News : New Roles at Gucci, Bloomingdale's and Nanushka

Monday, February 12, 2024

New Roles at Gucci, Bloomingdale's and Nanushka

In this week's Careers Newsletter, read BoF senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young's latest: How Fashion Is Adapting to the Diversity Backlash.

When publicist and Glam Body founder Danika Berry set out to launch Black Beauty Founders, an organisation to provide resources and networking opportunities to Black women in the beauty industry, she expected to face the familiar hurdles of corralling investors, or convincing retailers to open up shelf space for Black brands.

What she didn't anticipate was that she'd spend weeks mulling new tactics to shield her new organisation from conservative activists.

Berry had good reason to worry. When she launched a holiday of the same name (National Black Founders Day) back in August, to recognise the contributions of Black women to the industry, it was just over a month after the Supreme Court overturned university affirmative action programmes. By the fall, conservatives were targeting a host of companies and organisations with programmes aimed at supporting underrepresented groups. In October, a federal court ordered The Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm that invested in minority-owned brands to pause grant applications while it weighed a legal challenge. In November, a conservative group asked a US regulator to investigate whether Macy's diversity goals were discriminatory.

Black Beauty Founders is going ahead later this month. But Berry said she pushed back the launch by a month so she could work out language that would speak to her underlying mission without running afoul of still-undefined new rules. Rather calling significant attention to "Black women," her group's website speaks to "all BIPOC women," and uses other less-conspicuous terminology, she said.

To Berry, the backlash represents another hurdle for entrepreneurs and brands that already struggle to raise funding and catch the attention of retailers.

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Plus, find a new job on BoF Careers, with roles in production at Gucci, in merchandising at Bloomingdale's and art direction at Nanushka.
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