The fashion industry is, perhaps more than most, built on image. Brands implore us, through their use of cultural cues, models, product, and studies and guesses about what's now or next or what's best kept preserved as classic or chic, to accept as ours the identity they project. Building these images, however, sometimes clashes with, or is perceived to clash with, societal norms and anti-bias laws.

Discrimination laws are not the only challenges facing fashion retailers, but the need to build and project a particular image accounts for many of the employment law problems unique to the industry. Beyond the issue of employment, ugly claims of racial profiling or exclusion surface from time to time, where a retailer is accused of harassing minority shoppers on the theory that they are in the store not to shop, but to shoplift.

Fashion is one of the most diverse industries in the modern world. Everyone gets dressed in the morning, and almost everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, sexual orientation, and so forth, is interested in how they look. Walk into almost any house of high couture and you will see employees of color, gay and straight, male and female.