This isn't the first season that black women have gone missing from the runway. Styles go in and out of favor and so do models. But ever since the demise of the supermodel in the early '90s, the fashion industry has been stubbornly unwilling to make room for more than one black model per show. Other than the occasional star -- Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede and now Chanel Iman -- black women go unrepresented.

At [Bethann Hardison]'s urging, African American designer Tracy Reese talked about the difficulty of getting model agencies to send her black women. Agents complained that some designers won't even consider black models for their shows. Editors of publications aimed at black consumers described the politics of booking models for their covers. Some black models fear being pigeonholed as too ethnic, a label that can prevent them from being featured prominently in more mainstream publications. And a lawyer dissected the difference between making an aesthetic choice, which is legal, and a biased one, which is not.

Some of the most enduring cultural images have come from the fashion industry. The glossy black and white pictures of wavy-haired ladies in pumps and day dresses defined the conservative and formal '50s. The pictures of Twiggy with stick-straight hair and wearing a miniskirt call to mind the '60s with their emphasis on youth and the sexual revolution. There is no better shorthand for the 1980s than the image of a woman with her hair teased high and shoulder pads bulking her up to the size of a linebacker.