little over a week ago, a writer for French Elle wrote a blog post narrating the American “black-geoisie’s” adoption of white codes of fashion to go from street to chic. The piece didn’t go over so well here, and it obviously didn’t well with French natives who have written an open letter, calling the magazine out on it’s carelessness and lack of black representation.

The letter, published in Le Monde, was written by a group of black French celebrities including supermodel Noémie Lenoir, Cahiers du Cinéma critic Vincent Malausa, and Morehouse College’s Julius E. Coles. Here’s what it says:

“Elle magazine informs us that in fashion, in 2012, “the ‘black-geoisie’ has finally integrated white codes” of dress. Moreover, “chic has at last become a plausible option for a community that previously knew only streetwear.” While for decades blacks were dressed as hoodie-clad “thugs” [Translation note: cailleras, the word given here as "thugs," intentionally recalls "racaille," the derogatory term infamously used by then-interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe the banlieue rioters of 2005, which is most often translated as "scum"], they have finally understood, through the education of white people, that they must pay more attention to their appearance.

“It is high time for the editors of Elle to venture out of their glass-enclosed headquarters in the business district of Levallois-Perret to mix with the population, to see what black people are really like, and how they dress in real life. It is also time for them to realize that there are many black women in France. Black people do not all live in the United States, and they are not all pop singers, film actors, and sport stars.

“Why not,” asks the open letter, “hire some black editors? Call us crazy, but why not have a black woman on the cover? Just for once.”‘

Tell ‘em how you really feel.

The authors clearly have several good arguments and, as has been pointed out on numerous sites, French Elle is a weekly magazine—out of 52 cover opportunities, it shouldn’t be hard to find black models to fill the space. In 2011, only two non-white models covered the mag, and considering the publication is keen on placing white American models on it’s cover, it could certainly give a top black American woman cover space, since they love to write about them so much.

What do you think about this letter? Will it make any difference?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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It’s come to be expected that people will miss the mark when discussing black people, but with so many examples of what not to do, you can’t help but wonder why people still don’t get it.

Nathalie Dolivo, a writer for French Elle, is catching a lot of heat for a blog on black fashion power that, in a nutshell, attributes the “recent” rise in black American’s fashion sense to Michelle Obama and the adoption of “white codes” of fashion. She wrote of the first lady’s influence:

“For the first time, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged [only] to its streetwear codes.”

And like so many writers attempt to do, Dolivo coined her own phrase to describe the representatives of this street to sanctuary transformation: “black-geoisie,” a play on the French social class, bourgeoisie.

“If in 2012 the ‘black-geoisie’ has integrated all the white codes [of fashion], they [do so not] literally. [There] is always a classic twist, with a bourgeois ethnic reference (a batik-printed turban/robe, a shell necklace, a ‘créole de rappeur’) reminiscent [of] the roots. It [has] shifted, [it is] new, desirable, powerful.”

So basically we’ve traded in Baby Phat, RocaWear, Apple Bottoms, and the House of Dereon for Michael Kors, H & M, Zara, and Marc Jacobs, and thrown on a black power necklace to set it all off. I guess we should just be glad black-geoisie is less offensive than n****b****.

What’s most unfortunate about the article is that it makes black fashion political. Aren’t we allowed to simply experiment and try new things without it being an adoption of white fashion? Race never needed to enter the discussion from the point of influence.

The article itself is ironic because black people are often seen as the fashion trendsetters, noticing some style we’ve worn for years suddenly showing up on the runway and being labeled as chic, like headscarves or Vogue Italia’s Slave Earrings. I suppose we could consider that an attribution to black culture but I’ll pass. The thing is no one calls out white people for their adoption of black style, and how they flip it to suddenly be the “in” thing for the masses, but now this writer seeks to strip our style from us and appropriate it to white people and the one black woman they believe to be respectable in the United States, Michelle Obama.

Several of French Elle‘s readers fired back with comments showing their disapproval for Dolivo’s assumptions that before 2012 “we dressed in hay and burlap bags” and remarking that “Black women are beautiful and elegant, [and do] not need magazines to tell us what to wear, we dress with taste and class and we have always done” but there hasn’t been a response from the mag, and I’m not sure one is needed.

What this article draws out more than anything is the significance of the first lady. It’s a shame that it took Michelle Obama to show up on the scene wearing a Jason Wu ballgown or a J Crew sweater for the rest of the fashion world to realize black folks have diverse style, but I hate to think what they’d write about us if they didn’t look to her as the one icon of chic style among black women.

How do you feel about this article? Do you think it was harmless or somewhat derogatory?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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