H&M Responds To Backlash Over Young Model’s Hairstyle In New Campaign

Clothing line store H&M just launched a new kids campaign and it caused quite an uproar when a beautiful young black girl who modeled for the line was shown with her hair undone.

Hairstylist Vernon Francois called out H&M Kids, saying that a young Black model’s hairstyle appeared “to have had very little to no attention” paid to it.

Here’s his full statement.

View this post on Instagram

It’s essential that we have a conversation about this photograph from the @hm_kids campaign. Before I begin, I do not have the facts, nor have I seen any statement by #H&M or the team who worked on this. This post is just an assessment based on all my years of seeing situations like this happen time and time again. And its got to stop. This beautiful young girl’s #kinky hair appears to have had very little to no attention yet all of her counterparts have clearly sat in front of someone who was more then capable of styling other hair textures. My heart breaks imagining yet another girl from my community sitting in front of a mirror being ignored by the team around her, left to her own devices because someone didn’t know how to handle her texture. As if that’s not bad enough…. Prior to this campaign appearing this photograph will have been seen and APPROVED by countless ‘professionals’. Lets say conservatively 50 people. It’s breathtaking to me that not one person looked at this shot and had the same reaction that the internet seems to be feeling since the campaign broke. THAT IS AN ISSUE. We must do better. Our girls, our young women deserve better. Let this be a moment of learning. #Education is key #wehavetodobetter #vernonfrancois #Ignorance #blackgirlmagic #allhairisgoodhair

A post shared by Vernon François (@vernonfrancois) on Sep 19, 2019 at 9:33pm PDT

Many others on social media had these same thoughts.

When reached for comment on the post, a spokesperson for H&M told NYLON via e-mail, “We are aware of the comments regarding one of our models for H&M Kids. We truly believe that all kids should be allowed to be kids. The school aged kids who model for us come to the photo studio in the afternoon after school and we aim for a natural look which reflects that.”

Clearly someone on the H&M team could have given her hair a little more attention and touched it up a bit between the shoot.

Regardless, this young princess is gorgeous and we applaud her for embracing her natural beauty.