Last Friday evening Jackie Aina, a well-known makeup guru and influencer, took to her Instagram story to call out several fashion brands for the lack of acknowledgment of “black issues and black struggles.”
Jackie Aina is a professional makeup artist who rose to prominence on YouTube, producing content centered around women of color and beauty. The YouTube channel she started back in 2009 now has over 3 million subscribers and over 300 million views. Her makeup skills and constant advocacy for women of color has propelled Jackie into becoming a prominent voice within the Black community.
Never one to shy away from dropping truth bombs, Jackie directly tagged Fashion Nova, PrettyLittleThing and Revolve in her story, saying “there are a lot of brands who love capitalizing on Black culture… but are dead silent when it comes to talking about Black issues and Black struggles in our community.”
But she wasn’t done there. She continued to talk about how simply posting “memes” on their pages were “not going to cut it” and that they needed to “do more”. Jackie not only encouraged the brands to make statements on the recent occurrences of police brutality against Black people, but encouraged them to donate to families of those involved in the tragedies.
Going on to address why she singled out these 3 brands in particular, she cited the fact that she noticed the “particular aesthetic that they like, a particular vibe that they push on their socials.”
“You can’t just take, pick and choose the parts of our culture and not embrace all of it. Unfortunately right now this is a big, huge –it’s hard to ignore. There hasn’t been a single Instagram batlle that I’ve attended, that I haven’t seen Fashion Nova in; PrettyLittleThing tends to be pretty present in those too. I see you guys commenting, so how come when the even bigger elephant in the room is present, it’s crickets?”
While asserting that “sometimes philanthropy doesn’t have to be announced” she insisted that it was important for these brands to take public stances, saying that “considering how much influence these brands specifically have, it’s very important that you say and do something. It’s the least you can do.”
What you would THINK was the mic drop to close her story came when Jackie with a smirk said “after you’ve done your part and at least donated to the families and raised awareness, tomorrow you can go back to posting your tanned girls, who blackfish on your feeds. But right now let’s talk about more important stuff. Thanks.”
But the FINAL “and I oop” moment came when she posted another part to her story, when she said “the I only Black guys club, where y’all at? Y’all know mainly Black men are the ones being affected by this right? Where y’all at? Where y’all at?,” adding a hand over her eyes in faux search of their statements.
In response to her story on Instagram, Aina posted updates on her Twitter saying that she spoke with both the CEOs from Fashion Nova and PrettyLittleThing, giving them not only course of actions plans, but also critiques of their subpar previous posts.
Fashion Nova reached out and I wrapped a call a few hours ago with their CEO. Post call, I followed up with an extensive course of action and plan to have a follow up call with them tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who contributed suggestions earlier today https://t.co/Gqx31uOArw
— Naira Banks (@jackieaina) May 29, 2020
just got off the phone with the CEO of pretty little thing. hopefully some progress will be made by morning. just wanted to update you guys
— Naira Banks (@jackieaina) May 30, 2020
It’s obvious that both her phone calls and Instagram story were not ignored, as all 3 brands went on to make statements and more. Fashion Nova opted for a simple black and white picture of George Floyd alongside a Martin Luther King Jr. quote. PrettyLittleThing made two separate posts, one with a graphic of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor with an accompanying caption and another post with a picture of Saweetie that detailed their plan to donate all of the proceeds from their At Home with Saweetie collection to Black Lives Matter. Revolve, on the other hand, similar to Fashion Nova, opted for an ombre background post with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote.
In her final tweet addressing the situation directly, she acknowledged the brands’ efforts and encouraged them to hire more Black people, so that they won’t be so tone-deaf in the future. If we learned nothing else from this ordeal, we learned that influencing at its best inspires and prompts change and holds brands and corporations accountable, which is truly, influencing at its best.
I know for a fact a lot of brands have been seeing my tweets for the past few days because your feeds started looking a lil different 👀
learn something from this and hire black publicists AND more black creatives https://t.co/0abU88nDas
— Naira Banks (@jackieaina) May 30, 2020
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