fashion brands are always looking for a breakout look that can captivate an audience and gain buzz. However, the way they do so is not always so genuine. Rather than hiring lesser known people to bring their ideas to a much larger platform, they tend to try to replicate their ideas without giving proper credit. This tends to happen with white-owned companies with the ideas of small minority businesses. The cycles goes as: minority creates an idea, idea receives buzz and gains the attention of a bigger company, bigger company tries to create their own version of the idea.
This used to happen a lot in the past but with the ever growing pace of technology today, it gets easier and easier to tell who's lying. Let's take a look at some examples of the use of minority ideas that companies use to create buzz.
Hoop earrings are so ghetto
If you wore Hoop Earrings, you probably heard this growing up. People saw what you were as different and being different is considered weird to some people. People think that you shouldn't experiment and go outside social norms. So when you wear something as different as hoop earrings because everyone is used to wearing studs, they will mark you as weird, different, or ghetto unless you change. The reason why people call hoop earrings ghetto is due to that fact that it is a trend started by minorities.
It is so related to black culture that people believe that white people wearing hoop earrings is a form of cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation is when people wear traditional clothing and accessories of another culture for pure ostentatious purposes. Now, I'm not saying wearing hoop earrings are a form of cultural appropriation.
Sites like Us Weekly are saying things like hoop earrings are making a comeback, but they can't make a comeback because they never left. They just weren't in the eyes of mainstream media for a period of time because they were deemed ghetto. People who truly appreciate the style never stopped wearing them regardless of what others had to say.
If you can't beat em, join em
When I think of white-owned companies stealing minority ideas, I automatically think of one person who is the embodiment of this struggle: Kylie Jenner. Although she is a very young and talented girl who has been able to make a name for herself, Kylie Jenner has profited by using black ideas since she became famous. Its even gotten to the point where she's altered her body to adopt characteristics of black women (i.e. fuller lips and wider thighs). Time and time again, she been exposed for doing this -- whether it be outright copying the fashion identities of celebrities or her stealing business ideas from smaller companies. This particularly frustrates me because it just goes to show how profitable ideas can be, but many people do not have the platform to show the world.
It also goes to show that people like Kylie Jenner do not care about the advancement of fashion and how can they contribute to the fashion world. It's about making money by any means necessary.
Concluding thoughts
It's unfortunate to know how relatively easy it is for big companies to discredit minority fashion statements like hoop earrings until they find it useful themselves to make money off of. To add, it is equally disheartening that people like Kylie Jenner can be repeatedly exposed for stealing ideas from minorities and face almost zero reprecussions. She is still making tremendous amounts of money and by the look of it, she doesn't look like she is going to leave the cycle of collecting minority ideas.
From reading this article, I hope you gained knowledge about how minorities are (to an extent) farmed for their ideas without receiving proper credit. Maybe it will lead you to support minorities such as buying Rihanna's beauty products over Kylie's. Maybe it will lead you to support local brands around you. But, if you learned something after reading this article, then my job here is done.
