Donna Karan Uses "Real" People In DKNY's New York Fashion Week Runway

This whole battle for diversity on the runway has opened up a whole new can of beautiful, diverse worms!
Now, not only are designers and retailers incorporating racially diverse models into their runways and campaigns, they’re also using models that are of all shapes, sizes, and ages!!
The latest designer to do so was Donna Karan (one of the designers specifically called out by Naomi Campbell‘s Diversity Coalition for using un-diverse models) during her DKNY show at New York Fashion Week on Sunday.
She pulled from BOTH her normal model pool AND from “real people” when it came to selecting catwalkers for her Fall 2014 runway!
The show started with a video talking about the backgrounds of the models, and also was accompanied by a written program that listed off occupations like “night life hostess” and “tattoo artist/ pro skateboarder”.
But Karan had her own reasons, aside from diversity, to switch up her runway peeps!
The designer explained:

“DKNY really is about the streets. It’s about the streets of New York, the energy of New York, the people of New York. You know, seeing how they do their hair, and their look and their style. Designers try to keep up with them.”

So the muses become the models!
What a neat way to pay tribute to all the fashionistas of New York, right??
Hope to see this type of runway diversity become more common in the future!
[Image via Getty Images.]