We STILL need to talk about those Knit Karl boxes - JUN 30, 2020 (Patreon Archive)

Those Knit Karl boxes, the ones some knitting influencers like Melanie Berg and Josh Bennet have proudly promoted.

Both Karl Lagerfeld's brand and Melanie Berg have put out black out tueday squares and Josh Bennet and his enormous platform hasn't said a thing, ever, about fighting racism.

So why am I bringing this up again? For context too, read this article about Karl Lagerfeld: CNN:We can’t ignore Karl Lagerfeld’s complex legacy

Anyone claiming to do the anti-racism work really needs to look within before anything. Not acknowledging past mistakes or an entire brand built on the racist, sexist, and fatphobic behavior of the creator of the brand, is not acceptable.

Acknowledgement is a sign of looking for ways to move forward and creating measures to rectify the damage that was done and to have plans in place so that it never happens again. A large corporation like Karl Lagerfeld, owned by an even larger corporations, can absolutely reinvent the label. Brands do this all the time. They close down a label to open another one, sometimes keeping their staff and operating under a new name. The icon or legacy that is Karl Lagerfeld is steeped in racist and fatphobic tendencies and yet the industry has not corrected course with all their black squares claiming they are about anti-racism or justice. I have not heard anyone from the fashion world or the brand itself recognizing the faults that is Karl Lagerfeld.

When you claim someone is an icon, it means their legacy continues to live on forever, meaning all of them, not just cherry picked parts of them to fit this glorified story of a legacy. We shouldn’t be praising and worshipping someone that perpetuates racism, fatphobia, islamaphobia, and upholds white supremacy. Period. Fashion icon or Confederate generals that believed in enslaving people or colonizers that pillaged Indigenous tribes to claim their land.

So what does this mean for the fiber community and fiber industry? Someone had to reach out to these knitting influencers, meaning they have a direct contact to the team at Karl Lagerfeld. They could very well contact these people to do the anti-racism work, that white people should collect their own to do the labor that shouldn’t be on the shoulders of BIPOC to ask for the mere thing that we shouldn’t be supporting racism and anti-blackness. If they do intend on doing better, we need to see those changes. Again, silence is complicity to white supremacy, covert and overt.

Continuing to promote racist brands or ignoring the conversation all together is clearly siding with the oppressor. Why and how can you continue to support these brands and creatives that do no care to even try when there are PLENTY of other brands and knitting pattern designers and knitting influencers that DO THE WORK? Our dollars is power in our world. Dollars and where they go makes a significant difference in redirecting what we value as a society. We need to value humanity, justice, and equality along with equity way more than what these brands produce or what supposed service they provide.