Caity Briare is set to attend fashion school for the first time in New York City at Parsons School of Design this fall. Growing up, Briare always struggled to find trend-forward clothing that fit her smaller body–Briare is a little person—so she began cutting and altering clothing she bought at fashion stores. Looking back now, she realizes now that she was a fashion designer before she recognized it herself. Then, in 2020, she got her first sewing machine and started making clothing for herself. Now, she has a business called Ca8ty Designs that sees her customize thrifted pieces with hand-drawn images and embroidery, and she is pursuing a career in fashion with the goal of making others feel more included.
Briare will be one of the first students to participate Parsons’ new Disabled Fashion Student Program, which is a new recruitment, scholarship and mentorship initiative created by Parsons and Tilting the Lens, the accessibility consultancy founded by disability activist, educator, and writer Sinéad Burke, that specifically supports disabled students in attaining a fashion degree and entering the industry.
Historically, the fashion industry hasn’t been known to be the most inclusive, especially when it comes to disability. Up until recently, most campaigns and runway shows have tended to feature able-bodied models. Luckily, that’s been slowly changing and inclusion is becoming more of a priority. For example, in 2018, Aaron Rose Philip became the first Black, transgender, disabled model to be represented by a major modeling agency, and Tommy Hilfiger has been making an adaptive line for almost a decade now. In September 2023, the brand Selkie was praised for featuring a model in a wheelchair in its Spring/Summer 2024 runway at New York Fashion Week.
Philip—who took Teen Vogue along on her prom GRWM adventure in 2019—has now appeared on the runway for major brands including Moschino and Collina Strada. Ellie Goldstein, who has Down syndrome, has been on the cover of Glamour. Still, the industry has a long way to go as very few fashion brands make disabled consumers a priority or are fronted by disabled designers.
Parsons is hoping to change the fashion industry’s failure to not only recognize disabled people as consumers and wearers but also as creatives with its new initiative, which is set to launch this fall and will support three fashion students to start.
Burke, who has been deeply invested in changing the fashion system, says it was the mass disabling event of the pandemic that really got her thinking about what systemic change might look like in the fashion industry and beyond. Around that same time, Ben Barry PhD, who is also disabled and queer, had been appointed the dean of fashion at Parsons.
“Immediately,” Burke tells Teen Vogue, “I went to try to find him on Instagram and DMed him and said, ‘Hi, you’re a queer disabled person. I’m a queer disabled person. We’re both invested in transforming fashion. Can we have a conversation?’” From there, the duo began meeting monthly and thinking about how they could change systems and create a legacy within the industry. Burke says they realized that “building muscle memory within the fashion institution—that can only be done by having disabled designers in the room.” In order for that to happen, Burke and Barry had to work backwards and build a program and a pathway to it that was accessible through the lens of disability justice and intersectionality.
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