Rising East Online

Reporting the Gateway

Fashion Notes

• Amica Anselm Young Gifted and Wannabe Lite
• Louise Tierney Chanel’s Bit of Rough

Fashion Notes

Young, Gifted and Wannabe Lite

—Amica Anselm

Young black women are using harmful bleaching creams in a dangerous attempt to follow fashion. Three decades after ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, the ongoing fashion for skin whitening has been highlighted by the recent conviction of Michael and Yinka Oluyemi, husband and wife owners of beauty salons in Peckham, south-east London, for supplying harmful poisonous products.

The Oluyemis were winners of a Black Business award several years ago. In 2001 they were convicted and fined for a similar offence. Their cosmetics were found to contain mercury and lightening products including steroids such as clobetasol propionate, and the poisonous chemical hydroquinone.

Skin lightening otherwise known as bleaching is big in East London, but is largely hidden. When I asked Newham residents about it, almost everyone said they themselves didn’t do it, but they knew someone else who did.

It seems that bleaching is something that many people are afraid to admit to. But there are telltale signs: the apparent darkening of the knuckles, and anywhere else where pigment hides in the creases of skin; also the dark black spots which may appear on the face, combined with the smeared shade of damaged pigmentation coming through.

Some people use these creams just to clear small blemishes, and the same type of cream is also being sold to Caucasian women in major retail outlets. A beautician who owns her own shop on the Barking Road in East London claimed that clearing blemishes and diminishing stretch marks are what these creams are really for, and for this reason she said she was happy to sell them, adding that she herself would never use them for bleaching.

But this is disingenuous. Light-skinned stars such as Beyonce, who has been accused of bleaching, and Halle Berry, criticised for being so light that she is acceptable to mainstream white audiences but black enough to tick the right boxes, nevertheless exert an influence over young women whose only hope of resembling them is to use artificial means to lighten up. But these young women (and some men) are applying whitening creams without knowing what’s in them or what those ingredients can do to their health. They also seem unaware of the negative message which bleaching sends out to the next generation of black children. It is a kind of self-hatred, which may well date back to slavery days, and in its own way is as harmful as the poisonous chemicals.

Amica Anselm is studying Journalism

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Fashion Notes

Chanel’s Bit of Rough

—Louise Tierney

East London is not exactly the fashion Mecca of Europe, is it? With its ghetto style and bling attached to every body part possible, it used to be associated with well, chavs. But don’t fret, a saviour is here, in the shape of pop princess Lily Allen.

Lily Allen came to fame on the website MySpace. Her MySpace page with her music featured on it has thousands of hits each day; but it is her style that is more documented in the press. With her scruffy trainers and jewellery that looks like she raided a goldmine, she’s a blessing to all East Londoners out there.

Now 21-year-old Lily has been made the face of Chanel. Remarkable considering that gold hoop earrings were once only seen on troublesome teenagers laden with babies. Out go Chanel muses such as Nicole Kidman, renowned for her sophisticated style, and in comes Miss Allen with her rude girl exterior.

Some people feel that Lily’s style is all a front, and she’s just a posh girl gone bad. They may have a point: Lily’s father is not Mad Frankie Fraser but Keith Allen, comedian, sometime singer and currently the Sheriff of Nottingham in BBC TV’s Robin Hood. Lily had a privileged upbringing, attending fee-paying, private schools, but she is marketed as street-wise, more East End than West. Meanwhile many East Londoners have warmed to Lily as they feel that she’s one of them (sort of): she says it as it is and does only what she wants to do.

Regardless of which Lily is the authentic one, she and her record company have certainly found a real gap in the music market, what with a shortage of young women ready to speak their mind.

Lily got into trouble when her single Smile reached number one and she was reported to have said that she was going out to party with some cocaine. Not exactly role model material, you might think. But I think this is exactly why Chanel has hired her. They must be as bored as we are by puppet models with no personality. They want to reach out to a fresher, younger audience. In signing up Lily, Chanel has brought a touch of chav into high fashion. East London rules again.

Louise Tierney is studying Journalism

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