It's A Small World After All

By Sophfronia Scott

The model gazes serenely at the magazine reader from the country-club cool of a Ralph Lauren ad. Dressed impeccably in a tweed jacket, silk scarf and elegant suede gloves, she projects all the dreamy remoteness that is typical of Lauren models, with one notable difference: she is black.

It was a long time coming, but an ethnic rainbow is finally sweeping across the fashion and advertising industries -- and brightening them considerably. The blond, blue-eyed ideal is out, diversity is in, and the concept of beauty is growing as wide as the world. The new cast of faces is appearing not only in ads aimed at specific ethnic groups but in mainstream advertising as well. Revlon's Most Unforgettable Woman of 1989, chosen in a search across the U.S., is Mary Xinh Nguyen, a 20-year-old Vietnamese American from California. Such companies as Du Pont, Citibank and Delta Air Lines have populated current ads with a rich variety of blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

While many consumers still live in segregated neighborhoods, integrated ads have become the height of hipness. Reason: they have a sophisticated, global- village look. "Advertisers don't want to insult people's intelligence. They are reflecting how the world is," says James Patterson, chief executive of the ad agency J. Walter Thompson USA. If an ad features nothing but a herd of Caucasians, it can appear dated and stiff. The inclusion of a lone minority-group member has a similar effect. Says Ron Anderson, vice chairman of the Bozell ad agency: "Ten or 15 years ago, there was a sense of tokenism. Some advertisers would throw a black or Hispanic into an ad because they were sensitive to minorities. Now we use blacks and Hispanics to sell a product."

From supermodel Suzy Parker in the 1950s to Christie Brinkley in the early 1980s, fair-skinned models used to dominate advertising. Most ad experts trace the change to Europe, where couturiers, notably Givenchy, began employing black women as runway models. The French fashion magazine Elle helped pioneer the polyethnic look in its editorial pages, then exported the philosophy to America when it launched a U.S. edition four years ago. (Catherine Alain- Bernard, fashion and beauty editor of the French Elle, says her magazine still gets a few letters from people complaining about black models and "giving jobs to immigrants.")

One of the first advertisers to embrace the rainbow look was Benetton, the Italian knitwear maker, which launched its "United Colors of Benetton" campaign in 1984. The ads picture handsome youths of diverse nationalities often standing arm in arm. The purpose of such ads is not just to appeal to ethnic customers who might identify with people in the ads but also to pitch an alluring sentiment of brotherhood. Esprit, a San Francisco-based sportswear company, went one step further by putting its employees in ads. Says Esprit spokeswoman Lisa DeNeff: "We sat up and said, 'Hey, why not us?' We had a lot of great-looking folks here. Many were ethnically different."

All over the globe, advertising is becoming more multiracial. Many ads in Japan, which often used to depict blonds because they represented the Western good life, are populated by blacks, Asians and Latins. "Japanese consumers now want to see somebody unique and somebody they can easily empathize with," says Hidehiko Sekizawa, senior research director for Hakuhodo, Japan's second & largest ad agency. In France the two hottest commercials of the summer, for Schweppes and Orangina, featured Brazilian music and casts of brown-eyed, mixed-race beauties.

Modeling agencies are finding ways to meet the demand for fresher faces by scouting all over the world and staging more contests. "If you see a beauty, you don't worry about her color. The perfectly proportioned features are no longer so important," says Ann Veltri, a vice president at Elite Model Management.

Since consumers want to see real people rather than idols, advertisers expect the ethnic look to be around for years to come. "We don't want a colorless, odorless soup," says Guy Taboulay, the executive creative director in Paris for B.S.B., a U.S.-owned ad agency. "We want to see national identities and character. Tomorrow's culture will be made up of different cultures. That will be its strength."

With reporting by Tala Skari/Paris and Martha Smilgis/New York