In 2011, L’Officiel placed Beyoncé on a cover and in an editorial wearing darkened makeup described by the creative team as a tribute to Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti and a symbolic return to her African roots. Creative director Jenke Ahmed Tailly defended the styling as an homage to African queens, but the imagery was widely criticized as blackface because Beyoncé, already a Black woman, had been made visibly darker and presented through a generalized visual idea of “Africa.” Critics argued that the shoot collapsed the continent’s many nations, ethnicities, histories, and skin tones into a single exoticized stereotype.
The controversy exposed the fashion press’s recurring dependence on provocation, racial caricature, and colonial visual codes while claiming artistic freedom. L’Officiel’s defense—that the image was a cultural tribute rather than a racist performance—did little to resolve the dispute, and the episode became part of the broader 2010s reckoning over blackface imagery in luxury fashion, advertising, and editorial photography.
