Editor talks about “white fashion” and “black-geoisie”

Jan 27, 2012 20:21 GMT  ·  By
Michelle Obama is “black-geosie,” combines “white fashion” with symbols of her Black roots, according to Elle France
   Michelle Obama is “black-geosie,” combines “white fashion” with symbols of her Black roots, according to Elle France

That First Lady Michelle Obama is a fashion icon, that she supports young black designers and that she's a trendsetter is not a secret. According to a recent editorial on Elle France, Michelle Obama is also the reason why African-Americans finally know how to “dress up.”

In a piece called “Black Fashion Power,” which is no longer available on the official website, editor Nathalie Dolivo writes about such things as “white fashion” and the “black-geoisie” to which Michelle Obama belongs.

She also “praises” the First Lady for knowing how to dress, basically saying it wasn't until she came into the spotlight that Blacks knew how to wear elegant clothes.

Understandably, the uproar following the article is unimaginable: Dolivo is a racist for saying those things and Elle is racist for printing them, voices online are saying.

“In this America led for the first time by a black president, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged to its codes [of] streetwear,” Dolivo wrote (excerpt and traslation via the New York Daily News).

She called the Obamas the “black-geoisie,” with Michelle dressing “white” while still honoring her “roots,” her blackness with symbols such as scarves, turbans, shell necklaces.

“There is always a classic twist, with a bourgeois ethnic reference (a batik-printed turban/robe, a shell necklace, a ‘créole de rappeur’) that recalls the roots,” she said.

In other words, African-Americans had no idea of how to dress until Michelle Obama, a claim that is insulting to both the people she's referring to and to Michelle herself.

The Elle readers were the first to show how outraged they were at the editorial.

“How, in 2012, in a France where there are at least three million blacks and mixed people, can you write such nonsense. You are too kind when you write that in 2012 we have incorporated the white codes… what do you think, in 2011, we dressed in hay and burlap bags?” one commenter on Elle wrote, as per the NYDN.

FashionBombDaily also points out the Dolivo didn't even bother to do her research before writing her piece because, with it, she completely erased all other fashionable African-Americans ladies who made a difference in trends and styles.

“This poor journalist clearly didn’t do any research at all; didn’t see the impact of the Supremes and Diana Ross in the 50′s, 60′s, and 70′s, the wardrobes of TV starlets like Clair Huxtable in the 80′s, the sartorial impact of everyone from Salt N Pepa to TLC to Aaliyah in the 90′s and naughts,” FBD writes.

“The truly flustering passage was when she attributed black modern dress to white dress codes, then ventured to say we ‘afro-centrize’ our looks with shells and ‘boubous’. Some of us do, some of us don’t. We are not one monolithic group to be written about like zoo animals,” the e-zine adds.

As we speak, controversy continues to rage on. Neither Elle nor Dolivo has apologized or acknowledged in any way the offense caused with the article.