H&M’s New Diversity Officer Is An Attempt By The Fashion Giant To Save Face

Just yesterday, Swedish fast-fashion retail giant H&M announced via Facebook that it has appointed its first-ever “diversity leader,” Annie Wu, a veteran employee who is currently the Global Manager for Employee Relations. This was no unprompted gesture: the company was widely criticized two weeks ago for an e-commerce photo featuring a young black boy, five-year-old Stockholm-based model Liam Mango, wearing a hooded sweatshirt that said “coolest monkey in the jungle gym.” Due to the notoriety of the incident, which included looting of H&M stores in South Africa, Mango and his family have reportedly left Sweden for safety and privacy. But as noted by the New York Times, the attitudes in Europe were less severe than the outrage in the United States and South Africa. “To put the t-shirt and the word ‘monkey’ with racism, maybe that is not my way of looking at it,” Terry Mango, his mother, told BBC. “I’m just looking at Liam, a black, young boy, modeling a t-shirt that has ‘monkey’ on it. I think everyone should respect different opinions on racism.” But whether or not Mango (and the rest of Europe) thought it was racist, H&M issued an apology to the public. But not before musicians like The Weeknd and G-Eazy severed their collaborations with the brand. And then H&M—perhaps realizing it lacked the resources to prevent such blunders in the future—turned to Wu. An American woman of color, Wu spent most of her career working in New York City before relocating to Stockholm in 2016. Her race—and nationality—are encouraging and suggest she’ll be able to speak up for non-Eurocentric attitudes about racism, cultural appropriation, and sexism within the company. Read more at Quartz.