This project developed 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 Toronto Metropolitan University with Dr. Ben Barry, fashion students co-designed an outfit with a disabled wearer by working through a collaborative design process that is grounded in disability justice.

Students were introduced to the frameworks of design activism, disability justice, disability aesthetics, design thinking and co-design. Students used mobile body scanning technology and 3D modelling software to create a 3D digital model of the wearer’s body. They then created, modified and finalized the outfit in exchange with a disabled wearer. The final work was photographed, and these photographs alongside the final outfits were exhibited to disrupt stereotypes 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 were interviewed before and after the project about their reasons for participating, experiences and co-designed outfit. They were also asked to keep an audio or written journal of their thoughts and feelings during the process.