Beverly Johnson On Being A Black Fashion Icon And Seeing No Brown Faces On The Runway

Anyone can see the lack of diversity on fashion runways these days, but what does that feel like from the perspective of a black fashion icon?

Celebrated supermodel Beverly Johnson visited HuffPost Live on Thursday and discussed her reaction to the homogeneity of the modeling world today.

“We [in the fashion industry] live in this elitist bubble and we’re not aware of what's happening in the world in the way of diversity.”

Johnson saw just how “out of touch” her industry has become at New York Fashion Week when she “went to a number of shows where there weren’t any women of color on the runway,” an experience which extended to the shows of black designers. When asked how she felt about it, Johnson's answer was an easy one: "angry."

She went on to describe yet another layer to the conversation, a flourishing number of black bodies and faces in the modeling world -- all of which are however international and not black American.

"What’s wonderful is that we have this global community of women and men of color… it’s great to see representatives from the world... and then we have this total lack of African American models now.”

Check out Beverly Johnson's HuffPost Live segment in the clip above.