Disability & Fashion

This project develops new activist methodologies and pedagogies in fashion design and education by centring the disabled wearer. In a special topics course on disability and fashion in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University with Dr. Ben Barry, fashion students will co-design an outfit with a disabled wearer by working through a collaborative design process that is grounded in disability justice.

Students will first be introduced to the frameworks of design activism, disability justice, disability aesthetics, design thinking and co-design. Students will use mobile body scanning technology and 3D modeling software to create a 3D digital model of the wearer’s body. They will create, modify and finalize the outfit in exchange with a disabled wearer. The final work will be photographed, and these photographs alongside the final outfits will be exhibited to disrupt serotypes and misrepresentations about disability and fashion, as well as to explore the relationship between fashion and design activism and social and political justice.

To document the project for research analysis and mobilization, both students and wearers will be interviewed before and after the project about their reasons for participating, experiences and co-designed outfit. They will also be asked to keep an audio or written journal of their thoughts and feelings during the process.