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The project I’m going to tell you about is called “Bezgraniz (No borders) Couture”,
its full name is “Bezgraniz Couture Fashion and Accessory Award.
Bezgraniz Couture deals with unobvious things.
On the surface, it supports young designers who make clothes for people with disabilities
In fact, the story is more complicated.
Bezgraniz Couture strives to alter social stereotypes related to physical disability rooted in the modern Russian society.
Certainly, this is a tremendous task.
Fortunately, we are not alone.
We have partners, volunteers and I hope you’ll also be part of this initiative.
Any support is equally important for us, because the project itself is rather difficult, both emotionally and practically.
On the other hand, the project is incredibly inspiring.
It gives us a feeling that we do something meaningful which can change the state of things.
So, I begin a talk on why this project inspires me so much.
To begin with, the right term we use to describe the clothes we make is the clothes for people with special body characteristics.
It’s not simply a matter of political correctness, it helps to clarify some points.
In fact, people without special body characteristics merely do not exist.
Each of you chooses clothes in the morning.
All of us have an idea what suits you depending on your height and body peculiarities.
Our choice is guided by comfort.
High heels may cause a backache, light clothes may be uncomfortable too.
There is not a person without body peculiarities.
Right vision of the issue is crucial, I think.
It’s not “normal” vs. “disabled”.
I’ll give a Gaussian chart as an example.
Gaussian chart reflects the statistics of big volumes.
It shows that there is a number of people that wear all sorts of clothes,
a group of people that wear different sorts of standard clothes and a number of people whom standard clothes don’t suit at all.
The first and the latter are not numerous, all-wear group is somewhere in the middle.
It is important to have this in mind, especially in reference to the universal design.
Here are four examples, among which there is a photo of a famous model.
I talked to my friends, and a huge number of models at fashion shows.
Though it seems that fashion industry work for them, it’s not like that, and they are not just flat, two-dimension sketches.
Some clothes don’t suit them either; some items are hard to wear for them.
Judging by fashion industry standards, the person may be idyllic. Still, he has body peculiarities
There’s another aspect, often neglected.
Our body changes throughout our life.
When we break legs, arms, the back or get pregnant.
We immediately turn into people with body peculiarities, when, because of plaster, our jeans refuse to fit us.
Our bodies change as we get older.
That way or another we may have different body shape peculiarities through our lives.
It’s important to keep this in mind as quite often people tend to get away/hide from disabled people needs.
In reality, we are all interrelated. There are no absolutely healthy or unhealthy.
Almost everything I’m going to talk about one-handed people, for instance, can be attributed to everyone.
All of us have had injuries, burns.
We know how it feels when you cannot button yourself up with one hand.
You just need to imagine that this is a lifetime situation.
Any situation can be applied to everyone.
A couple of figures.
When we talk about people considered to be disabled by the social system.
People who can’t walk, people with one-hand -it’s 10% of the population.
In other words, it’s each 10th man on the planet.
It’s not easy to accept this fact, more difficult is to believe it.
Try to believe it.
1 man out of 9 has difficulties with changing clothes.
It’s a huge number indeed.
One important point – clothing market for people with special needs is huge.
I’ll explain later why.
Here is another figure which I want you to guess.
8 years.
What does it refer to?
No.
Each of you spend 8 years being physically disabled.
If, on average, the total lifespan is 70 years, for various reasons we’ll spend 8 years being part of the 10% category.
I don’t only mean broken legs or illnesses.
I mean what definitely happens when you are old.
And, undoubtedly, if we continue to live longer, the figure will only increase.
It’s 100%.
We’ll be alive, and thanks God, energetic enough, but most likely we’ll not be physically perfect
To talk about specific clothes for people with special needs I made a graph of characteristics the clothes should correspond.
A couple of words about that.
First and most simple: functionality, clothes should be functional.
If a woman has only one hand, she won’t be able to fasten the bra at the back.
Another exercise. Girls may imagine how they try to fasten the bra on the back, using only one hand.
Boys may imagine how they try to unfasten that bra, using only one hand.
The easiest way to imagine functionality is to imagine process of putting jeans on immobile legs.
When we talk about physical comfort it’s not only about putting on/off clothes.
There are other factors which we rarely think of – what is the comfort for a person who sits 24 hours a day?
I mean we’re constantly adapting the state of our body to our needs.
We move our body, readjust our clothes to make ourselves more comfortable.
Imagine you no longer can do it.
Comfort is a more complicated thing than changing clothes.
Another point rarely considered is safety of clothes for physically disabled people.
I don’t only mean the wrong design of jeans that make difficult a simple walk for a person with special needs.
I also focus on another type of safety.
Fabrics safety for skin exposed to bedsores.
Esthetics. How should the special clothes for look like?
Since childhood, we’ve been told: well-chosen clothes underline merits and hides imperfections.
A good idea, for some situations.
Look, on the right is actress Amy Mullins.
To some extent, she is a role model of a successful person with disabilities.
A famous Hollywood actress, a beautiful woman which is important for media.
Many famous designers work with her.
She has a collection of legs, she doesn’t have her own.
Alexander McQueen made a part of famous collection of legs for her.
Here’s one of those pairs of wooden legs made by McQueen.
She is often pictured with wooden legs, tells about them, it’s another big story.
A woman on the left has no health problems.
She is bigger seen by the formal standards of modern beauty.
She is undoubtedly beautiful.
I’m honest, I don’t try to be polite.
But these are not two stories about merits and shortcomings.
Firstly, Amy Mollins can not hide her shortcoming as she doesn’t have legs, it’s hard to hide that.
On the other hand, we see that these striking artificial limbs made in a way that stress shortcomings.
They show that her artificial legs are a work of art.
If we focus on advertising industry, it’s obvious that the girl on the right will have to stay indoors.
Advertising imposes its rules of the game.
Advertising didn’t work when the clothing was restrictive.
It didn’t work with at the age of corset.
It’s not effective in regard to ordinary people, let alone people with disabilities.
So, when we talk about esthetics with reference to the clothing for disabled,
I want to stress once again that it is a more sophisticated issue than it seems.
I’ll start with 4 ideas outlined earlier.
I’ll explain why it’s that important to support BezGranits designers.
Idea #1 is.
- underwear with magnetic closings.
It’s an absolutely brilliant idea.
I have a feeling it will one day become the industry mainstream due to a simple reason-10% is a huge market segment.
Clothing items easily worn equally by ordinary people and people who have difficulties with wearing clothes are usually referred to the universal design category.
The logic is simple: let’s make something that suits everyone.
There are some difficulties, of course –the majority of current trends doesn’t fit universal design capacities.
Underwear with magnetic closings is gradually becoming fashion industry standard.
I’m sure all will benefit from this.
No matter what health problems may be, using magnets is much easier than dealing with hooks.
Another item from the last year BezGranits winner’s collection.
It’s about typical problem for people with cerebral palsy.
It’s about getting dressed.
If you’ve ever dressed a child you know what the whole process may look like a nightmare.
Then, imagine a child who simply can not stand still.
BezGranits designer has developed a special collection for children with cerebral palsy.
Roughly, it consists of two parts which are easily tied together.
Aesthetic aspect was crucial for us.
This clothing is bright and convenient, but you’ll never tell it from ordinary children’ clothes.
Items from children’s collection are indistinguishable from standard kid’s wear collections.
And, finally.
It’s a photo of one of our models from Inoplaneniki/People From Other planets project.
We take photos of people with disabilities and ask about their dreams.
This beautiful girl, a young and active motherwith immobile legs
Her main difficulty is dressing through legs.
All her clothes are put on over head which irritates her a lot.
She really looks forward to jeans that can be put on over head..
Jeans that are fastened along the inseam of jeans.
I hope the designer that will make such jeans will appear soon.
The idea is great, though we understand that these seams can be rubbing and unpleasant to wear for someone who can not move.
Still, we are looking for innovative ideas
Another pragmatic aspect - wearing comfort.
The trousers for a person with cerebral palsy in the corner of the picture.
What can be the difficulty?
Anyone who wears trousers knows that they roll up a bit while you are seated.
They roll up and cause yet another inconvenience- it strains in hip.
You can change your body position unconsciously to ease the strain.
The person in a wheelchair can not do it.
Wide trousers don’t solve the problem either, because in this case the trousers are simply crumpled in its lower part.
Trousers for wheelchair-users are designed to provide comfort in a seated position.
There is a number of standard models for trousers.
Obviously, they depend on the season, material and particular circumstances.
A red-and-black coat for wheelchair users.
Wearing coat may be difficult since it may cause excessive pressure on the backbone.
There is an idea on how to make a coat without a back part.
The crucial point is it should like an ordinary coat.
This coat is designed to easily fit shoulders and waist.
And no one can see the back.
A rather sophisticated white dress.
The top of it is made by one of the competition winners.
This item is a part of the collection for people with spinal diseases.
All these pieces of clothing are trendy, made from modern fabrics; yet at the same they are comfortable.
They are done with account of spinal deformations.
Look at this nice girl in a fancy dress.Though it’s a special dress, nobody sees the details.
As a result, a girl is wearing beautiful and comfortable piece of clothing.
The final example is a bit futuristic, but awesome, to my mind.
It’s called and exo-skeleton.
You may consider it a tool or a piece of clothing, in any case it solves a number of problems.
For instance, the one of a broken arm.
No need to use a band suspended from the neck to support it.
Sure, it’s not its exclusive mode of use.
This construction may be integrated into clothes or be external.
The disadvantage of exo-skeleton is its high cost.
They are used to keep the leg in a straight position.
An invaluable tool for those who can’t keep their bodies straight by the muscles power.
Security is another important aspect.
I’d like to give you some examples.
Left picture shows that wide trousers or skirts are easier worn than tight-fitting clothes.
The difficulty is that pieces of trousers may stuck in the wheelchair which can be traumatic.
On the left you see the design that allows trousers to be only folded forward.
Top photo shows a wheelchair cover to keep feet warm.
A plaid blanket may stuck in a wheel, a cover is safe.
Its another feature is its padded interior which helps soften falls.
A checked suit is notable for its innovative trousers too.
Another unobvious thing – dealing with layers of clothes than can pose a problem for a people with a limited mobility.
Changing clothes can be a tiring, painful process.
This suit let change clothes easily, over the head.
This piece is simple unbuttoned from the shoulders and tied up as a piece of cloth.
The latest innovation is development of clothing that doesn’t harm blood-circulation.
In DutyFree stores you may have seen these health socks.
Initially, they were made for people with blood-circulation problems and wheelchair users.
Their legs may have low sensitivity.
So, the development of innovative materials that retain shape and don’t make pressure on the skin is crucial.
Another pragmatic aspect is functionality.
On one hand, clothing for disabled people is no different from the regular one.
The same principles - warmth, safety, beauty.
On the other hand, designers strive to introduce innovative decisions.
My favourite example is this dress collection for visually impaired.
The dress skirt is embroidered with fairy tales texts using the Braille script.
Unlike ordinary kids, this girl can not spend time by playing on IPad.
This dress is both a dress and a book, a toy that will keep a kid occupied for a while.
Pink exo-corset, cute and funny, useful.
Pragmatic and good-looking.
Made from silicon and polymers.
The most sophisticated item- a dress for hearing impaired.
The idea is simple – it has in-built devices that detect air vibration and pass it to skin.
They help to make the environment safer, serve as a warning about an approaching car or other possible dangers.
In-built detectors inform about any vibration or noise happening around.
Finally, the last but not the least.
The clothes designed for people with body peculiarities is made to be adequate for the public environment.
It’s hard to hide that you’re in a wheelchair or you don’t have an arm, right?
Hard to hide, but possible to make a situation when people at least feel fine wearing what they wear.
It’s the first question we make when we choose clothes every day – whether it will be adequate to the situation or not.
These clothes help to feel at ease in the situation, to be adequate for it.
For example, this lacy silicon stuff is an exo-corset.
Sure, we can’t make it look like a piece of ordinary bijou.
Though, at least we can make it look attractive.
The girl in red on top photo is a Russian wheelchair ballroom dance champion.
It’s one of her dance dresses.
It’s totally safe, yet elegant.
She looks like a lady in an evening dress sitting in a wheelchair.
Another important moment for me is a room for irony, joke despite the burden of the whole situation.
A talk on trauma may turn from tiring sympathy to a joke after seeing an arm-lifting device.
T-shirt crucial for today’s talk.
It says: ”Here’s the way a disabled person looks like”
The t-shirt was worn during one of the rallies devoted to the disabled people in the society.
A lot of social institutions, press people, individuals tell me they are not ready to deal with the issue.
It’s an awkward, unpleasant topic.
People with disabilities can be very different, their bodies are very different.
We are currently making an Acropolis project about it.
These t-shirts were worn by disabled athletes…
And people with disabilities which, of course, produces another effect.
Disabled people are mostly invisible, not seen in every day lives.
This is the issue we try hard to address by photo exhibitions and other cultural projects.
It’s a pure instinct – to hide from seeing a disabled person.
There are 1000 reasons for that.
We conduct polls, write articles about it.
Some say – I don’t want to embarrass him.
Though in childhood we used to regard them with interest unless adults stopped us.
They stopped us for a number of reasons deeply rooted in our history.
First reason is purely prevention from getting a contagious disease.
And it’s also an attempt not to embarrass a person.
The second reason is historical. Quite often, a disabled man used to became socially disabled.
He used to lose work, his family and was literally found in the street.
There were a lot disabled in the street after the WorldWarII.
There were even more of them in the Middle Ages.
Trauma, pain, post-traumatic syndrome made him socially disabled.
The third reason is that some people feel that a tragedy is contagious.
It’s a known fact-an aberration of consciousness.
An experiment illustrating this statement was held in the U.S. recently.
A girl rode metro every day to document the number of people that took a seat beside her.
Then her face was transformed by make up.
Scars were added, face complexion was made uneven.
People stopped taking seat beside her.
It may seem absurd, but we often tend to keep away from diseases, tragedies.
We attribute bad qualities to what doesn’t look good.
Invisibility/visibility of disabled people is a huge and complicated issue.
Initially, we think that all these people would like to look like others.
For many it’s true, for some-not.
There’s a story about Cochlear implant that may be installed in brain to ensure almost ‘normal’ level of hearing.
It turned out a great number of hearing-impaired people resist the integration into the majority community.
They have their own culture, language, theatre and environment.
Why should they be integrated into another world?
“Everyone wants to be like everyone” proved to be wrong.
It was either wrong to believe that a person must hide its body imperfection for our comfort’s sake.
We know this statement is no longer relevant with reference to their social groups
Though, in the 60-ss, “to pas for white” was a great advantage for Afro-Americans.
It was a big, painful question.
Why, indeed, should people look like a privileged majority?
Why should my body be fitted into some esthetic standards?
This exciting topic may give a lot food for thought for anyone who speculates on how a man builds his own identity.
These are two of my favourite examples.
On the left you can see an artist who makes bijou for people with misshapen limbs.
They do not hide them, but accentuate them.
The other example is a very famous model who has never hidden she doesn’t have an arm.
She doesn’t wear artificial limbs.
It’s a simulated limb.
And, for example, there is one of her famous photo shoots where her able arm is covered with sleeve but her shoulder where there is no arm is bared.
I would like to show this scheme again and say one important thing. These things are completely interconnected.
And I would like to point out another important thing.
It is no coincidence why this dignity subject is linked with the others.
That is made not due to politically correct reasons but especially for practical ones.
If a person feels comfortable wearing clothes, his or her plasticity changes.
It becomes more confident and calm.
If clothes are sensible, the person has less restriction on what he or she can or cannot do in social life.
He or she rarely faces humiliating situations where the outside help is needed.
Or when the person is helpless in general. So, dignity and security are directly linked.
I was studiously trying to avoid the talk about what sort of courage we were talking about.
As the physical disability is understood to have double halo – the halo of weakness and (the halo) courage.
And the halo of weakness is named as the halo of courage – a person somehow copes with his or her problems.
But if we are talking about the clothes it is more complicated.
Firstly, there is the courage of those who are ready and willing to be well-dressed.
This story is not obvious.
Believe me, such people want to hide as we all want to.
For instance: those of us who had to wear a collar around his neck.
When you go into a subway car, it creates impression that everyone is looking at you.
Now imagine that your problem is more serious than the collar around your neck.
You are ready to be well-dressed, and this readiness means that you want to be seen despite the fact that society does not want to notice you.
And it is certainly called courage.
Courage for a person with cerebral palsy who goes shopping to a regular store.
We have seen how it works.
Fashion designers also have courage.
It is not only the courage of working with a difficult issue, it is also professional courage.
Now, in the West it is easier to talk about clothes for disabled people than 5 years ago.
There were no talks about that 20 years ago.
They referred these clothes to medical ones.
But as far as our lifespan is increasing, and as far as they cure diseases better
– and it is a crucial moment – we are still alive after those things which would have killed us,
for example, severe brain injuries, and severe spinal injuries.
The situation when they should wear us in a beautiful dress once and then bury is changing.
Now we need to be somehow dressed every day.
The percentage of disabled people is increasing.
People in the West understand this better.
That is why the idea to create something for 10 percent of the market, even for less percentage, is not bad in a practical way.
But it is a terrible topic for Russia
as buyers do not want to take these clothes to retail stores, buyers do not want to take them to online stores.
And then we face the topic which concerns courage of the market.
They do not want to open special stores but if they do,
they call it medical clothing stores where they also try to sell different medical devices and supplies.
There is courage of the market which is extremely important.
For setting up a good designer store for disabled people in a shopping mall but not a la medical clothing store.
Buyers of big online stores need courage to include these clothes into their regular catalogues.
You do need courage to take a chance to open such a store in a shopping mall.
But I have a feeling that this market is advantageous.
And, secondly, the market will recollect courage, especially if we repeatedly keep on talking about it.
There is a separate topic about mass media courage.
There are very good stories, there are very bad ones.
A good story is when mass media agrees to publish shootings, interviews,
and as a spin doctor I can honestly say it pays off, it brings income.
It is stories about people that interest people.
There is a bad experience when they say:
“we would be happy to cooperate together and we sympathize with you, but
But the mass media which publishes this requires certain courage, certain reasoning,
tough negotiations with advertisers, and with the finance department.
Since they will naturally make head against that.
and there is society courage.
And it is the most difficult thing to talk about because it seems awfully clear that people should be kind to disabled people.
But, in fact, take fixing wheelchair ramps paid by taxes.
But let’s take any normal country with transparent taxation.
We will pay a huge part of the taxes for 10 % of the population.
We can definitely call it courage, it’s a certain stage of society evolution, and I think that's important.
There is courage of a higher level, courage to send your child to an inclusive kindergarten.
I heard stories how people refuse to send their children to an inclusive kindergarten.
I also heard about school parents' committee at voting against having children with disabilities at schools.
It's the same animal fear to stay close to disease.
When you listen to reasoning, you feel that a speaker fails to explain what he or she has against a child in a wheelchair.
The most common argument is "Why should my child face these horrors."
But it would be unfair to say that we do not understand him or her.
Subconsciously, we all want a comfortable environment for our children.
Children, so to say, do not face difficulties at all.
There are research that prove that children are more tolerant than parents.
In other words, it really takes a lot of efforts,
Right now we are working on a photo project, Stylists spent probably 20 hours preparing paralympians, models, people with disabilities, for photo shooting.
It is really scary to tone a stump, it is scary to touch it, to hurt a person.
But they managed to do make up successfully, they coped with that.
It is no denying that in order to work with these topics you need courage.
We have partners, we have colleagues, and we have print media that supports us.
We have you who came to hear about this difficult and not very pleasant subject,
for which I am especially grateful, because it is great support for us.