Fashion houses constantly seek the trendiest ambassadors, from film and music stars to assorted celebrities and prominent influencers. In recent years, some have also begun to enlist diversity consultants. However, these efforts often feel superficial, amounting to tokenism rather than genuine change. As a result, the industry remains stagnant, missing opportunities to expand its vision and embrace a more inclusive future, one that thoughtfully considers the relationship between the body and fashion.
There are, however, compelling researchers who are pushing the boundaries, providing insightful contributions to how we understand the body in a broader, more inclusive sense, and who may inspire us new paths to follow for the fashion industry. Asa Ito, Director of the Future of Humanity Research Center at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and a Visiting Scholar at MIT in 2019, is one such figure. Specializing in aesthetics and contemporary art, her work also explores the complexities of the human body, particularly in relation to diversity and disabilities.
Born in 1979, Ito initially aimed to become a biologist but later shifted her focus to the arts. At the Future of Humanity Research Center, she has developed studies that explore how perceptions of the human body are shaped by disabilities.
According to Ito, shedding our current worldview and truly embracing the diversity of the world can offer a glimpse into the new values that future society will require. While her ideas primarily focus on the human experience, they resonate across various fields, including education, fashion, and economics. Take fashion design, for instance: how many courses actively involve healthcare professionals, encouraging collaboration between designers, patients, and medical experts to create designs that accommodate specific disabilities or conditions? Probably very few, yet such courses would open up vast markets (consider the success of Marks & Spencer's stoma bag knickers in the UK).
One of Ito's research topics has been altruism, something rarely found in fashion, where the Latin proverb "mors tua, vita mea" (your death, my life) often prevails. The concept of acting in ways that benefit others, not just ourselves, is indeed almost absent from both the industry and fashion design education (perhaps it's time to rethink fashion schools, restructuring them to follow models like the Paris-based École 42 where students engage in project-based learning without teachers, traditional classes, or textbooks, focusing instead on peer-to-peer collaboration. This shift could inspire a new generation of designers to approach fashion with more empathy and inclusivity).
In her research, Ito encourages people to view human beings and society from different perspectives, moving away from the competitive, profit-driven values that often neglect marginalized groups. Her work, grounded in aesthetics and philosophy, has so far involved also interviewing individuals with disabilities - visually impaired people, dementia patients, and cancer survivors, among the others - to understand how they experience the world and use their bodies. These conversations allowed her to examine the various ways people perceive and use their bodies to engage with the world, prompting her to explore how personal experiences influence perception, such as making sports events accessible to visually impaired spectators.
For example, for an able-bodied person, "seeing" is visual, but for a blind person, "seeing" can mean perceiving through touch. By shifting our understanding of perception and acknowledging the diverse ways people experience life, we can open up new methods of interaction, create fresh perspectives, and even develop innovative technologies. Examining disabilities from different angles can often lead to new solutions, and at times, even the creation of new products.
Ito would like for example to develop a research on dementia, to better understand the world that those with the condition live in. By seeing the world of people with dementia from within, we can discover a sensibility that is different from our "normal" in terms of time and space. Such a discovery could lead to new ideas and lead to more humane designs for caregiving institutions and environments.
Now, let's explore how Ito's insights can be applied to the fashion industry. When we attend or watch online a grand fashion show from a prestigious fashion house, we often revel in the spectacle - the elaborate set design, the performers maybe invited on the runway to showcase a choreography, and, of course, the stunning designs on the runway. However, visually-impaired spectators miss out on this experience.
To bridge this gap, we could enhance their experience with detailed live descriptions and broadcasts, perhaps paired with sensory elements like mini-kits containing fabric swatches or surface embellishments from the collection being showcased (Midjourney can help us imagining this reality, see image in this post). These tactile materials would allow a visually-impaired guest at a runway show to grasp what a garment "feels" like, fostering a deeper connection between the fabric and its potential wearer. This would produce an innovative idea (how many fashion shows throughout history have included visually-impaired spectators in the front row, equipped with such audio and tactile kits? Practically none. Too expensive? Surely not for major luxury fashion houses…).
But further researches could be developed examining fashion from the point of view of a bed-ridden person, a person who wears a prosthesis and so on (garments designed for people wearing prosthesis could inspire innovative research in what we may call biomecha-phoresis, that is a focus on the interactions between mechanical structures and the body's movements within fashion design).
We often perceive the allure of fashion as being exclusive to the beautiful and the handsome - the perfect individuals gracing the front row. However, we do not live in Samuel Butler's Erewhon, and we are not required to fit an ideal mold. It would be truly wonderful if spectators with different abilities could also experience the essence and sensations of fashion shows. Embracing this inclusivity and driving continual efforts to acknowledge and celebrate the diversity within each individual would lead indeed to a brave new fashion world. The key is in altruism and in shifting perspectives, Asa Ito tells us.
Ready to do it, fashion design students out there? (fashion design students reading this post, develop more ideas along these lines - how you could adapt your show to accommodate a visually-impaired guest? What other new strategies and solutions can you create?).
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