Major Fashion Names Among Worst Offenders in Britain Gender Pay Gap

LONDON — This week, as the final hours ticked down to the deadline for British companies to report their gender pay gap data or face a fine, a flurry of last-minute filings revealed a stark and unflattering trend: Fashion and beauty brands, predominantly focused on female consumers and audiences, and often employing an overwhelmingly female staff, are among the worst offenders in the country when it comes to paying men more than women.

The explanation, according to several companies? A coterie of men in a handful of top-tier executive roles, while the majority of entry-level, retail, design and distribution center jobs are held by women, creating a gendered, pyramid employment structure reflected across sectors in the fashion industry.

Take Condé Nast Publications Limited, publisher of magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour and GQ. The company reported data on Tuesday that revealed it to have the largest mean gender pay gap favoring men among all British media publishers and broadcasters, despite having more women than men at every pay quartile.

The company reported a mean gender pay gap of 36.9 percent (in other words, when comparing mean hourly rates, women earn 63 pence, or 83 cents, for every 1 pound, or $1.40, that men earn) and a median gap of 23 percent (when comparing median hourly rates, women earn 77 pence, or $1.08, for every £1, or $1.40, that men earn).

In a statement published alongside the data, Condé Nast attributed its salary skew to its longstanding and male-dominated senior leadership team. The chairman of Condé Nast Britain, Nicholas Coleridge, for example, has held various roles across the executive team since 1991. Jonathan Newhouse has led Condé Nast International for over 30 years. The statement said that across three-quarters of its business, the company had not found evidence of an appreciable gender pay gap. Three-quarters of all Condé Nast employees are female, with the bottom two salary quartiles particularly dominated by women.

The disparity of wages that exist within most fashion businesses was further underscored by the figures produced by many brands and retailers. The middle market women’s wear brand Karen Millen pays women 49 percent less than men on a median hourly basis, meaning that, companywide, men’s median pay was double that of women. Women made up 84 percent of the company’s top positions, with a female C.E.O. and C.F.O., and the same proportion of men and women received bonuses, yet women’s median bonus pay was 96 percent lower than men’s.

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In a statement, the company said that this was because the majority of its retail assistants and distribution center staff were women, and that the small percentage of male employees worked mostly in its head office.

“Our gender gap paints a misleading picture about our commitment to gender diversity and equality,” the statement read, adding that when head office roles were excluded, the gender pay gap dropped to 6 percent. It did not, however, address why so many head office roles were filled by men instead of women.

Other high-profile names included Victoria’s Secret, with a median hourly rate gap of 19 percent, and Benefit Cosmetics, which revealed a 30.7 percent median hourly rate gap, although women made up more than 90 percent of each pay quartile at the company. At Burberry, where women make up 70 percent of the luxury fashion group’s employees, there is a 26 percent gender pay gap in favor of men, who get higher bonuses too. None of the companies in this article wished to provide further comment beyond the statements released with their data.

“While we continue to take steps to ensure employees at all levels are able to fulfill their potential and further their careers at Burberry, and are recognized for their contribution, we know we can do more,” said the Burberry chief executive, Marco Gobbetti, when the company released its data last month. “This report shows that we have a gender pay gap in the U.K. The gap is influenced by the fact that we have fewer women in senior positions, however we are committed to narrowing this gap as we work to develop more women leaders to drive the growth and success of our business.”

More than 2,500 companies, equivalent to one in four, submitted their gender pay gap figures in the 48 hours before midnight on Wednesday. Last year, the government ordered all British companies with more than 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap reports by midnight on April 4.

The hope, it said, was to shame companies into doing more to close the divide. On the final day of results, findings indicated that 78 percent of companies showed a pay gap in favor of men, 14 percent had a gap favoring women and 8 percent had no gender pay gap. The government calculated that Britain’s overall pay gap is 18.1 percent.

Prime Minister Theresa May called the gender pay gap a “burning injustice,” and added that the whole of society would remain “poorer” if outdated employment practices went unchallenged.

The effort in Britain is one of a growing number of initiatives among countries to promote equal pay. Australia recently mandated gender pay gap reporting for most companies, while in Germany a new law will require businesses with more than 500 employees to reveal their pay gaps. The fashion industry, riding high on selling female empowerment via T-shirt slogans and social media hashtags, is starting to look like the employer equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes.

Spring Fashion Captured by a Photographer Who Hides Faces

The 23-year-old photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis rarely shows a model’s face. “I want their egos to be taken away,” she says. Her fashion photographs are kinetic, snapped as models twist and manipulate the bright color-block clothing that contains them. Without a face, she says, every element in a photograph’s composition has equal play: the clothes, the setting, and the model tell a single story.

For this fashion shoot, Bobb-Willis went to New Orleans, where her mother is from, with a box of our fashion editors’ favorite looks from the spring 2018 runways. She photographed women who live in the city wearing colorful dresses, accordion pants, and plastic knee-high boots, all while contorting on sidewalks and in abandoned fields. “The colors and the composition of the city have always inspired me,” she says. “There’s just this heaviness to it. It’s so vibrant, but there’s a spooky undertone that runs through.”

Bobb-Willis developed an abstract, dissociative style while struggling with anxiety and depression, using photography as a form of therapy. “I felt like my body was something I was renting more so than something that was given to me,” she says. “When I’m shooting, I’m focusing on what’s in front of me and nothing else.”

Exploring Femininity With Fashion at the New Orleans Museum of Art

When fashion curator Sofia Hedman first assembled “A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes” in St. Louis in 2013, she did so with a psychological approach typical to her exhibitions. But now, as a revamped version of the largely avant-garde presentation opens this week at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Hedman’s vision has shifted, along with the collective zeitgeist.

“One thing I’ve learned in the past five years is how politically aware people are today,” explains Hedman, who holds a BA in psychology from Stockholm University. “We wanted now to do something that is quite contemporary and touches on pressing issues such as sustainability, race and inclusivity.”

Comprised of over 100 gowns, shoes, headpieces and jewelry from more than 50 renowned and up-and-coming designers, the museum’s first fashion exhibition explores how pieces of “bold couture” can illustrate various forms of femininity. Iconic pieces from Alexander McQueen, Comme des Garçons and Gucci stand alongside works of photography, sculpture and art including experimental video from South African designer Rich Mnisi.

Calling the exhibition a “celebration of femininity,” Hedman focused her scope of “QA Queen Within” to include only designs of the past decade, building on mythological personality archetypes to illustrate how wearable art can tell a woman’s story in real life.

“We look at the [archetype] of the ‘Thespian,’ who is blessed with imagination,” continues the Swedish-born curator. “We also look at ‘Mother Earth,’ which [investigates] how to make the world more sustainable for the future. Then we have the ‘Explorer,’ who is an independent-minded pioneer, the ‘Enchantress’ or femme fatale, the ‘Heroine’ with a very strong personal morality and, lastly, the ‘Magician’ who is the visionary artist and inventor. She is reimagining a new future.”

Masterfully presenting these lofty concepts has become the norm for Hedman, who in 2010 acted as London-based archivist for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibit “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.”

“There’s been a huge shift politically in just the last five years,” she observes. “I’m very intrigued with looking at fashion from a sociological perspective, but also trying to understand why we dress as we do and what it means.”

Susan Taylor, the director of NOMA, offers a more straightforward assessment, describing the museum’s latest installation as “definitively [demonstrating] that fashion is art.”

Hedman, who describes New Orleans as “bubbling with creativity and culture,” understands the many layers of symbolism may not reach each visitor of the collection, which is open through May. Instead, her hope is that people “see it as a celebration of femininity, but also makes people think about their own lives and how they dress every morning.”

Integral to each of Hedman’s projects is to create a provocative experience that inspires self-reflection for the visitor, which she argues is often easiest with fashion (over other visual arts) given its daily role in our lives. “Today, you can see a lot of people want to create more communities and it becomes very political. You buy clothes to belong to a community or show you have certain values.”

“Some people say they don’t care about clothes, but then they use fashion to tell a story,” she adds. “There are a lot of possibilities with fashion as an art form and you make a statement when you dress every morning. It’s good to be aware of it.”

These Are Hip-Hop's Realest Fashion Styles

From bucket hats to full-body tattoos, hip-hop fashion changes like the wind. Here's our guide to some of the most pivotal and influential trends.

Hip-hop fashion has evolved at a rate of knots since the sound first emerged from New York City's Bronx neighbourhood in the middle of the 1970s and styles have ranged from city to city, coast to coast and scene to scene. Our handy cut-out-and-keep guide to hip-hop trends focuses on those that have stood out most, those that have never gone away and those that continue, from time to time, to make comebacks. Will Chance The Rapper's dungaree overalls stand the test of time like these have?

The b-boy years

The first hip-hop uniform was worn by rappers, DJs, breakdancers and graffiti artists alike. The early '80s b-boy look, which emerged on the east coast, comprised of Kangol bucket hats, chunky street-tuff gold chains and name-plate necklaces, shell-toe trainers with 'phat' laces, and black (sometimes leather) tracksuit tops.

Sportswear companies such as Le Coq Sportif, Adidas and a couple of other now-defunct brands ruled the streets. Run-D.M.C. probably wore it best, but The Fat Boys, Ultramagnetic MCs, Schoolly D, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane and many, many more also rocked the look.

Black pride

After a few twists and turns that took in an early gangster rap style inspired by Latin American gang culture and the preppy flower-power look of De La Soul, hip-hop fashion became entwined with a growing interest in black pride and socially conscious hip-hop.

Towards the end of the '80s hip-hop acts such as Public Enemy, Eric B And Rakim, Brand Nubian, Main Source, Queen Latifah, KRS-One, Salt-N-Pepa and more began celebrating their African heritage, as well as revisiting black nationalist movements such as the Black Panthers. Paramilitary fatigues mixed with the black nationalist colours of yellow, red, black and green, and even the jewellery took on meaning, with Salt-N-Pepa's gold door-knocker earrings connected to Africanism.

Ghetto fabulous

Next came hip-hop's most ostentatious trend, which outstrips even the Courvoisier-guzzling bling period of the early '00s for flashiness. In a style that suggested extreme wealth, in the mid-'90s hip-hop's biggest stars started wearing increasingly extravagant attire.

Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, aka Puffy, aka P Diddy, aka Diddy, aka Love) turned the trend into something straight-up slick and called it ghetto fabulous, but he, Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G. and 2-Pac began by mimicking the old-school gangster look of Al Capone and the prohibition era's most notorious. That means fedoras and bowler hats, double-breasted suits and alligator-skin shoes. Snappy.

The baggy years

After the concepts and show-off years, hip-hop fashion simplified in the mid-to-late '90s. Out went suits and uniforms and in came low-slung baggy jeans, snapbacks, work boots, puffer jackets, Tommy Hilfiger threads and – a hip-hop perennial – sportswear.

The Wu-Tang Clan rocked this look, as did Gang Starr, Missy Elliot and others. Later on, Dirty South rappers such as Nelly and Ludacris would add do-rags and basketball tops, while female rappers Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown eschewed the baggy style altogether.

Open Thread: This Week in Style News

Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The latest newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here.

Hello and happy Friday. It’s been quite a week.

First there was the red carpet revolution at the Golden Globes. You might have noticed a difference in our coverage and slide shows (no name-checking of brands) and I’d be really curious to hear what you thought.

Then there was the furor over Michael Wolff’s book on the Trump administration, “Fire and Fury,” with its many juicy, controversial revelations, including the astonishing tidbit about how, exactly, the president achieves his hairstyle.

I’ll let you discover that for yourself, but suffice it to say in involves scalp reduction surgery, and then an elaborate comb-up-and-over.

Amid it all, understandably, a genuine piece of fashion news got a little lost: the first designer appointment of the new year. Diane von Furstenberg named Nathan Jenden her new chief design officer (I know: C.D.O.; brings up strange, recessionary nightmares). He starts with a bang — and not a lot of time to settle in — at New York Fashion Week next month.

Jenden, who is British and went to Central St. Martin’s and the Royal College of Art, has a history with DVF. He was creative director of the brand from 2001 to 2010 — he and Von Furstenberg used to take their runway bow together — when he left to concentrate on his own line, which launched in 2005. That didn’t go so well, and most recently he was creative director of Bebe.

Meanwhile, DVF also couldn’t settle down without him, going through three designers in the last seven years.

Now both sides are older, wiser and have presumably realized what they missed without the other — which is probably a good thing in these days of crazy designer churn. A lot of fashion success is dependent on relationships (designer with founder, designer with C.E.O., designer with design studio, brand with consumers) and it takes time to build that kind of trust and understanding.

Anyway, enough with the lectures! Let’s see how it all plays out next month.

For now, I offer the following reads: Amber Tamblyn’s searingly honest Op-Ed about getting dressed for an awards ceremony; an inside look on how the experts pack for the men’s wear season; and the latest, weirdest slogan clothes. Have a good weekend!

Your Style Questions, Answered

Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.

Q: My son is in college in Maine, and the temperature is frequently below zero. It seems like every woman is swathed in an ankle-length black puffer coat from November to March, so why do men have so few choices in outerwear that is knee length or longer? Have you come across any knee-length down coats for men? — Amy, Pelham, N.Y.

A: It’s true: Though dress coats hit at the knee and great coats (especially those that are military-inspired in heavy wool) can be even longer, in general men got the short end of the stick in the coat-length sweepstakes. It’s pretty clear this is one of those sexist fashion things — a long coat is somehow seen as not manly, unless maybe you live in Russia and it is fur. Because real men…have weatherproof legs? Or something.

Given that all sorts of gender rules are loosening up when it comes to clothing these days, however, a warmer time may be on the horizon. In the meantime, however, I asked Matthew Schneier, our deputy fashion critic (currently in Milan at the shows) for his advice. Here’s what he said:

“Where men’s outerwear is concerned, even the hardiest coats seem to come only to somewhere above the knee. To test the theory, I looked around at a range of brands known for their tough winter-wear (the North Face, Canada Goose, Moncler, Duvetica, Stone Island) and struck out at every one. Even L.L. Bean (which knows something about Maine winters, being headquartered there!) didn’t offer much that dropped below the waist. I suspect it’s that floor-length outerwear is pretty unwieldy, especially where there’s snow and slush on the ground, and many men (at the expense of their body temperatures) chafe at the idea of something long enough to be mistaken for women’s wear.

My solution, for what it’s worth, is to pile on the underlayers. Thermal-wear has come a long way since the days of heavy waffle weaves in one color (though I love those, too). I swear by Uniqlo’s Heattech line, which I wear, tops and bottoms, basically all winter. They’re thinner, softer and warmer than their predecessors, cheaper by far than a new coat, and they disappear under clothes. Friends report that there was a run on them at the New York Uniqlo stores last week when the weather was wretched here. I wouldn’t know; I order mine, as can you, online.” — VANESSA FRIEDMAN