Maria Gabriela Mendez
The 27-year-old model, Deddeh Howard, recreated some of the world’s most known modeling campaigns in a “call for diversity”. The series called Black Mirror had a massive response, people are starting to see Howard as an inspiration
Among the pictures, you’ll find ads from the biggest brands such as Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret and David Yurman. Deddeh’s boyfriend, Raffael Dickreuter who’s a photographer, collaborated with her in order to do the best series possible.
Take a look at this amazing work:
Howard was rejected several times from agencies.
She’s a fashion blogger and a medical student, but she takes modeling very serious. She created Black Mirror inspired by the discrimination she had to face with modeling agencies “Agencies would often tell me, ‘We like your look but there’s a black girl already’. It shouldn’t be limited to just one black girl; there can be more than one!”.
“The agencies are ashamed to represent diversity”
The Los Angeles-based model felt insecure about herself due to the constant rejection she had to face from the modeling agencies.
The name Black Mirror comes from mirroring two images.
“I thought it was perfect because we are mirroring two images. When you [black women] look in the mirror you question: ‘This could be me, why is this not me?”. The series was created with the purpose of sending a message to black models that are stunning and should be at the forefront of campaigns.
Models of color aren’t represented in the campaigns.
“There are many beautiful black models and they are not represented the way they should be,” She noticed that girls of color aren’t featured enough in magazines, Deddeh calls it “unbelievable” and “bizarre”
It took three months to create the series.
Although matching the real campaigns is a hard task as gathering the clothes it’s very difficult, is something possible. They tried to make it as accurate as they could Finding a motorcycle similar to Gigi Hadid’s took two months.
Howard is very proud of the project.
Managing to pull off the project was worthwhile.“I’m very grateful people feel the same that I do, people are telling me that I’m an inspiration to them and it feels unreal. We should keep fighting for what we believe in.”
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