India's fashion industry faces renewed scrutiny over its approach to representation and cultural sensitivity following a controversial campaign from luxury womenswear brand AMPM. The brand's autumn-winter collection campaign, titled 'Hum' (meaning 'we' in Hindi), has ignited heated discussions about racial insensitivity and tone-deaf marketing in the Indian fashion landscape.
The Controversial Campaign
Launched approximately a month ago, AMPM's 'Hum' campaign featured models painted head-to-toe in charcoal against hand-painted rural backdrops. Instagram snippets showed models having their faces covered with charcoal paint, similar to the treatment of the campaign canvases. The campaign initially generated little attention until an international content creator shared it earlier this week, triggering widespread criticism and reshares across social media platforms.
Many observers immediately drew parallels between the charcoal-painted models and blackface minstrelsy, which originated in 19th-century United States when white performers darkened their faces with shoe polish or charcoal to create racist caricatures of African Americans.
Brand Defense and Artistic Intent
In response to the growing criticism, AMPM co-founder and creative director Priyanka Modi defended the campaign through an emailed statement to Lounge. She explained that the concept aimed to celebrate "togetherness" and unity among humans, animals, and nature.
"To express this visually, we used a charcoal tone across the campaign," Modi stated. "This was an intentional artistic choice, not meant to change or highlight any particular identity. Instead, it allowed everything—the models, the forms, the objects—to exist in the same visual space without hierarchy or contrast."
Campaign art director and photographer Pranoy Sarkar elaborated further, calling the monochrome treatment an "artistic device, not a racial one." He argued that linking the campaign to blackface misunderstands both the history of blackface and the intent of their work, emphasizing that 'Hum' was created with Indian women in an Indian context to "dissolve difference, not exaggerate it."
Missing the Cultural Context
Despite the brand's artistic explanations, critics point to the campaign's failure to acknowledge India's deep-rooted issues with skin color discrimination and colorism. In a country where fairness creams dominate beauty aisles and darker skin tones face persistent social prejudice, using charcoal as a unifying "artistic device" appears particularly insensitive.
The campaign's social media carousel further complicated matters by featuring fair-skinned models alongside the charcoal-painted women, raising the obvious question: why not simply hire models with darker skin tones if the goal was genuine representation?
This incident reflects a broader pattern in Indian fashion where artisans often appear as props beside runway models, and luxury campaigns appropriate traditional elements while overlooking the communities that create them. Just weeks earlier, another brand faced criticism for shooting a Banarasi sari campaign in Thailand using the politically problematic term "Oriental design" and treating the Thai model as a silent prop beside the speaking Indian model.
As the industry continues to grapple with these issues, the AMPM controversy highlights the urgent need for fashion to move beyond superficial inclusivity and embrace genuine diversity in bodies, identities, and representation. True celebration of togetherness requires acknowledging and respecting differences rather than artificially erasing them through monochromatic treatments.
